Elites, time budgets & long distance omnivores: Knowledge Exchange & Cultural Participation

A couple of weeks ago the Knowledge Exchange Network, based at Leeds Metropolitan University, brought the second in their series of seminars on Participation & Engagement in the Arts to Manchester. The Network is coordinated by Leila Jancovich from the UK Events Research Centre and Professor Franco Bianchini, the Cultural Planning and Policy Unit in the School of Cultural Studies.

On behalf of the Institute for Cultural Practices and alongside long-time collaborator Andy Miles, CRESC, I welcomed delegates to Manchester and to Contact where the seminar was hosted. The seminar featured a double-header of Professor Mike Savage, the founding Director of CRESC and now at University of York and Baba Israel (accompanied by RECON  Young Producer, Alex Browning) Artistic Director of Contact Theatre.

Proceedings from the day, including video footage of Baba and Alex’s presentation and discussion can be found here - http://www.eventsandfestivalsresearch.com/Knowledge-Exchange-Network/ – along with further details of the Network and its programme of events.

The Network aims to create space for cultural professionals, academic researchers, practitioners, consultants and policy makers to bring their differing perspectives to meet each other, square up a little and then agree their respect values on common ground. They are even encouraged to occasionally agree with each other. Both presentations, the following discussions and summing-up (by Franco) certainly met this brief – eliciting questions, comments and responses from the floor and presenters alike to bring new light on participation and engagement with respect to issues of class, taste and ethnicity – or in the language of sociology, social divisions.

Mike Savage’s presentation concerned the work led by CRESC, following Pierre Bourdieu’s methodology for mapping the distinctions of taste and patterns of participation which was explored through their national Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion survey. This survey produced data which has been explored and mapped in clusters of taste and distinction through Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA). This produces a particularly useful illustration of the social divisions of participation through maps. The work is published in Bennett, T, Savage, M, Silva, E., Warde, A., Gayo-Cal, M & Wright, D (2009) Culture, Class, Distinction

Key research questions from Mike’s presentation:

• Is there still ‘elite’ high culture or has there been a process of ‘democratisation’?• What is the impact of new media on cultural participation?• What is ‘popular culture’ these days?• Can we still talk of a cultural ‘avant garde’ or is cultural innovation more widely diffused, or possibly ‘exhausted’?• What is the relative importance of the ‘enthusiast’ or the ‘cultural omnivore?’

Baba and Alex examined a similar raft of issues from the perspective of their own practice, and within the context of Contact’s core mission to engage young people in participation and co-production of  ”theatre not for young people, but by young people for all people”. They described, in conversational style, the activities generated by Contact and the strategies adopted to engage young people from diverse and different backgrounds. These include producing a programme which is multi-faceted enough to appeal to diverse tastes but coherent in providing an ecology of opportunities with which to engage with Contact as a shared building and creative space. The use of social and digital media was highlighted as important, but as important is a respectful approach to partnership building with young people as producers, developing local knowledge on tastes and subcultural practices to build and tease out confidence in new participants to experiment and cross genre boundaries.

Some key phrases, words and questions raised in the seminar’s discussion and presentations:

• What are the implications of cultural omnivorousness for audience development? if you disinvest in one cultural form do you move audiences or lose them?
• The biggest gaps are between engagement and disengagement. class differentiation persists – professional and managerial classes are highly engaged, working class more likely to be disengaged
• Those who ‘do’ things are often ‘migrants’ – they have no family ties and are free to suit themselves
• The most powerful divide is created by age – very few people are truly omnivorous, but there is a process of ‘ageing out’ in the traditional divides between old and high culture and young and popular culture
• There are little differences in patterns of taste between ethnic groups
• Given the dynamics of taste and practice, what is the shelf life for survey data? what kinds of data will endure or keep track of these changes? the importance of mixed and qualitative methods
• The priorities for evaluation are to understand the transformation of cultural participation by practice – what is the impact of taking part on participation? how do people move across genres and cultural forms?
• Do young people know they are participating? how do we build confidence?
• How do we work across class taste divides when class is difficult to differentiate in traditional audience evaluation practices?
• The importance of time budgets and footprints
• What are the conditions for favouring intercultural forms of cultural production

The next seminar of the Knowledge Exchange Network will be in May in the North East – details to follow