When writing about cultural policy in what is now known as Canada, finding references about the Canadian context can be difficult.
Cultural policy is not a distinct field because “culture” is such a broad concept and, as such, the sector encompasses a lot of subsectors with their own policy concerns. Cultural policy is studied within disciplines focused on specific subsectors (e.g., museology), communications, public administration, history, and more. If I tried listing every discipline that intersects with cultural policy, I would inevitably miss some.
These different disciplines write about cultural policy differently. For example, when researching heritage commemoration policy as a kind of cultural policy, I found historians’ works document government commemorative actions without ever using the keywords “cultural policy,” “heritage policy,” or even just “policy.” After discovering the correct keywords, I found so many more examples of relevance.
In an attempt to share labour, I created a Mendeley bibliography years ago with all of my sources on Canadian cultural policy and shared it with everyone I knew studying the subject. They said thank you, but no one ever seemed to use it or contribute to the resource.
I still think it’s a good idea.
So, I have now made it a teaching resource and am working to expand the bibliography so that it reflects more than my interests. It is available to view here.
The subject librarian at MacEwan is helping me to expand the resource now and I would love to see more sources added. If you’d like to contribute, ask to join! I would love to have help and to make this something that is useful for research broadly.