The “problem” of participation in cultural policy (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2015
Policy rhetoric around strategies to and the value of increasing participation in the arts has been well documented internationally over more than a decade. But in the UK, which is the focus for this article, targets to increase participation have been consistently missed and there remains a direct correlation between those taking part in cultural activity and their socioeconomic status. The starting point for this article is to examine the barriers to increasing participation in the arts and question the way that such policy has been implemented within the English context, which may have relevance for policy making in other countries. What is demonstrated is that policy implementation is influenced by vested interest of those in receipt of funding and that a narrow range of voices, from a powerful cultural elite, are involved in the decision making in the arts. The article makes a case for widening the range of voices heard in decision making in order to support both artistic practice and public engagement.
Participation and provision in arts & culture – bridging the divide
Cultural Trends, 2016
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Participation and provision in arts & culture – bridging the divide
Cultural Trends, 2016
Successive policies and efforts to increase participation in a range of arts and cultural activities have tended to focus on the profile and attitude of individuals and target groups in order justify publicand therefore achieve more equitablefunding. Rationales for such intervention generally reflect the policy and political regime operating in different eras, but widening participation, increasing access and making the subsidised arts more inclusive have been perennial concerns. On the other hand, culture has also been the subject of a supply-led approach to facility provision, whether local amenity-based ("Every Town Should Have One"-Lane, 1979. Arts centresevery town should have one. London: Paul Elek), civic centre or flagship, and this has also mirrored periodic growth in investment through various capital for the arts, municipal expansion, urban regeneration, European regional development and lottery programmes. Research into participation has consequently taken a macro, sociological, "class distinction" approach, including longitudinal national surveys such as Taking Part, Target Group Index, Active People and Time Use Surveys, whilst actual provision is dealt with at the micro, amenity level in terms of its impact and catchment. This article therefore considers how this situation has evolved and the implications for cultural policy, planning and research by critiquing successive surveys of arts attendance and participation and associated arts policy initiatives, including the importance of local facilities such as arts centres, cinemas and libraries. A focus on cultural mapping approaches to accessible cultural amenities reveals important evidence for bridging the divide between cultural participation and provision.
Calling Participation to Account: Taking Part in the Politics of Method
Histories of Cultural Participation, Values and Governance, 2019
New Directions in Cultural Policy Research encourages theoretical and empirical contributions which enrich and develop the field of cultural policy studies. Since its emergence in the 1990s in Australia and the United Kingdom and its eventual diffusion in Europe, the academic field of cultural policy studies has expanded globally as the arts and popular culture have been re-positioned by city, regional, and national governments, and international bodies, from the margins to the centre of social and economic development in both rhetoric and practice. The series invites contributions in all of the following: arts policies, the politics of culture, cultural industries policies (the 'traditional' arts such as performing and visual arts, crafts), creative industries policies (digital, social media, broadcasting and film, and advertising), urban regeneration and urban cultural policies, regional cultural policies, the politics of cultural and creative labour, the production and consumption of popular culture, arts education policies, cultural heritage and tourism policies, and the history and politics of media and communications policies. The series will reflect current and emerging concerns of the field such as, for example, cultural value, community cultural development, cultural diversity, cultural sustainability, lifestyle culture and eco-culture, planning for the intercultural city, cultural planning, and cultural citizenship.
Great art for everyone? Engagement and participation policy in the arts
Cultural Trends, 2011
is a Senior Lecturer in events management, specialising in the arts, festivals management and cultural policy. She is coordinator of the Yorkshire Festivals Network and a knowledge exchange network on participation and engagement in the arts. She is also a council member for Arts Council England, Yorkshire. Previously Leila worked in the arts for twenty years as a producer, researcher and policy maker. During which time she worked with Arts Council England, a number of local authorities, audience development agencies and numerous arts organisations. She has managed cultural programmes from small scale touring to the Cultural Programme of the Manchester Commonwealth Games. Her current research focus is on cultural policy, participation and engagement in the arts.
PARTICIPATION IN CULTURAL CENTRES IN DENMARK
PARTICIPATION IN CULTURAL CENTRES IN DENMARK, 2023
Five Ways to Study One's Own Cultural Centre 9 CHAPTER 3 12 Cultural Centres in Denmark-The Quantitative Study 13 CHAPTER 4 18 Participation in the Cultural Centres-The Qualitative Study 19 The purpose of the report is to share and disseminate the knowledge created, so it can also benefit a wide range of cultural centres, including those outside Denmark. Keywords and Concepts Participation: 'Participation' is a broad term. In cultural centres, it refers to many different practices in which the individual user is part of a larger social context. This could be a shared artistic experience or creative production, a verbal or physical exchange, or a collective learning or decision-making process. Cultural centres provide a framework not only for cultural, but also for social and democratic participation, and it was important to include the diversity of forms of participation that take place in cultural centres. We regard the various forms of participation as equally valuable, and do not distinguish between 'good' and 'less good' participation. Cultural centre: DELTAG encompasses what we have referred to as cultural centres, and other cultural institutions that engage citizens. In the quantitative part of the study, we only included cultural centres and public libraries. We mapped cultural centres across Denmark using the definition of a cultural centre as an institution and/or place that gives space to professional and amateur cultural activities, provides for a combination of cultural and social activities, allows for citizeninitiated activities and focuses on diversity in activities as well as users. The three core research questions in DELTAG are: • Which participatory practices take place in cultural centres? • How do these forms of participation relate to the different organisational features of the cultural centres? • What are the outcomes and values of (the different forms of) participation for the participants, for the cultural centres and possibly for the local area or a broader area? More detailed descriptions of the project's methodology and results can be found in L.E. Hansen and K. Nordentoft: Kulturhuse i Danmark-et kvantitativt studie af et mangfoldigt felt 2020 www.pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/ kulturhuse-i-danmark and B. Eriksson, L.E. Hansen and K. Nordentoft: Deltagelse i kulturhuse og andre borgerinvolverende kulturinstitutioner 2021 www.ebooks.au.dk/aul/catalog/book/429 In terms of methodology and concept, DELTAG is based on a European research and development project entitled RECcORD, in which participation was also both a research topic and method. Cf.
Cultural policy research in the real world: curating “impact”, facilitating “enlightenment”
Cultural Trends, 2016
The very identity of cultural policy studies as a distinctive field of academic pursuit rests on a long-standing and widely accepted tension between 'proper research' and policy advocacy, which has often resulted in resistance to the idea that robust, critical research can-or even should-be 'useful' and have impact on policy discourse. This paper tries to navigate a third route, which sees policy relevance and influence as a legitimate goal of critical research, without accepting the pressures and restrictions of arts advocacy and lobbying. This is accomplished by exploring in detail the journey 'into the real world' of preliminary quantitative data produced by the UEP project in the context of its development of a segmentation exercise based on Taking Part data. The exercise used cluster analysis to identify profiles of cultural participation, and showed that single most engaged group corresponded to the wealthiest, better educated and least ethnically diverse 8% of the English population. This data fed into the consultation and evidence gathering process of the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value, and was eventually cited in its final report Enriching Britain. The paper looks at the trajectory that 'the 8%' statistic has travelled, charting its increasing prominence in English cultural policy debates and argues that, despite the impossibility for researchers to exert control over the use and misuse of their data, policy influence is nonetheless a realistic objective if understood in terms of 'conceptual influence'.