The Everyday Participation since the Pandemic Project (EPSTP) aims to explore the range and variety of people’s day-to-day spare-time activities in order to better understand how they participate in these activities and what their participation means to them. Specifically we are looking to speak to people living in Gateshead, Peterborough. Stornoway, South Uist, Peterculter, Broughton (Manchester), Cheetham (Manchester), and those living in and around the villages of Buckfastleigh or Moretonhampstead in Dartmoor.
Continue readingCall for proposals…
Featured
Studies in Cultural Participation Book Series – call for proposals
ABOUT THE SERIES
Pivot Books- between 40,000 and 50,000 (maximum) words in length
To commence publication in 2021; receiving proposals now.
This book series will provide a platform for contributions to the newly defined field of ‘cultural participation studies’ (Miles and Gibson, forthcoming 2021). The series brings together research on traditional cultural tastes and practices with research on
informal ‘everyday’ activities. In doing so it broadens our understanding of cultural participation, focusing on participation as a pluralistic and interconnected practice, exploring the links between the cultural, civic and social dimensions of participation, and
reconsidering its emergence in time and space by political economy, material resource and cultural governance. This book series has been designed purposively to provide a platform for an interdisciplinary examination of cultural participation.
Participation in cultural activities is a research subject within a number of disciplines and fields, ranging from sociology to cultural studies, history, and geography, incorporating heritage, museum, media, theatre, tourism, leisure and cultural policy, business and
management studies. This series will bring together debates across these disciplines and fields of study to consider the subject of cultural participation in all its dimensions.
In addition the series is intended to make a significant contribution to more applied considerations of contemporary cultural participation and specifically to considerations of policy and practice. As such we aim for the series to be relevant and attractive
to policy makers and practitioners.
Short books can be focused essays engaging deeply with a particular issue, subject or theoretical discussion; short books can also provide a wider overview of their subject. Both approaches to studies in cultural participation have a place in this book series.
CONTACT FOR PROPOSALS
Please contact the series editors with a short expression of interest in the first instance:
Prof. Lisanne Gibson, University of Leicester, lg80@le.ac.uk and Prof. Andrew Miles, University of Manchester, andrew.miles@manchester.ac.uk
Details here Cultural Participation Books Series flyer
Call for proposals
Young Adults and Community Land Management
Featured
In Scotland legislative provision affords communities the right to buy the land they live on from private landlords and from some public bodies. This model of land ownership depends on the active participation of local volunteers to make up the boards which manage the land.
In her briefing Young Adults and Community Land Management , Dr Louise Senior explores the experiences of young adults involved in this form of civic participation in the Western Isles. Their engagement is crucial to the long-term sustainability and succession plans of community owned estates.
Valuing Parks and their Communities
Featured
Reply
Public parks have provided generations of urban dwellers with havens from the noise and pollution of their towns and cities. They are places where people participate in family life, friendship, sports and exercise, nature watching and private contemplation.
Read UEP’s Research Briefing: The Value of Public Parks and their Communities UEP Research Briefing
UEP tackles the social life of well-being indicators
Featured
This summary of Susan Oman’s recent chapter, ‘Measuring National Well-being: What Matters to You? What Matters to Whom?‘ outlines the importance of in-depth enquiries into the methodological aspects of metrics and what they might tell us about culture. Continue reading
UEP methods at the UEP methods conference
Featured
The Doing Research on Participation conference hosted dozens of papers from across the UK, Europe and further afield. Below are slides and audio from each UEP presentation. Continue reading
The Art of Devolution – a storify of the Culture and the North event
Featured
Dr Abigail Gilmore leads discussions on the role of culture in the Northern Powerhouse
Doing research on participation conference – a storify
Featured
The Doing Research on Participation conference took place in Manchester, 25 & 26 May 2016. Below is a storify of the response to the event on twitter.
The politics of cultural measurement – a review
Featured
Here Susan Oman reposts her review of Making culture count: the politics of cultural measurement, edited by Lachlan MacDowall, Marnie Badham, Emma Blomkamp and Kim Dunphy, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, ISBN 978-1-137-46457-6. Continue reading
Participation in local mining communities
Featured
Sarah Hughes shares insights from her UEP PhD research in her post, Understanding cultural participation and value in former coalmining communities in and around Barnsley
One of the aims of the Understanding Everyday Participation (UEP) project is to strive towards a more democratic understanding of participation. We are exploring ways in which decisions about cultural investment are made, and how they relate to particular forms and contexts for governance, nationally and in relation to different local cultural eco-systems in England and Scotland.
Who Goes to Museums? (and who doesn’t?)
Featured
Lisanne Gibson explains how her Museum Studies teaching intersects with the UEP project in a video of a mini lecture of her research.
Click here for slides
The figures tell us that museum visiting has been increasing.
According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Taking Part statistics, 51.8% of adults attended a museum once, in the first Quarter of 2014/15, compared to 42.3% in 2005/06 (the year the Taking Part survey began).
Valuing Participation: The cultural and everyday activities of young people growing up in care
Featured
Lisanne Gibson and Delyth Edwards outline findings in the Valuing Participation Report, published 30 October 2015. This report describes research focusing on the participation of young people growing up in care. Continue reading
New Directions in Cultural Policy Research
Histories of Cultural Participation, Values and Governance
This book develops the first integrated, critical-historical examination of the terms, narratives and assumptions constructing present day notions of participation and value, and the relations between them. Histories of Cultural Participation, Values and Governance proposes a radical reevaluation of these relationships, organized in two inter-related sections, on political discourses of participation and value, and on culture and governance. The essays collected here provide an in-depth historical understanding of the development of definitions, assumptions and beliefs around the nature and value of cultural participation, their place in contemporary cultural governance and exploitation in local socio-economic development strategies. They also bring a novel perspective to current policy, practice and scholarly debates on the connections between culture, place-making and the creative economy. As such, the essays provide vital historical insight that sheds light on contemporary issues of cultural participation, value and governance.
Order online at springer.com / or for the Americas call (toll free) 1-800-SPRINGER
or email us at: customerservice@springernature.com. /
For outside the Americas call +49 (0) 6221-345-4301
or email us at: customerservice@springernature.com
Full specification here : Histories of Cultural Participation, Values and Governance Series New Directions in Cultural Policy Research
The effect of place and space on patterns of participation in libraries and leisure centres
Local geography forms a significant context within which culture is situated, and can play a role in enhancing, or diminishing the potential for cultural participation
activities to take place.
With this in mind the UEP project has undertaking research examining the effect of place and space on patterns of participation in libraries and leisure centres. The findings shed light on potential new ways to encourage public attendance.
Read about the research findings in the report: The effect of place and space on patterns of participation in libraries and leisure centres.
Understanding everyday participation: Re-locating culture, value and inequality
The UEP project team thanks everyone who contributed presentations, thoughts and scholarship to this conference. Thank you!
Understanding everyday participation: Re-locating culture, value and inequality
11-12 June, 2018
Friends’ Meeting House, Manchester
Confirmed keynote speakers: Professor Omar Lizardo (University of Notre Dame) and Professor Kate Oakley (University of Leeds)
Conference programme
Registration
Registrations are also welcome from those who are not presenting papers. Registration closed on Wednesday 23 May.
- Conference fee £150.00
- Conference dinner £45.00
- About Manchester
About the conference
The Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Values project calls into question the traditional boundaries of ‘culture’ and exposes the role these play in the making of economic, social and geographical inequalities. Its research disputes the methodological nationalism that dominates understandings of cultural participation and demands a radical re-appraisal of the meanings and stakes attached to participation and ‘cultural value’.
This closing project conference asks how we might re-think the field of participation studies, both within and across disciplinary boundaries, including its articulations with policy. Papers contributing to the debate about the future of cultural participation research will be presented under the following themes:
- Cultural values and participation
- Geographies of everyday participation
- Creative economies and the everyday
- Health, wellbeing and everyday participation
- Arts, culture and heritage and the everyday
- Participation, identities and power
Abstracts
The Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Values project thanks everyone who submitted abstracts for the conference.
To contact us please email uep-admin@manchester.ac.uk.
The effect of place and space on patterns of participation in libraries and leisure centres
The UEP project has undertaking research examining the effect of place and space on patterns of participation in libraries and leisure centres. The findings shed light on potential new ways to encourage public attendance.
Read about the research findings and access our report: The effect of place and space on patterns of participation in libraries and leisure centres.
How can we safeguard public parks?
The Understanding Everyday Participation project (UEP) and The Whitworth hosted a workshop on March 22, 2017.
The event Valuing Parks and their Communities, centred on the values and practices of community engagement in public parks. Continue reading
UEP Special issues ‘Cultural Trends’
We are delighted to announce the publication of Understanding Everyday Participation’s second special issue of Cultural Trends. This issue focuses on the situated nature and territorial dynamics of participation. It contains Continue reading