Abigail Gilmore
Biographic Data
| ID | 3759592 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Abigail Gilmore |
| GIVEN NAMES | Abigail |
| FAMILY NAME | Gilmore |
| SIGNATURE | GILMORE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0596-6667 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Cultural policy and urban cultural infrastructure beyond the creative city
This special issue showcases interdisciplinary research on the changing conditions, policies and practices of urban cultural infrastructure, offering new insights into the relationship between art, culture, policy and urban development. The collection of research articles offers empirical consideration and theoretical reflection on what might be considered an ‘infrastructural turn’ within urban and cultural policy studies that challenges previous…
Infrastructure or industry: Re-performing cultural statistics and the foundational economy
For the arts and culture to be regarded as components of overlooked, everyday and providential foundational economy, we need to address the obstacle of how they are currently seen by policy. This article explores how evidence-based policymaking (EBPM) uses statistical data analysis to articulate the value of cultural activity and appraise the policy interventions designed to enhance this value to society and to economy. Within dominant UK and Aus…
Creative improvement, cultural infrastructure and urban zones: A tale of three cities and their cultural districts
This paper critically examines place governance and cultural policy decision-making in the context of three cities - Melbourne, Manchester and Toronto. It takes an infrastructural lens to examine the narrative histories and policy rationales for creating spatial zones in which culture is demarcated as an engine for social, cultural and economic development in each of these cities. By contextualising each city in relation to their individual histo…
Cultural Policy is Local: Understanding Cultural Policy as Situated Practice
This collection promotes a greater understanding of ‘the local’ within the ways the arts, culture and creative practices are governed and promoted. This is an open access book.
The impact of Covid-19 on digital data practices in museums and art galleries in the UK and the US
The first quarter of 2020 heralded the beginning of an uncertain future for museums and galleries as the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the only means to stay ‘open’ was to turn towards the digital. In this paper, we investigate how the physical closure of museum buildings due to lockdown restrictions caused shockwaves within their digital strategies and changed their data practices potentially for good. We review the impact of COVID-19 on the museum …
Calling Participation to Account: Taking Part in the Politics of Method
The Taking Part Survey is the UK government’s flagship research instrument for cultural policy appraisal. It was developed by the Department of Culture Media and Sport and its non-departmental public bodies to provide measurable indicators of cultural participation for the purposes of policy performance management under the New Labour administrations of 1997–2010. In this chapter, we re-examine the historical emergence and significance of Taking …
Histories of Public Parks in Manchester and Salford and Their Role in Cultural Policies for Everyday Participation
The establishment of public parks in England within the nineteenth century, and their ongoing creation and management, provides the basis for understanding changing relationships between local governanceLocal governance and administration, cultural policy formation and everyday participation, particularly within the industrial and post-industrial urban context. This chapter considers the history of public parks and their management in Manchester …
Arts councils, policy-making and “the local”
In the British Isles, national policies for the arts are primarily viewed as the responsibility of arts councils with statutory duties to distribute state funding that meet the requirements of both “arms-length” principles and national strategic frameworks. This paper explores the tensions between policy making for the nation-state and for “the local” through comparative research on the arts councils (and equivalent bodies) in Scotland, England a…
Situating the local in global cultural policy
David Stevenson - ORCID 0000-0002-8977-1818 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8977-1818
The park and the commons: Vernacular spaces for everyday participation and cultural value
Public parks were first established in the UK in the newly industrialised cities of Manchester and Salford, as nineteenth century cultural strategies for public health, regulation and education responding to moral anxieties about the changing conditions of everyday life. This article looks at public parks as vernacular spaces for everyday participation, drawing on empirical research, including ethnographic fieldwork, household interviews and focu…
Accounting for quality: Arts evaluation, public value and the case of “Culture counts”
Arts policy has a longstanding relationship with the concept of “quality” and the ways in which organisations measure, evaluate and account for it. Culture Counts, an evaluation system and digital platform, compiles data from standardised evaluation surveys of different stakeholder groups – organisations, audiences, critics, funders and peers – and provides the means to compare and triangulate data in an accessible format. As a result, it claims …
Higher Education and the Creative Economy: Beyond the campus
Since the DCMS Creative Industries Mapping Document highlighted the key role played by creative activities in the UK economy and society, the creative industries agenda has expanded across Europe and internationally. It has the support of local authorities, regional development agencies, research councils, arts and cultural agencies and other sector organisations. Within this framework, higher education institutions have also engaged in the creat…
Measuring quality in the cultural sector: The Manchester Metrics pilot: findings and lessons learned, by Catherine Bunting and John Knell
Those of us who run the cultural organisations that have participated in the Manchester Metrics pilot were so bemused by Sara Selwood's comments and assertions in her review that we felt a response
Beyond the campus: Higher education, cultural policy and the creative economy
This article examines the dimensions and dynamics of an expanding area of policy interest: the relationships between higher education and the creative economy. These activities feature collaboration between individuals and networks from the different sectors, involved in teaching, curriculum and policy development, research and knowledge exchange. They have become the focus of policy debates through their central role in stimulating innovation, c…
Higher Education and the Creative Economy: Creative Graduates, Knowledge Transfer and Regional Impact Debates
This paper highlights the growing importance of interdisciplinary research at the intersection between higher education, creative industries and growth of regional creative economies. The paper not only focuses specifically on the UK context but also encompasses issues of further international interest and debate. It undertakes a review of existing literature on the cultural role of higher education institutions (HEIs) and points to recent resear…
Understanding of the value and impacts of cultural experience – a literature review
This literature review was published by Arts Council England (ACE) in July 2014. It is part of a long line of research reports, some commissioned and some produced in-house by the research team, al
Evaluating legacies: Research, evidence and the regional impact of the Cultural Olympiad
From the bidding stage onwards, the London 2012 Olympics has been framed by an explicitly instrumental agenda, with objectives including increasing participation in sport in the UK and economic and physical regeneration in host sites, through investment in the Olympic Park and its surrounding infrastructure. The bid also signalled the ambition that London 2012 should be the first Olympics to deliver legacy through a nation-wide cultural programme…
Cold spots, crap towns and cultural deserts: The role of place and geography in cultural participation and creative place-making
This article considers cultural participation in relation to locality, by looking at the case of Macclesfield, a town in northwest England. It does so in the context of current arts policy, which aims to rebalance arts participation patterns across localities. Such policies are grounded in particular forms of evidence of differentiated levels of participation, which indicate the position of places within league tables and indices of activities ac…
Mapping cultural assets and evaluating significance: Theory, methodology and practice
Over the last decade in the UK, there has been a notable shift in the popularity and use of cultural mapping as a methodology for policy making at a regional and local level. This follows increased demand for an informed framework for planning arts and cultural facilities from local and regional government and from within the cultural sector (Evans, 2008: p. 65). The article begins with an exploration of cultural mapping within cultural policy, w…
Counting eyeballs, soundbites and ‘plings’: Arts participation, strategic instrumentalism and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad
This article examines cultural participation, its metrics and ‘drivers’ as they are defined through cultural programming for the London 2012 Olympics. The meanings and interpretation of these terms are considered by examining the development of an evaluation framework for the We Play programme in the North West of England, an initiative funded by Legacy Trust UK and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It argues that in spite of the dissona…
Local cultural strategies: A strategic review
The development of Local Cultural Strategies was recommended to all local authorities in England through the publication of a guidance document, Creating Opportunities, by the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS, 2000). Although not a statutory duty, by the end of 2002 Local Cultural Strategy development was strongly encouraged by the government, and the adoption of a strategy became part of performance review for local authorities under …
Public History Review Essay: ‘That Was Then, This is Now’ — Old Work and New Labour in the Work Zone, the Millennium Dome
The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting
(2002). The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting. International Journal of Cultural Policy: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1-20
Figuring out the dome
The New Millennium Experience ‐ an exhibition on the theme of time sited in a fibre‐glass dome on the Greenwich Peninsula adjacent to the Prime Meridian ‐ was the centrepiece of Millennium celebrations in Britain. From its inception in the mid‐1990s ‘the Dome’ had been controversial for several reasons, not least of which was its financial viability were it not to prove very popular with the general public. Within weeks of opening, it emerged tha…
Cold spots, crap towns and cultural deserts: The role of place and geography in cultural participation and creative place-making
This article considers cultural participation in relation to locality, by looking at the case of Macclesfield, a town in northwest England. It does so in the context of current arts policy, which aims to rebalance arts participation patterns across localities. Such policies are grounded in particular forms of evidence of differentiated levels of participation, which indicate the position of places within league tables and indices of activities ac…
The park and the commons: Vernacular spaces for everyday participation and cultural value
Public parks were first established in the UK in the newly industrialised cities of Manchester and Salford, as nineteenth century cultural strategies for public health, regulation and education responding to moral anxieties about the changing conditions of everyday life. This article looks at public parks as vernacular spaces for everyday participation, drawing on empirical research, including ethnographic fieldwork, household interviews and focu…
The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting
(2002). The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting. International Journal of Cultural Policy: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1-20
Evaluating legacies: Research, evidence and the regional impact of the Cultural Olympiad
From the bidding stage onwards, the London 2012 Olympics has been framed by an explicitly instrumental agenda, with objectives including increasing participation in sport in the UK and economic and physical regeneration in host sites, through investment in the Olympic Park and its surrounding infrastructure. The bid also signalled the ambition that London 2012 should be the first Olympics to deliver legacy through a nation-wide cultural programme…
Figuring out the dome
The New Millennium Experience ‐ an exhibition on the theme of time sited in a fibre‐glass dome on the Greenwich Peninsula adjacent to the Prime Meridian ‐ was the centrepiece of Millennium celebrations in Britain. From its inception in the mid‐1990s ‘the Dome’ had been controversial for several reasons, not least of which was its financial viability were it not to prove very popular with the general public. Within weeks of opening, it emerged tha…
Arts councils, policy-making and “the local”
In the British Isles, national policies for the arts are primarily viewed as the responsibility of arts councils with statutory duties to distribute state funding that meet the requirements of both “arms-length” principles and national strategic frameworks. This paper explores the tensions between policy making for the nation-state and for “the local” through comparative research on the arts councils (and equivalent bodies) in Scotland, England a…
Mapping cultural assets and evaluating significance: Theory, methodology and practice
Over the last decade in the UK, there has been a notable shift in the popularity and use of cultural mapping as a methodology for policy making at a regional and local level. This follows increased demand for an informed framework for planning arts and cultural facilities from local and regional government and from within the cultural sector (Evans, 2008: p. 65). The article begins with an exploration of cultural mapping within cultural policy, w…
Situating the local in global cultural policy
David Stevenson - ORCID 0000-0002-8977-1818 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8977-1818
Measuring quality in the cultural sector: The Manchester Metrics pilot: findings and lessons learned, by Catherine Bunting and John Knell
Those of us who run the cultural organisations that have participated in the Manchester Metrics pilot were so bemused by Sara Selwood's comments and assertions in her review that we felt a response
Accounting for quality: Arts evaluation, public value and the case of “Culture counts”
Arts policy has a longstanding relationship with the concept of “quality” and the ways in which organisations measure, evaluate and account for it. Culture Counts, an evaluation system and digital platform, compiles data from standardised evaluation surveys of different stakeholder groups – organisations, audiences, critics, funders and peers – and provides the means to compare and triangulate data in an accessible format. As a result, it claims …
Beyond the campus: Higher education, cultural policy and the creative economy
This article examines the dimensions and dynamics of an expanding area of policy interest: the relationships between higher education and the creative economy. These activities feature collaboration between individuals and networks from the different sectors, involved in teaching, curriculum and policy development, research and knowledge exchange. They have become the focus of policy debates through their central role in stimulating innovation, c…
Higher Education and the Creative Economy: Creative Graduates, Knowledge Transfer and Regional Impact Debates
This paper highlights the growing importance of interdisciplinary research at the intersection between higher education, creative industries and growth of regional creative economies. The paper not only focuses specifically on the UK context but also encompasses issues of further international interest and debate. It undertakes a review of existing literature on the cultural role of higher education institutions (HEIs) and points to recent resear…
Counting eyeballs, soundbites and ‘plings’: Arts participation, strategic instrumentalism and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad
This article examines cultural participation, its metrics and ‘drivers’ as they are defined through cultural programming for the London 2012 Olympics. The meanings and interpretation of these terms are considered by examining the development of an evaluation framework for the We Play programme in the North West of England, an initiative funded by Legacy Trust UK and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It argues that in spite of the dissona…
Figuring out the dome
The New Millennium Experience ‐ an exhibition on the theme of time sited in a fibre‐glass dome on the Greenwich Peninsula adjacent to the Prime Meridian ‐ was the centrepiece of Millennium celebrations in Britain. From its inception in the mid‐1990s ‘the Dome’ had been controversial for several reasons, not least of which was its financial viability were it not to prove very popular with the general public. Within weeks of opening, it emerged tha…
The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting
(2002). The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting. International Journal of Cultural Policy: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1-20
Public History Review Essay: ‘That Was Then, This is Now’ — Old Work and New Labour in the Work Zone, the Millennium Dome
Local cultural strategies: A strategic review
The development of Local Cultural Strategies was recommended to all local authorities in England through the publication of a guidance document, Creating Opportunities, by the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS, 2000). Although not a statutory duty, by the end of 2002 Local Cultural Strategy development was strongly encouraged by the government, and the adoption of a strategy became part of performance review for local authorities under …
Counting eyeballs, soundbites and ‘plings’: Arts participation, strategic instrumentalism and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad
This article examines cultural participation, its metrics and ‘drivers’ as they are defined through cultural programming for the London 2012 Olympics. The meanings and interpretation of these terms are considered by examining the development of an evaluation framework for the We Play programme in the North West of England, an initiative funded by Legacy Trust UK and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It argues that in spite of the dissona…
Mapping cultural assets and evaluating significance: Theory, methodology and practice
Over the last decade in the UK, there has been a notable shift in the popularity and use of cultural mapping as a methodology for policy making at a regional and local level. This follows increased demand for an informed framework for planning arts and cultural facilities from local and regional government and from within the cultural sector (Evans, 2008: p. 65). The article begins with an exploration of cultural mapping within cultural policy, w…
Cold spots, crap towns and cultural deserts: The role of place and geography in cultural participation and creative place-making
This article considers cultural participation in relation to locality, by looking at the case of Macclesfield, a town in northwest England. It does so in the context of current arts policy, which aims to rebalance arts participation patterns across localities. Such policies are grounded in particular forms of evidence of differentiated levels of participation, which indicate the position of places within league tables and indices of activities ac…
Understanding of the value and impacts of cultural experience – a literature review
This literature review was published by Arts Council England (ACE) in July 2014. It is part of a long line of research reports, some commissioned and some produced in-house by the research team, al
Evaluating legacies: Research, evidence and the regional impact of the Cultural Olympiad
From the bidding stage onwards, the London 2012 Olympics has been framed by an explicitly instrumental agenda, with objectives including increasing participation in sport in the UK and economic and physical regeneration in host sites, through investment in the Olympic Park and its surrounding infrastructure. The bid also signalled the ambition that London 2012 should be the first Olympics to deliver legacy through a nation-wide cultural programme…
Beyond the campus: Higher education, cultural policy and the creative economy
This article examines the dimensions and dynamics of an expanding area of policy interest: the relationships between higher education and the creative economy. These activities feature collaboration between individuals and networks from the different sectors, involved in teaching, curriculum and policy development, research and knowledge exchange. They have become the focus of policy debates through their central role in stimulating innovation, c…
Higher Education and the Creative Economy: Creative Graduates, Knowledge Transfer and Regional Impact Debates
This paper highlights the growing importance of interdisciplinary research at the intersection between higher education, creative industries and growth of regional creative economies. The paper not only focuses specifically on the UK context but also encompasses issues of further international interest and debate. It undertakes a review of existing literature on the cultural role of higher education institutions (HEIs) and points to recent resear…
Higher Education and the Creative Economy: Beyond the campus
Since the DCMS Creative Industries Mapping Document highlighted the key role played by creative activities in the UK economy and society, the creative industries agenda has expanded across Europe and internationally. It has the support of local authorities, regional development agencies, research councils, arts and cultural agencies and other sector organisations. Within this framework, higher education institutions have also engaged in the creat…
Measuring quality in the cultural sector: The Manchester Metrics pilot: findings and lessons learned, by Catherine Bunting and John Knell
Those of us who run the cultural organisations that have participated in the Manchester Metrics pilot were so bemused by Sara Selwood's comments and assertions in her review that we felt a response
The park and the commons: Vernacular spaces for everyday participation and cultural value
Public parks were first established in the UK in the newly industrialised cities of Manchester and Salford, as nineteenth century cultural strategies for public health, regulation and education responding to moral anxieties about the changing conditions of everyday life. This article looks at public parks as vernacular spaces for everyday participation, drawing on empirical research, including ethnographic fieldwork, household interviews and focu…
Accounting for quality: Arts evaluation, public value and the case of “Culture counts”
Arts policy has a longstanding relationship with the concept of “quality” and the ways in which organisations measure, evaluate and account for it. Culture Counts, an evaluation system and digital platform, compiles data from standardised evaluation surveys of different stakeholder groups – organisations, audiences, critics, funders and peers – and provides the means to compare and triangulate data in an accessible format. As a result, it claims …
Calling Participation to Account: Taking Part in the Politics of Method
The Taking Part Survey is the UK government’s flagship research instrument for cultural policy appraisal. It was developed by the Department of Culture Media and Sport and its non-departmental public bodies to provide measurable indicators of cultural participation for the purposes of policy performance management under the New Labour administrations of 1997–2010. In this chapter, we re-examine the historical emergence and significance of Taking …
Histories of Public Parks in Manchester and Salford and Their Role in Cultural Policies for Everyday Participation
The establishment of public parks in England within the nineteenth century, and their ongoing creation and management, provides the basis for understanding changing relationships between local governanceLocal governance and administration, cultural policy formation and everyday participation, particularly within the industrial and post-industrial urban context. This chapter considers the history of public parks and their management in Manchester …
Arts councils, policy-making and “the local”
In the British Isles, national policies for the arts are primarily viewed as the responsibility of arts councils with statutory duties to distribute state funding that meet the requirements of both “arms-length” principles and national strategic frameworks. This paper explores the tensions between policy making for the nation-state and for “the local” through comparative research on the arts councils (and equivalent bodies) in Scotland, England a…
Situating the local in global cultural policy
David Stevenson - ORCID 0000-0002-8977-1818 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8977-1818
The impact of Covid-19 on digital data practices in museums and art galleries in the UK and the US
The first quarter of 2020 heralded the beginning of an uncertain future for museums and galleries as the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the only means to stay ‘open’ was to turn towards the digital. In this paper, we investigate how the physical closure of museum buildings due to lockdown restrictions caused shockwaves within their digital strategies and changed their data practices potentially for good. We review the impact of COVID-19 on the museum …
Cultural Policy is Local: Understanding Cultural Policy as Situated Practice
This collection promotes a greater understanding of ‘the local’ within the ways the arts, culture and creative practices are governed and promoted. This is an open access book.
Creative improvement, cultural infrastructure and urban zones: A tale of three cities and their cultural districts
This paper critically examines place governance and cultural policy decision-making in the context of three cities - Melbourne, Manchester and Toronto. It takes an infrastructural lens to examine the narrative histories and policy rationales for creating spatial zones in which culture is demarcated as an engine for social, cultural and economic development in each of these cities. By contextualising each city in relation to their individual histo…
Cultural policy and urban cultural infrastructure beyond the creative city
This special issue showcases interdisciplinary research on the changing conditions, policies and practices of urban cultural infrastructure, offering new insights into the relationship between art, culture, policy and urban development. The collection of research articles offers empirical consideration and theoretical reflection on what might be considered an ‘infrastructural turn’ within urban and cultural policy studies that challenges previous…
Infrastructure or industry: Re-performing cultural statistics and the foundational economy
For the arts and culture to be regarded as components of overlooked, everyday and providential foundational economy, we need to address the obstacle of how they are currently seen by policy. This article explores how evidence-based policymaking (EBPM) uses statistical data analysis to articulate the value of cultural activity and appraise the policy interventions designed to enhance this value to society and to economy. Within dominant UK and Aus…
Political science (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development (19 works) · Cultural policy (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (9 works) · The arts (9 works) · Public relations (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Geography (6 works)