Dr Paul Clements BA MA PhD
Staff details

Paul Clements is a lecturer in arts and cultural policy. He has spent many years working with excluded communities and formerly taught in Adult Education. More recently he has lectured in Higher Education for the Open University, Birkbeck College and Londonmet University covering cultural theory and policy as well as popular culture and community arts. His career has been varied and has included a range of roles and experiences: youth worker, teacher of disturbed prisoners, government interviewer, prison librarian, community musician, visual artist, astrologer and moderator/evaluator for arts programmes. He still works as a visual artist specialising in commissions for healthcare environments and private consumption.
Teaching and Supervision
Research interests
These relate to cultural policy and theory, particularly the relationship between social and cultural inclusion/exclusion, the instrumental use of the arts and how cultural value is determined, also the relationship between individual artists and society more generally. Besides community arts forms and practices his interests also cover popular culture and its articulation with ‘high’ culture. This includes a more general analysis of leisure space and the global impact of mass culture.
Publications and research outputs
Book
Clements, Paul. 2020. The Outsider, Art and Humour. New York/Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9780367468224
Clements, Paul. 2016. The Creative Underground: Art, Politics and Everyday Life. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9781315714530
Clements, Paul. 2013. Charles Bukowski, Outsider Literature and the Beat Movement. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415807593
Clements, Paul. 2009. The Arts Culture and Exclusion. A critical examination of the arts and extent to which they legitimate social difference or socially integrate the excluded. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag. ISBN 978-3639187694
Book Section
Clements, Paul. 2017. The construction of post-communist ideologies and re-branding of Budapest: the case study of Statue Park Museum. In: Martin Zebracki and Joni M. Palmer, eds. Public Art Encounters: Art, Space and Identity. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 51-69. ISBN 9781472468796
Clements, Paul. 2011. ‘The rehabilitative role of arts education in prison: accommodation or enlightenment?’. In: Felicity Allen, ed. Education. Documents of Contemporary Art. London: Whitechapel Gallery. ISBN 978-0854881925
Article
Clements, Paul. 2020. Astrology, modernity and the project of self-identity. Culture and Religion, 21(3), pp. 259-279. ISSN 1475-5610
Clements, Paul. 2017. Highgate Cemetery heterotopia: A Creative Counterpublic Space. Space and Culture, 20(4), pp. 470-484. ISSN 1206-3312
Clements, Paul. 2014. The Consumption of Communism: Changing Representations of Statue Park Museum and Budapest. Art & the Public Sphere, 2(1-3), pp. 73-86. ISSN 2042-793X
Clements, Paul. 2011. ‘The Recuperation of Participatory Arts Practices’. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 30(1), pp. 18-30. ISSN 1476-8062
Clements, Paul. 2009. Cultural Legitimacy or “Outsider Hip”?: Representational Ambiguity and the Significance of Steely Dan. Leisure Studies, 28(2), pp. 189-206. ISSN 0261-4367
Clements, Paul. 2008. ‘Public art: radical, functional or democratic methodologies?’. Journal of Visual Arts Practice, 7(1), pp. 19-35. ISSN 1470-2029
Clements, Paul. 2007. The Cultural Aspects of Social Exclusion ands the Stereotyping of Adolescent Males. Youth & Policy, 94, pp. 61-77. ISSN 02629798
Clements, Paul. 2007. ‘The evaluation of community arts projects and the problems with social impact methodology’. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 26(3), pp. 325-335. ISSN 1476-8062
Clements, Paul. 2006. The Excluded Terms of Culture: Cultural Exclusion as Spectacle. Journal for Cultural Research, 10(4)(4), pp. 323-342. ISSN 14797585
Clements, Paul. 2004. ‘The rehabilitative role of arts education in prison: accommodation or enlightenment?’. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 23(2), pp. 169-178. ISSN 1476-8062