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Jane Woddis. (2023). Acting on Cultural Policy: Arts Practitioners, Policy-Making and Civil Society. Palgrave Macmillan Cham. ISBN 978-3-031-11161-7

This book investigates the role of arts practitioners in cultural policy-making, challenging the perception that arts practitioners have little or no involvement in policy and seeking to discover the extent and form of their engagement. Examining the subject through a case-study of playwriting policy in England since 1945, and paying particular attention to playwrights’ organisations and their history of self-directed activity, the book explores practitioners’ participation in cultural policy-making, encompassing both “invited” and “uninvited” interventions that also weave together policy activity and creative practice. It discusses why their involvement matters, and argues that arts practitioners and their organisations can be understood as participants in civil society whose policy activity contributes to the maintenance and enlargement of democratic practices and values.