This introductory page is the first of three pages about the Understanding Everyday Participation project:

Description (you are viewing this now)
Case studies 
Partnership development

These pages describe the key elements of a research development project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under its Communities, Culture and Creative Economies scheme, the main outcome of which is a fully specified major research proposal currently under review by the AHRC. 

Origins of the project

The project originated in a cross-university and cultural sector consortium of academic and sector researchers that came together at an AHRC Connected Communities workshop in Birmingham in December 2010. The project was led by Andrew Miles from the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change (CRESC), University of Manchester. Co-researchers Lisanne Gibson from the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies, Abigail Gilmore from Manchester’s Institute for Cultural Practices, Arts Council England’s Director of Research and Knowledge Catherine Bunting, Eleanora Belfiore from Warwick University’s Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, Jane Milling and Kerry Schaefer from the Drama department at the University of Exeter, and Museums, Libraries and Archives Clore Fellow Sarah Stannage and Felicity James from the School of English at the University of Leicester completed a multidisciplinary team with expertise in the history and theory, practice and policy dimensions of cultural participation and its valuation.

About the project

There are three pages on this website about the Understanding Everyday Participation project:

Introduction

You are viewing this now. It covers the origins of the project, its rationale and key research questions.  You can also download an annotated bibliography which the project team created as a first stage in informing the project’s development.

Case studies 

Two brief case studies at Cheetham Hill, Manchester and Peterborough, were undertaken in order to test out and further inform the development of the larger project proposal

Partnership development

A number of partners are actively supporting the project in various ways as a result of extensive stakeholder consultation undertaken during this development phase.

Below is an outline of the rationale and questions informing the proposed project.

The rationale

Orthodox models of the cultural economy and ensuing cultural policy and management in the UK are based on a narrow definition of cultural participation, one which is largely understood in terms of the traditional, formalised practices and institutions funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. This same framework specifies the primacy of economics in the valuation of cultural participation, maintaining that the costs and benefits of such activities and organisations are most meaningfully expressed in monetised terms.

 Our research proposes a radical re-evaluation of the relationship between participation and value, intended to re-orientate both academic thinking and policymaking. We are interested in what lies behind, and is in the process obscured by, the assumptions of orthodoxy. We argue that the current focus on certain types of participation to the exclusion of others misses opportunities to understand the variety of forms of cultural participation and their cultural, economic, political and social, consequences. Our aim in this project was therefore to develop a programme of research for exploring the meanings and stakes that attach to ordinary, ‘everyday’ participation - to investigate how hidden, marginalized and forgotten value forms generated by mundane, informal practices and engagements might transform our understandings of the creative economy and the role of cultural participation in the creation and life of communities.

Developing the proposal

The project engaged a range of potential partners and stakeholders in scoping out key issues, contexts and frames for understanding and connecting everyday participation, cultural value, community and the creative economy. This process was facilitated through an integrated programme of seminars and meetings with representatives of national level organisations in the cultural sector and by pilot case studies that engaged local stakeholders and community level representatives in two sites – Peterborough and the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester – chosen for their contrasting characteristics.

The results of these exchanges were invested in the design of the research proposal, which began with an initial literature review (link to literature review) and proceeded through an iterative series of team workshops to consolidate the proposal’s conceptual framing, refine the research questions, determine a methodology and establish the empirical focus. The main research questions and the key themes and principles of our approach are as follows:

Core research questions

• How, historically, did we arrive at the definitions, fields of knowledge and policy frames informing notions of cultural participation and value today?
• What are the forms and practices of everyday participation - where do they take place? How are they valued? And how do these practices relate to formal participation?
• How is participation shaped by space, place and locality?
• How are communities made, unmade, divided and connected through participation?
• How can broader understandings of value in and through participation be used to inform the development of vibrant communities and creative local economies?
• How do we reconnect cultural policy and institutions with everyday participation?

Research framework

• Our overarching theoretical frame is defined by an engagement with the core concepts in Pierre Bourdieu’s work on cultural capital and distinction
• Noting that recent empirical work in the UK overlooks the local and spatial dimensions to cultural tastes and practices, our approach examines participation as ‘situated’ phenomena
• To do this we operationalise the notion of the ‘cultural ecosystem’, investigating the patterns and processes of participation and its outcomes in several contrasting locations
• We plan to work with a range of data sources, old and new, to develop interdisciplinary perspectives on participation and value, underpinned by a distinctive ‘mixed methods’ approach
• In addition to proposals for more traditional academic dissemination the proposed project also includes an extensive plan for sharing and developing our findings through an integral programme of collaborative working with project partners and practice communities across the cultural sector