The audiovisual action plan: a new audiovisual policy for Ireland

This article analyses the recent plan for the audiovisual industries introduced (after some delay) by the Irish Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The Audiovisual Action Plan (“the Plan”) sets out the Department’s approach to the audiovisual industries and is, it is contended, evidence of a marketization of culture consistent with a creative industries perspective. The analysis of the Plan in a wider policy context identifies key issues shaping audiovisual production in Ireland. Using a thematic analysis approach from Braun and Clark (2005, 2019) a number of themes are developed from analysis of the relevant policy documents, broadly conceived around the increasing instrumentalism of culture. Taking a political economy perspective allows for development of themes around the commodification of the nation-state through the provision of policies that actively encourage a certain type of audiovisual production. Building on Mosco’s work on political economy (Mosco, 2009) the concept of spatialization from Lefebvre (Lefebvre, 1991) is used to interrogate the production of and commodification of space through Specifically, this article interrogates the policy norms underpinning the Audiovisual Action Plan introduced by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht in Ireland in 2018 as part of Culture 2025, the national cultural policy framework. It identifies the key proposals which affect the audiovisual industries. It is concluded that the Plan (and other relevant policy documents) support a spatialized, commodified view of the audiovisual industries as primarily industrial in nature, paying scant attention to the consideration of such industries as cultural forces.