Culture, Participation and Policy in the Municipal Public Park / Palgrave Studies in Cultural Participation (PDF)

"Finally we have a book which engages seriously with parks not just as 'recreation' but as a vital part of the social infrastructure and inseparable from fully democratic, locally focused cultural policy."

- Justin O'Connor, Professor of Creative Economy, University of South Australia

"A valuable read for anyone interested not only in the public park but in participation and public value, cultural policy and governance."

- Leila Jancovich, Professor in Cultural Policy and Participation, University of Leeds, UK

Drawing on extensive mixed-methods research on everyday participation in diverse local cultural ecosystems in England and Scotland, the book examines the social lives of parks and their users, and the important public values that are generated through their common stewardship and usership. It presents case studies of parks and co-located museums as cultural public spheres, which promote both commoning and commodification. These are contextualized by histories of municipal parkmaking from the nineteenth century to the present and related to the making of local government and to other civic and cultural institutions.

Abigail Gilmore is Senior Lecturer in Arts Management and Cultural Policy at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research is on culture, public policy and place with recent projects on everyday participation, local governance and the move beyond the 'creative city' in place-based policymaking.