The second challenge facing governments is dealing with the uneven profile of the arts and cultural sector. The tradition of supporting expensive and generally non-sustainable artforms has largely persisted and settled into ‘patronage plus’ models. Arguments about market failure as the rationale for providing support for services and activities that are perceived as ‘public goods’ are not sufficient to explain why there is always support for elite and less popular arts and culture irrespective of party ideology or the type of support model that underpins the policy. Indeed, support flows even when there is no clearly articulated policy by government. In such circumstances, ‘policy’ tends to rely on ‘back of envelope’ largesse strategies, or ‘accidental policy’. There are no market or economic rationalist arguments that can succinctly or persuasively be cited to justify continued support for traditional elite culture.

Yet support for this sub-sector continues to be at the heart of cultural policy even when placed within a broader cultural planning framework (such as Richard Florida’s creative classes or Robert McNulty’s sustainable communities approaches, see McNulty 1986; Ciccarelli and Coppa 2001). In fact, if anything, we are witnessing a re-emergence and reinforcement of bifurcation in the domain of arts and culture with a retreat to earlier forms of patronage for the top of the arts hierarchy and the propulsion of broader notions of culture into a compote of policies brought together under the umbrella of well-being, sustainability, entrepreneurship, citizenship and innovation.

As discussed earlier, the broad cultural arena or eco-culture that links to the everyday and popular cultural forms consumed by the majority of the population is of marginal interest to cultural policy makers despite its self-evident resonance with the community. Furthermore, one of the ironies of the instrumentalist approach to cultural policy is that it simultaneously ghettoises elite culture and alienates potential new audiences, resulting in perverse policy outcomes reminiscent of Jowell’s spiral of decline. So while new cultural forms such as physical circus and indigenous art continue to prosper, older forms such as classical performing arts and mainstream visual arts still struggle.