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This thesis reflects upon the nature of creativity and participation in the UK public cultural institution. It asks: to what extent is creative agency enabled or disabled within this context? In order to answer this question a qualitative study of Southbank Centre, one of the UK's leading public cultural institutions, has been constructed. The thesis considers the institution in its totality, analysing and interpreting both internal, subjective dimensions and external, public-focused dimensions. An interdisciplinary approach characterises a theoretical and methodological framework that draws upon concepts and methods from sociology, visual culture, museum studies and institutional ethnography. The case study is contextualised through analysis of three key historical examples that provide the preconditions for current perspectives on the relationship between art and work in the public cultural institution: the 1951 Festival of Britain, Artist Placement Group (APG) and the Arts and Crafts Movement. The Southbank case study involves employee interviews, fieldwork observations and the interpretation of cultural objects. These provide the empirical evidence that enables reflection on how creative work and the public are constituted, and how the institution might be seen to exist as a site of struggle. These methods facilitate an assessment of the critical potential of creative work within and around the public cultural institution's self-defined boundaries and the specific historical, discursive and symbolic conditions through which it is enabled or disabled. Although the influence of neoliberal cultural policy cannot be underestimated in this context, the thesis concludes with an alternative suggestion for what the public cultural institution could be. It claims that the discursive tension between artistic and managerial agendas can act as a productive terrain for creative work in its broadest sense.

In the UK, over the past decade, the rhetoric of ‘Third Way’ governance informed cultural policy. The research sets out how the agenda for cultural policy converged with priorities for economic and social policy, in policies implemented by Arts Council England, in the commissioning of publicly funded visual art and within culture-led regeneration. Hence visual art production was further instrumentalized for the purposes of marketization and privatization. The practice-based research examines the problems issues and contingencies for visual art production in this context. Public sphere theory is used to examine ideas of publics and publicness in Third Way cultural policy context, in state cultural institutions and programming. Using Jürgen Habermas’ conception of the public sphere, the research proposes that cultural policy functioned as ‘steering media’, as publicity for the state to produce social cohesion and affirmative conceptions of the social order, i.e. the management of publics. In contrast, public sphere theory is concerned with societal processes of opinion formation, of selfforming, deliberating and rival publics. The research also applies theories of the public sphere to the theories of art and participation associated with socially-engaged art practice - theories that articulate art in relation to its publics. While socially-engaged artists have produced new modes of art practice that have shifted arts ontology, the research points to how Third Way cultural policy was quick to seize upon socially-engaged art for its own agenda. Public sphere theory informed the strategies and tactics of the Freee art collective (Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt, Mel Jordan) in the production of publicly-funded artworks. The artworks were a means to test the hypothesis and to find evidence by intervening in Third Way cultural policy with alternative ideas. Freee’s public spherian art proposes new modes of participative art to counter Third Way cultural policy - a ‘counter-public art’.

The thesis explores the work of two disparate figures, John Ruskin (1819-1900) and Albert Smith (1816-1860) who, together, helped transform the way the Alps were perceived in the mid nineteenth century. Both esteemed the Alps in their own way, although Ruskin’s cultural aestheticism contrasting markedly to the popular showmanship of Smith. Nevertheless, both Ruskin’s five-volumed Modern Painters (1843-1860), and Smith’s theatrical shows describing his ascent of Mont Blanc (1852-1858), contributed significantly to the growing popularity of the landscape resulting in the Alpine Club (1857) and the birth of modern tourism in the region. This work examines in detail the work and interests of both characters. This includes Ruskin’s drawings, art theory (especially in relation to his admiration of Turner), geological interests, religious convictions, and poetry. These reveal his desire to centre ideas of the sublime around his scientific interest in the area and the legacy of his Evangelical upbringing. The thesis investigates the tension between these elements. Smith’s climb of Mont Blanc (1851) and his subsequent shows highlighted his desire to thrill and entertain. For him, presentation of the Alps was a matter of showmanship and the thesis investigates his success, tracing its roots in elements of Victorian popular entertainment. Both Smith’s shows, and works like Of Mountain Beauty (Volume IV of Modern Painters (1856)), inspired many to explore the landscape for themselves. For Ruskin, this led to a decline in his interest in the Alps following the development of the rail network and the expansion of popular tourist sites, including his beloved Chamonix. For Smith, the public’s increasing familiarity with the region, and the popularity of other stories of Alpine ascents by members of the Alpine Club, led to a decline in interest in his shows by the end of the 1850s. Due to their interest in the region, the Romantic appreciation of the Alps in the early nineteenth century associated with theories of the sublime became a much more diverse phenomenon illustrating a number of key features of Victorian culture, including: the relationship of ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture; the increasing influence of mass tourism; and the ways in which major figures in Victorian Britain explored and utilised foreign destinations. The thesis will also, from time to time, examine the relationship between cultural and visual forms and key elements in Victorian intellectual controversy, including the relationship of religion and science.

Au début des années 1990, apparaît une nouvelle pratique contemporaine : l’art participatif. Celle-ci se caractérise d’abord par une création hors-atelier : la création s’inscrit dans l’espace social. Elle se distingue ensuite par le fait qu’elle n’est pas le fruit du travail de l’artiste seul, mais celui d’une collaboration en présence entre artiste et participants. Notre thèse constitue une enquête sur les enjeux à la fois artistiques et politiques de cette pratique. Nous inscrivons ainsi l’art participatif dans une histoire artistique de la participation sur le XXème siècle, afin de comprendre les problèmes communs justifiant la mobilisation d’un tel dispositif de création, et la spécificité de ce dernier en art participatif ; mais aussi dans une histoire esthétique permettant d’éclairer la façon dont la participation remet en question nos préconceptions les plus profondes sur l’art. Une deuxième partie de notre travail consiste à étudier le développement de cette pratique, en relation avec la politique, au Royaume-Uni de 1997 à 2015. Les gouvernements successifs promeuvent la participation au rang de valeur, et multiplient la mise en place de dispositifs de participatory democracy. Avoir recours à un dispositif de création participatif acquiert, dans ce contexte, une autre dimension et signification. Nous étudions également l’art participatif en rapport avec le politique, que nous analysons comme la tentative de réinventer de nouvelles formes du commun et de la communauté. Nous faisons l’hypothèse que le processus de collaboration entre artiste et participants fait émerger une forme d’association politique nouvelle : la communauté de singularités. / In the early 1990’s emerged a new artistic practice: participatory art. This post-studio practice is characterized by an embodied collaboration between the artist and the participants. Our thesis is an investigation on the artistic and political stakes of this practice. We inscribe participatory art in an artistic history of participation, in order to understand the shared problems encountered by artists along the 20th century calling for the mobilization of this creative device, and also its specific use and functioning in participatory art. We also inscribe this practice in an aesthetic history which enlightens how participation questions our most rooted preconceptions about art. A second part of our work is dedicated to the study of the development of participatory art in relationship to politics (understood here as policies) in the UK from 1997 to 2015. Participation is promoted as a value in itself by the successive governments and participatory democracy is said to be developed by various kinds of public consultations. Participatory art acquires in this context a different meaning and dimension. Finally we intend to show how participatory art can be interpreted as an attempt to create new forms of communality and community. We suggest the idea that the collaborative process between the artist and the participants produces a new kind of political association: the community of singularities.