The Public Administration of ‘place’: Labels and Meaning in Local Government Arts Development in the Irish Urban-Fringe

This chapter explores how multiple interpretations of local places are administratively constructed in cultural policymaking. It does so by examining how top down characterisations of place are operationalised and negotiated, through the practice of local arts administration—and to what end. The chapter draws on research in cultural policy, public administration and interpretations of place from Irish literature, and cultural and human geography to examine a place-specific local arts development programme, entitled Exit 15. The programme, which took place from 2016–2019, was targeted at a residential area, Ballyogan, a so-called ‘hard to reach’ locality 12 km outside the city centre of Dublin, Ireland in Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County. Ethnographic study of the design and delivery of Exit 15 by that County Council arts office reveals that different classifications and categorisations of localities for the administration of public services facilitate senses of place that are employed, negotiated and re-imagined by arts officers. The single case study indicates that while systems change for a more place-sensitive strategy in cultural policymaking may be limited by public administration bureaucracy, meaning-making can be a critically reflexive practice where a change in the system may occur.