O'Brien, D., Rees, G. and Taylor, M. orcid.org/0000-0001-5943-9796 (2022) Who runs the arts in England? A social network analysis of arts boards. Poetics, 92 (A). 101646. ISSN 0304-422X
Abstract
Recent research on cultural production has drawn attention to significant inequalities. This paper aims to unpack one possible explanation for these inequalities by focusing on the people with ultimate responsibility for arts institutions: the boards of directors. Using data from the UK's Companies House, it analyses the boards of Arts Council England's National Portfolio Organisations. It then “hops” to the other organisations with whom arts organisations also share board members, and their directors. While the network of NPOs is relatively sparse, with most organisations not sharing board members with any others, in the one-hop network the majority of these organisations are indirectly connected to one another. In addition to a large number of arts and cultural organisations, this network also contains a large proportion of film funding companies and financial services companies. The most central company in the network, measured by betweenness, is the Royal Opera House, followed by companies associated with significant tax advantages for their directors. Our results raise questions for the governance of culture, drawing further attention to its ties with financial institutions.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | cultural governance; social network analysis; inequality; brokerage |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL AH/S004483/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 25 Jan 2022 11:09 |
Last Modified: | 27 Feb 2024 01:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.poetic.2022.101646 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:182874 |
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