Abstract

Arts policy-makers in the UK have tended to consider Cultural Diversity purely as an issue of identity, with little reference to the factors of over all discrimination and economic disadvantage. But the steady attitudinal shift of arts practitioners from African, Asian, Caribbean and Chinese backgrounds, increasingly targeting their aspirations not to the margins but to the so-called «mainstream» has revealed barriers. These will need to be addressed without further stereotyping those arts and artists as «exotic», «different» or «other». It is a subtle and difficult task that is currently informing the Arts Council of England's new policy.