Spatial entrepreneurs and scalecraft
This chapter focuses on the practices of frontline workers in policymaking processes and makes a key intervention by arguing that practices of scalecraft are an overlooked dimension of frontline work. It explores how frontline workers construct and strategically mobilise scale in their policy work by presenting an empirical study of frontline actors tasked with implementing England’s academies policy in a local authority case study. Analysis demonstrates how practices of scalecraft are a key feature and strategy of policy actors’ work which is key to understanding how a counter-hegemonic strategy was pursued in the empirical case. By identifying how frontline work involves the creative and strategic use of scale the chapter proposes that this new dimension of frontline work is called ‘spatial entrepreneurship’ and the discussion concludes by outlining the key features of this type of work.