emergence of culture-led regeneration : a policy concept and its discontents

Analysis of the concept of 'culture-led regeneration' from 1997 to 2007, concentrating particularly on the shift in policy priorities under New Labour in the UK between 1999-2004. Through a consideration of key urban, social, cultural and arts policies, the paper identifies the political motives and government interests which have animated this history. The paper seeks to demonstrate that culture-led regeneration is not a single coherent term, but has multiple meanings and applications. More significantly, under New Labour the economic instrumentalism of the previous Conservative regime was supplanted by a social instrumentalism, where culture was only defined in a policy context in terms of a supplement to social or urban policy aspirations. Culture and creativity were means to generate an already existing process of social reconstruction, but this came at the cost of an impoverished concept of culture.