A missing municipalist legacy: the GLC and the changing cultural politics of Southbank Centre
Soundings - ISSN 1362-6620
Volume 2020 Number 74
A missing municipalist legacy: the GLC and the changing cultural politics of Southbank Centre
Kathy Williams pages -
DOI: 10.3898/SOUN.74.02.2020
Abstract
The Southbank Centre tends to minimise its inheritance from the GLC - reflecting a wider practice of silencing alternatives to neoliberalism.
This article analyses key moments in the cultural history of Southbank Centre and focuses on two important legacies, one which is widely celebrated and the other marginalised. It discusses the 1951 Festival of Britain and the ways in which this heritage permeates recent and current working practices at Southbank Centre, and compares this to the mostly silenced legacy of the policies of Ken Livingstone’s GLC towards participatory arts and accessible public space. Drawing on a wide range of interviews, it argues that Livingstone’s GLC’s radical arts policies and high profile funding galvanised participatory arts at Southbank Centre, and the launch of the Open Foyer Policy in 1983 promoted democratic access to the site. This historical example of the potential of municipalism is mostly missing from discourses of cultural workers for Southbank Centre today. The prevailing silence on this period of municipal socialism is part of a wider silencing of alternatives to neoliberal capitalism.
SORRY - you are not registered as being permitted online access to the full text of this article
You have the following options:
- If you are viewing this via an institution or academic library you can ask that your institution takes out a Subscription to this journal.
- If you already have a Personal Subscription please login below
Forgotten your username / password? Click here to locate
- Purchase an annual Personal Subscription
PRINT + DIGITAL personal subscription (£40 / year)
DIGITAL personal subscription (£30 / year)
A Personal Subscription provides immediate access not only to the single article you are seeking, but also to all past and future articles in this journal up to the expiry of your annual (calendar year) subscription. - Purchase immediate access to this single article (UK£7.00) - Buy article Coming Soon
To cite this article
Kathy Williams (2020) A missing municipalist legacy: the GLC and the changing cultural politics of Southbank Centre, Soundings, 2020(74), -. https://doi.org/10.3898/SOUN.74.02.2020