Alternative Values and Stigmatized Agents: Communicating Legitimacy in the Creative Industries

Abstract This paper explores the UK’s subsidized creative industries sector through the lens of organizational stigma literature. We argue that this theoretical lens contributes nuance and depth to an underexplored yet imperative aspect of the creative industries within the UK at a time when it needs to recover and reconfigure its value-based assessment system as it emerges into the post Covid-19 “new normal.” We bring together two separate, but interlinking studies of a national arts funder’s key stakeholders and its recipient organizations to explore the legitimacy of the funder’s value-based judgements, and the impact of these on subsidized arts organizations.