‘It’s the beginning of the new age, it’s the beginning of the new age, it’s … , etc’. So goes the refrain of the Velvet Underground anthem that used to so intoxicate me as a teenager. Now, I would substitute ‘It’s the beginning of the information age, it’s …, etc’. This, the information age, or, in Manuel Castells’s language, the global network society, is the context for the contributions I have collated in the Research Handbook on Information Policy. (The photo on the dust jacket is meant to represent the dawn of a new age: hopefully it succeeds, or that it is at any rate a pretty cover for the library shelf or coffee table.)

By Dr Anna Spenceley (Editor)

Kerry Thomas, 2012, Rumination, Chicago

What has the economy got to do with creative performances and the making of artists and their artworks?

Over the last ten years I have been researching creative practice in university art school studios and senior school art classrooms. The focus has been on how students ‘invest’ in the creative life, oftentimes seeking to become creative artists, and working under pressure of high stakes assessments, to produce creative artefacts – paintings, drawings, installations, digital media works and so on. The related issue of what role, if any, do their teachers play in assisting them in the development of their creative performances and in what they make has also been investigated.

[…]

Photo: Val Entertainment, Creative Commons 2.0

With over 80 per cent of the world’s population professing religious belief, holding such belief must be considered a common human characteristic. Moreover, religious belief is relevant to both social and private realms. Religious belief systems provide a meaning for existence through which adherents interpret their own circumstances and make decisions on how to act and interact in wider society. The values and attitudes associated with religious beliefs within countries therefore affect both public policy settings as well as social behaviours (with both positive and harmful consequences possible).

[…]