Cultural Intermediation

Project OverviewPhil Jones

Overall aim

To identify means of enhancing the effectiveness of cultural intermediation as a mechanism for connecting different communities into the broader creative economy

Cultural intermediation

• Split between creative industries and cultural economy• We haven’t been looking at the ‘sexy’ tech/media end of

creative industries

• Many definitions of cultural intermediation• Our focus has been on the

individuals/organisations/events whose mission is to connect more deprived communities into cultural activity

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4

WP0 Scoping & Theory Building

WP2 Historic

WP3 Governance

WP1 Valuation & Mapping

WP4 Communities WP5 Interventions

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4

WP0 Scoping & Theory Building

WP2 Historic

WP3 Governance

WP1 Valuation & Mapping

WP4 Communities

WP5 Interventions

Business registrations• Analysis by Lisa De

Propris and Sam Mwara• Substantial over

representation of cultural intermediaries working on creative products in London & South East

Historical review of intermediation

Big Story Interviews

Experienced intermediaries reflecting on past and present situation

Governing cultural intermediation• Reviewing connections / disconnections between

intermediaries and policy• Birmingham and Manchester/Salford as case

studies• Interviews with key players, focus groups, intensive

diary keeping

Community case studies

• Investigating culture as it appears on the ground in two communities with high IMD scores and complex issues• Walking interviews, community researchers, focus

groups• Ordsall: fragmented by infrastructure, divisions

between different neighbourhoods and Media City• Balsall Heath: much more ethnically mixed, major

problems with housing density, environmental issues, reputational damage via anti-terror CCTV / Trojan Horse

Ordsall

Balsall Heath

City Centre

Mac Arts

Digbeth

Moseley

Printworks

University

Edgbaston

Birmingham Cultural [budgeting] Pilots• Running 2013-14• Built on experience from DCLG’s Neighbourhood

Community Budget Pilot Oct 2011-Apr 2013

• £95k ACE/BCC/DCLG• Three case study neighbourhoods mapping onto

Community budget pilot areas• Balsall Heath• Castle Vale• Shard End

• £40k extension from DCLG/ACE agreed March 2014

Cultural IntermediationInterventions• Focus groups / arts interventions• How would you like to see your neighbourhood

differently?• What things of (cultural) value would you like to see

more of in your neighbourhood?

• Setting up rolling ‘panels’• Can a cultural intermediary help realise that vision for

change?• Panel members co-design proposed interventions with

intermediaries• Panels decide which interventions to fund

Outputs• Warren & Jones, Edited book for Ashgate based on sessions at the Royal Geographical

Society (Q2 2015)• Grosvenor & Macnab (in press) Education, community and documentary photography

in post war Britain. Paedagogica Historica• Warren & Jones (in press) Local governance, disadvantaged communities and cultural

intermediation in the creative urban economy, Environment & Planning C: Government & Policy

• Perry, Warren & Smith (final revisions) Revealing and re-valuing cultural intermediaries in the ‘real’ creative city European Cultural Studies

• [various other papers in review + working papers/brochures]• May & Perry (2014) ‘Reflexivity and the Practice of Qualitative Research’, in Flick (ed.)

The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis Sage, London.• May & Perry (2013) ‘Universities, reflexivity and critique: uneasy parallels in practice’.

Policy Futures in Education 11;5, 505-514• O’Brien (2013) Cultural policy: management, value and modernity in the creative

industries Routledge, London• Durrer and O’Brien (2014) ‘Arts promotion’ in Smith Maguire & Matthews (eds.) The

cultural intermediaries reader Sage, London• 5 international working papers online • Various national/international conference presentations• Ongoing seminar series

Opportunistic initiatives

• Joint seminar with MISTRA Urban Futures• Some Cities, pilot of

participatory evaluation• Poetic transect, Chris

Jam

Schedule

10.20 Dave O’Brien (City University): Participatory evaluation- lessons from a pilot study 10.40 Paul Long (BCU): Culturing communities? Understanding intermediation and locality 11.00 Jessica Symons (University of Salford, Manchester) Saskia Warren (University of Birmingham): Community interventions: process and progress 12.00 Reflections from project collaborators

Steve Mclean (Soul City Arts) Ian Edwards (St Paul’s Trust)Ginnie Wollaston (Birmingham City Council)

Schedule

12.30 Tim May (University of Salford, Manchester): Values, evaluation and knowledge 12.45 Laura Ager (University of Salford, Manchester): Universities and festivals - thinking critically about cultural production 13.00 Lunch 14.00 Guided walk around Balsall Heath 15.30 Wrap up