
SOUNDS OF OUR TOWN
CONCEPTUALIZING POPULAR MUSIC'S HERITAGE AS AN OBJECT OF POLICY
2020 saw Paul, Sarah and Zel begin collaborating on a project that sought to conceptualise popular music's heritage as an object of policy. Their conceptual work drew on knowledge they had gained from a multitude of projects – many captured on this website – that had highlighted policy-related challenges for popular music heritage initiatives in different places across the world. Specifically, this project was prompted by three key questions: (1) is the growing attention to popular music's heritage an amplification of the idea that the value of popular music lies not only in its economic promise but also in the ways in which it has accrued an abiding cultural worth for individuals/communities that consumed popular music?; (2) how is popular music's heritage to be preserved, on whom does that responsibility fall, and why might it demand attention from policymakers?; and, (3) how can any sense be made of a global field of practice in any systematic manner given the range of cultural, political and social contexts in which the recognition of popular music as heritage takes place?
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Popular music heritage policy involves governing authorities mobilising the past to capitalise in the present on what is perceived as the economic, cultural and/or social significance of this cultural form. This study understands policy for popular music heritage to encompass a complex assemblage of actors, interests, goals and practices, including governments (national and local), cultural institutions, cultural intermediaries, funding bodies, professional curators, DIY activists, the music industries, consumers, fans and end-users of heritage initiatives.
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In thinking about the dimensions and operations of policymaking as a dynamic field of meaning, intent, action and power, together Paul, Zel and Sarah worked to distil popular music heritage's global, cultural and political variants to develop three operational descriptors which broadly capture the field of popular music heritage policy: (1) preservation – the processes that serve to identify, recognise, legitimate, collect and safeguard materials and histories of popular music culture; (2) performance – the exhibition and display of popular music heritage, access to it and the use made of it; and, (3) promotion – how popular music heritage is produced or enlisted by policymakers in endorsing contemporary creative practices and informing processes of urban renewal and placemaking.
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SELECTED OUTPUT

Paul Long, Zelmarie Cantillon and Sarah Baker
This chapter in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy explores the ways in which the value of popular music heritage has been captured and inflected by policy motives and practices. It outlines preservation, performance and promotion as key operational descriptors for understanding popular music heritage policymaking.
RESOURCES
If you want to learn more about popular music heritage policy you might be interested in exploring the following resources that guided our conceptualisations:
SCHOLARLY READING
Music, heritage and cultural policy
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Ballico, C & Watson, A 2020, Music cities: evaluating a global cultural policy concept. London, Palgrave Macmillan
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Cohen, S 2017, Decline, renewal and the city in popular music culture, London, Routledge
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Gray, C 2002, 'Local government and the arts', Local Government Studies 28(1): 77–90.
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Howard, K (ed) 2016, Music as intangible cultural heritage: policy, ideology and practice in the preservation of East Asian traditions. London, Routledge
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O'Brien, D 2013, Cultural policy: management, value and modernity in the creative industries. London, Routledge
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Pendlebury, J 2015, 'Heritage and policy', in E Waterton and S Watson (eds) The Palgrave handbook of contemporary heritage research (pp.426–441), Palgrave Macmillan.
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Prince, R 2010. 'Policy transfer as policy assemblage: making policy for the creative industries in New Zealand', Environment and Planning A 42(1): 169–186​

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Shane Homan, whose invitation to contribute a chapter to the handbook of popular music policy he was curating sparked the impetus for this project.