A collection of three conversations between artists and public servants. Intended to inspire public servants of all kinds to reconnect fearlessly with their fundamental humanity, the three conversations in Art, Imagination and Public Service present a way of thinking about imaginative, compassionate, and intelligent public service. The book consists of three dialogues: between former UK Home Secretary David Blunkett and poet Micheal O’Siadhail, former UK Supreme Court president Brenda Hale and painter Hughie O’Donoghue, and UK Permanent Secretary Clare Moriarty and musician James O’Donnell. Together they explore how art and imagination can sustain public servants and enable them to find new ways of addressing the problems facing government, parliament, and the law—problems that resist utilitarian responses in which people end up being treated only as statistics in a target-driven world. Through these conversations, the speakers discover surprising connections in approaches to their work.

A radical reimagining of the role of art and culture in contemporary democracy, The Compassionate Imagination proposes a new Canadian Cultural Contract that re-humanizes our way of living together by tapping into the instincts for generosity and compassion that find their expression in art. Over the last forty years, the arts have been increasingly deemed unimportant to the creation of an educated workforce. Reflecting a broadly held political view that in a market-based economy the arts were “a frill,” they were deemed “unnecessary” courses compared to sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics. But what kind of Canada might we make if we were to place art and culture at the heart of our mutual decision-making, and return the arts to a central position in our education, shifting to steam rather than stem? What might be possible if we integrate the creative imagination into our responses to the great social challenges we face? What impact would it have on the future shape of our democracy? It’s time to find where the Compassionate Imagination can take us.

This book covers Singapore's key arts policies and art institutions which have shaped the cultural landscape of the country from the 1950s to the present.The scholars and experts in this volume critically assess arts policies and arts institutions to collectively provide an overview of how arts and culture have been deployed by the state. The chapters are arranged chronologically to cover milestone events from the forging of 'Malayan culture'; the government's 'anti-yellow culture' campaign; the use of 'culture' for tourism; the setting up of the Advisory Council on Arts and Culture, the Renaissance City Report, the setting up of the School of the Arts, and others.Putting to rest the notion that Singapore is a 'cultural desert', this volume is valuable reading for students of cultural policy, policy makers who seek an understanding of Singapore's cultural trajectory, and for international readers interested in Singapore's arts and cultural policy.

An exploration of the concept of justice, focusing on its place in public service. The three essays in Justice in Public Life, written by Claire Foster-Gilbert, Jane Sinclair, and James Hawkey, examine the meaning of justice in the twenty-first century, asking how justice can be expressed by our public service institutions and in society more widely. They consider whether justice is tied to truth and whether our idea of justice is skewed when we conflate it with fairness. They also explore how justice as a virtue can help us navigate the complexities of life in economics, in wider society, and in righting wrongs. In addition, their essays consider the threats to a just society, including human nature itself, the inheritance of unjust structures, the wide range of views about what constitutes justice, and the difficulty of establishing it globally and between nation-states. Justice in Public Life brings an often abstract concept to life, calling on public servants to nurture justice as a virtue pursued both individually and communally.

Administrative Leadership in the Public Sector is an ideal resource for any Public Administration course involving leadership and public management. Each of the book’s nine main sections begins with introductory text by the volume’s editors, Monty Van Wart and Lisa Dicke, followed by relevant readings. The volume includes some of the most important readings on public leadership published in the last eight decades. More than just an anthology, Administrative Leadership in the Public Sector provides a unique and useful framework for understanding the vast subject of leadership.

Looks at IT in the public sector.