Whose participation? Cultural inclusion, policy and the cultural value question

In this seminar, Dr Eleonora Belfiore (University of Warwick) will explore the 'problem' of cultural participation by offering reflections based on three projects she has been involved in over the past few years: Understanding Everyday Participation - Articulating Cultural Values (AHRC Connected Community funded project); the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value - a high profile public engagement initiative aimed at informing policy debates; and a project that considered questions of cultural value, power, representation and misrecognition in relation to a participatory arts project involving the Gypsy and Traveller community in Lincolnshire (funded by the AHRC Cultural Value Project).

Despite a firm rhetorical commitment to access, inclusion and widening participation, the system for the public support and provision of cultural experiences is still based on a deficit model that attributes value to certain forms of 'desirable participation' (largely in the activities that attract funding). Increased participation in such cultural activities is assumed to be a goal that low engagement groups ought to be pushed towards. For this reason, getting more people to actively engage in funded activities becomes a policy priority, and the disengaged are thus transformed into a target for policy intervention.

The process through which people who tend not to engage with publicly funded arts and culture see themselves being labelled as disengaged (usually by the funding bodies themselves) is questionable. It shows little consideration for other, non-funded, self-initiated, everyday forms of cultural participation that these groups might be engaged with. These are forms of cultural engagement that fall below the policy-makers radar, purely because they do not fit our public cultural institutions dominant and normative views of what desirable participation' is (as well as those of governments and politicians).

According to this deficit model approach to providing access to culture, cultural value is effectively created by and through the intervention aimed at widening access rather than residing with the participants to begin with. Thus, the supposed social transformation, which is claimed to result from the engagement generated through these programmes of activity, is seen as effectively bestowed upon the participant.

The seminar takes place from 4pm on Wednesday 24 February in G.19, Old Mining Building, University of Leeds.

All are welcome.

This event is organised by the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage as part of the Status of Inclusion research theme. It is part of the spring series of research seminars at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.