Dynamics of policy making for education are invested with intersubjective tensions, as different stakeholders seek to meet their changing needs in the shifting ground of neoliberalism. Recent literature emphasising the need for boundary-work seeks to bridge the tensions in order to broker resolutions. I argue that perspectives on boundary-work connecting with the Foucauldian sense of power as relations could benefit from further analysis of the forms of intersubjective conflict involved. Accordingly Sartre's concept of conflicted Otherness is in focus. Through empirical investigation, the stances taken by advisory policy makers and school senior management attempting to navigate directives for art education are theorised. This original approach to such relational boundaries locates key issues in the field of policy studies. It raises questions about the difficulties of aiming for effective collaboration in a climate of protectionist reactions to globalisation, incentivised competition, and the divisive minimisation of creativity in the curriculum.