Uniting sport and heritage: An evaluation of the Our Sporting Life exhibition programme

The year 2012 provided an opportunity to celebrate sporting history during the year when London staged that most historical of international sporting events, the Olympic Games. However, the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) made no reference to sporting history within official documentation, and there was no mention of sport in the Cultural Olympiad programme. This paper aims to understand the role of the Sports Heritage Network in exploring England's sporting heritage, despite being excluded from the official planning of the London 2012 Olympic Games. This affiliation of museums and archives with an interest in England's sporting past recognised the potential of the 2012 Olympic Games and established a community exhibition programme, Our Sporting Life, which aligned with LOCOG's aims and objectives. This paper evaluates the outputs and outcomes of Our Sporting Life and aims to understand why it was not supported financially or integrated into the official Cultural Olympiad programme. The data collection for Our Sporting Life is analysed and critiqued, and the impact of the programme is considered using the Generic Learning Outcomes and the Generic Social Outcomes frameworks. Our Sporting Life delivered over a hundred exhibitions and reached over one million people, with outcomes that included increasing knowledge and understanding, and strengthening public life. It provides an off-the-shelf methodology for future major sporting events and, as such, its omission from the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad can be regarded a lost opportunity.     

Legacy evaluation and London, 2012 and the Cultural Olympiad

The Summer Olympic Games were held in London from 27th July to 12th August 2012 with the Paralympic Games following two weeks later. In the immediate aftermath, the event was heralded as an outstanding success with praise for efficient organisation, welcoming volunteers and sporting prowess. But how do we evaluate the longer term legacy of an event like the Olympic Games? This article explores developments within the last decade to establish a paradigm for evaluating the legacy of the Olympic Games. The development of the International Olympic Committee's focus on “legacy” planning introduces this article and is followed by a brief synopsis of the contribution that the UK has made to legacy evaluation. The final section suggests that one of London 2012s major contributions to the Olympic movement as a whole may be what an interrogation of the issues surrounding legacy evaluation tell us about legacy as a whole.     

Evaluating legacies: Research,evidence and the regional impact of the Cultural Olympiad

From the bidding stage onwards, the London 2012 Olympics has been framed by an explicitly instrumental agenda, with objectives including increasing participation in sport in the UK and economic and physical regeneration in host sites, through investment in the Olympic Park and its surrounding infrastructure. The bid also signalled the ambition that London 2012 should be the first Olympics to deliver legacy through a nation-wide cultural programme in the build up to and alongside the Games [Kennell, J. & MacLeod, N. (2008, November 6–8). A memetic framework for the conceptualisation and evaluation of the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Paper presented at the 2nd Bi-annual International Tourism Studies Association conference in Shanghai, China. Retrieved from http://gala.gre.ac.uk/3951/], deliberately putting in place infrastructure for each English region and nation, shortly after the bid's success was announced. The ensuing national Cultural Olympiad, part funded by Legacy Trust UK, was evaluated through a series of research exercises which aimed to document the legacy and impact of the cultural programme. Through the case study of a regional programme in the North West of England, “We Play”, this article considers how evaluation research has been used locally to develop policy stories and legacy narratives which interpret and interact with the changing landscape of arts funding and cultural policy in the UK.     

A grey literature review of the Cultural Olympiad

This article considers the development of the UK Cultural Olympiad supporting London's successful bid to stage the Olympic Games in 2012. It suggests that the Cultural Olympiad is a complex event itself and needs to be better understood if any impacts are to be felt in a meaningful sense. The event is thus considered through review of over 50 documents relating to its management, in the context of a number of identified themes: cultural development, developing institutional frameworks, social benefit, educational benefit and promotional benefit.     

A review of tourism policy for the 2012 Olympics

This review considers the main tourism policy documents published by the UK Department for Culture, Media & Sport which are explicitly linked with the hosting of the Olympic Games in London in 2012. It reflects on the use of evidence gained from wider events hosting strategies utilized elsewhere, but notes concern about the lack of a coherent marketing theme and the potential to spread the tourism benefits beyond the main event venues. It concludes citing again the oft-noted problem about the links between tourism and wider cultural strategy development.     

Culture and the Scottish Household Survey

In 2007 the Scottish Government introduced an outcomes based approach to culture set within a National Performance Framework. One of the main data sources to measure “culture” in Scotland is the Scottish Household Survey (SHS). In this article, the SHS and its “Culture and Sport” Module are explored to show how useful the data is within the Scottish Government's economic agenda. This way, the paper reflects on the usefulness of the main data source used to understand cultural activity within Scotland. There are general difficulties measuring “culture”, but overall the SHS provides adequate national data for Scotland on cultural participation and attendance. However, the SHS cannot provide in-depth local level information and provides limited data on non-participants. Other surveys in Scotland and England give some example practices that could be incorporated to improve survey outcomes. Overall, the SHS is a useful policy tool but more could be done to utilise the data it can provide on the Scottish cultural sector.     

Beijing Stages Olympic Cultural Festival

Ten Olympic songs were premiered on July 16 at a grand ceremony at Beijing Olympic Sports Centre, marking the end of the third Beijing 2008 Olympic Cultural Festival. According to the organizers, the collecting campaign for Olympic songs will be held annually until 2007, from which the final theme songs for 2008 Games may be chosen. The third Beijing 2008 Olympic Cultural Festival, which was launched on June 23 with the theme of "Civilization of Beijing, Passion for the Olympic Games",…     

Measuring the cultural value of the Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporaries Exhibition as a platform for emerging artists

In our analysis of the cultural value of the Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporaries Exhibition, we assessed the institution's role in shaping emerging artists’ careers, as well as wider cultural value. Supported by our conceptual framework of value creation, issues assessed included the expected versus experienced value of the exhibition and the individual artworks, price setting, the market mechanism surrounding the exhibition, and its enhancement. The created cultural value is facilitated by high-visibility media exposure and through development of career-enhancing networks. We have generated new insight into cultural value more generally by moving beyond dominant instrumental valuation approaches. We have addressed many of the gaps in understanding the mechanisms behind engagement with contemporary art. We have progressed theory with the assistance of our conceptual framework and supporting qualitative data. Cultural value is expressed in contemporary art through artistic production systems and its cultural messages. Artists’ cultural value is often constructed via the intrinsic worth of their work, rather than from market influences. Cultural value is often personal to the viewer, shared with others and remembered over time. It is also co-created among the other stakeholders involved.     

Cultural map of Finland 2007: analysing cultural differences using multiple correspondence analysis

This paper explores the patterns of cultural consumption in Finland using data collected in 2007 from a randomly selected sample of 3,000 persons. This is an explanatory study employing Multiple Correspondence Analysis as a method to map the cultural consumption patterns in Finland. The paper refers to a number of previous studies addressing the same issue in Denmark and particularly the UK in an attempt to place the results within a comparison framework. The main argument of this paper is not simply that within socio-economic groups there is a preference for similar culture, but that cultural preferences follow a structure over different domains that can be detected without reference to socio-economic factors. As a result of the analysis, two dimensions of the MCA solution are found, which represent differentiations between high engagement in culture versus disengagement and contemporary versus traditional forms of culture. These dimensions are very similar to the dimensions found in the UK, even if the placement of individual cultural activities varies somewhat. The applicability of the Bourdieusian approach to cultural differences between classes, as well as recent critical developments of the theory of distinction, will be discussed in light of the results.     

Asia in the edges: a narrative account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore

Abstract

The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School is a Biennial event that invites Masters and PhD students from around Asia to participate in conversations around developing and building an Inter-Asia Cultural Studies thought process. Hosted by the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society along with the Consortium of universities and research centres that constitute it, the Summer School is committed to bringing together a wide discourse that spans geography, disciplines, political affiliations and cultural practices for and from researchers who are interested in developing Inter-Asia as a mode of developing local, contextual and relevant knowledge practices. This is the narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” which was hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.     

Counting culture to death: an Australian perspective on culture counts and quality metrics

Metrics-based approaches to understanding the value of culture imply homogeneity of artistic purpose, invite political manipulation and demand time, money and attention from cultural organisations without proven benefit. The system retailing as Culture Counts, a dashboard approach to quality measurement that emerged from Western Australia and is currently trialling in Australia, the US, the UK and Asia, serves to further abstract assessment processes. Cultural policy-makers across international domains need a more robust appreciation of the limits of metrics. Statistical data, well channelled, may provide useful ancillary information. But, where questions of value are concerned, it cannot replace critical judgment.     

Cultural capital and the place of sport

It is not unusual now to talk about the culture of the body, or to see routine and organized physical activity, as well as sport, as part and parcel of cultural life. In recent decades body management techniques have become a very conspicuous aspect of self-presentation and have been served by the expansion of the supply of commercial services to deal with diet and health, physical training and cosmetic improvement to appearances. The professionalization and commercialization of sport have also accelerated. Bourdieu interpreted measures for body management and maintenance in terms of the accumulation and display of cultural capital. He distinguished three types of cultural capital: institutionalized, objectified and embodied. This article considers some of the elements of the very complex and extensive property, embodied cultural capital. The Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion (CCSE) survey included questions on sporting activity, sports spectatorship and physical exercise routines, important elements in the mosaic of contemporary cultural activities. This article teases out the patterns of participation and taste in this area, examining differentiation by class, gender, education, ethnic and age groups in particular. While showing that all these factors matter, gender is the most important source of differentiation, though this is more the case for sport than for exercise per se. In addition, it is shown that educational qualification is particularly important in predicting participation in exercise, whereas occupational class makes more difference to the choice of sport, whether playing or watching.     

Review of Scottish Arts Council's Quality Framework – guidelines for arts organisations (2nd ed.), 2009

The Scottish Arts Council's “Quality Framework” was launched in 2007 as a continuous improvement toolkit. It provides a flexible framework for arts organizations to evaluate the impact of funding decisions. Developing tools that allow organizations to demonstrate their impact provides robust information to further build the evidence base for the cultural sector. The second edition (2009) has been revised after evaluation and consultation with arts organizations and Scottish Arts Council staff. Taking this approach and gathering further evidence is an important step in the lead up to Creative Scotland (which is the newly established creative arts funding body within Scotland). Continuous improvement tools not only gather evidence but can improve work practices. The Quality Framework should be viewed in the context of the National Performance Framework, as gathering outcome evidence will also assist in the production of Local Authority Single Outcome Agreements. This review also looks at the Unified Quality Improvement Framework, an over-arching tool that will assist local authorities and other service providers to evaluate the quality of their culture and sport provision. Evidencing sector information such as arts activity will be an important part of this process. The Quality Framework is a tool to gather outcome-based evidence that will show how culture can contribute to a variety of policy objectives.     

One world, One dream? Intergroup consequences of the 2008 Beijing Olympics

Despite deliberate efforts to promote the ideal of “One world, One dream,” the 2008 Beijing Olympics appears to have exaggerated Mainland Chinese’ perception of Chinese and Western cultural differences and increased low ingroup identifiers’ ingroup favoring emotions and perceptions. In Study 1, we measured Beijing Chinese's perceptions of Chinese and Western values before and after the Olympics. The results showed that, after the Olympics, encountering the Beijing Olympic icon increased perceived value differences between Western and Chinese cultures. Study 2 showed that in Mainland China, individuals who identified strongly with Chinese culture favored Chinese (vs. American) commercial brands more both at the beginning and toward the end of the Olympics. Moreover, although individuals with low levels of Chinese cultural identification did not display significant ingroup favoritism at the beginning of the Olympics, they did so toward the end of the Games. Together, the results suggest that the Olympics had widened the cultural divide between China and the Western world.     

Cultural mapping and sustainable communities: planning for the arts revisited

The field of arts and cultural planning and the aspirations of cultural practitioners, arts development officers and town planners has had a long, if frustrated, history in the United Kingdom. The relationship between the land-use development system and arts and cultural policy has lacked specific provision guidance or standards. This is in contrast to other areas of leisure and recreation, such as parks and open spaces, sports facilities and libraries. In large part this is due to the discretionary nature of much arts provision and also the fact that there is no single type of provider. Arts facilities and activity are delivered directly and indirectly by local and county councils, community and independent not-for-profit arts organizations – large and small – and private enterprises in the commercial entertainment and cultural industries. The absence of planning guidance and comparable data to assess the need for, and location of, a range of cultural amenities has also hampered an equitable, distributory planning approach. However, renewed interest in amenity planning and the role of cultural activity and opportunity in “place making” is evident internationally, and in the UK in particular, as new housing growth areas, demographic change and population increases require the planning of social as well as physical infrastructure on a scale not experienced since the last major new town developments. This article reviews the evolution of arts and cultural planning in the UK, including an assessment of recent concepts, guidance and resources in the UK and elsewhere. Cultural mapping and planning approaches are then demonstrated in housing growth areas, followed by a proposed methodology and framework for populating the cultural map. Finally, conclusions are made on the state of data and policy integration in what continues to be a fragmented cultural system.     

Local cultural strategies: a strategic review

The development of Local Cultural Strategies was recommended to all local authorities in England through the publication of a guidance document, Creating Opportunities, by the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS, 2000). Although not a statutory duty, by the end of 2002 Local Cultural Strategy development was strongly encouraged by the government, and the adoption of a strategy became part of performance review for local authorities under Best Value Performance Indicator BVPI 114. This recommendation encouraged local authorities to formalize and publish plans for the strategic development of their cultural and culture-related services. These used a broad definition of culture and recognized of the value of partnership working within localities, regions and sub-regions in which local authorities were taking the ‘lead’. It also reflected the advocacy of a cultural planning approach by central government for local government.

Cultural planning encourages a culturally sensitive approach to local cultural development, focusing on a diverse range of ‘cultural resources’, including leisure and sports facilities, qualities of natural and built environment, youth and ethnic communities and communities of interest, as well as the need for different local authority service departments and private, voluntary and other public sector partners to be involved early on in strategic development. According to this approach, culture is broadly defined as a ‘way of life’, and DCMS's guidance states that Local Cultural Strategies should promote cultural well-being and the quality of life in their designated areas.

As a result, Local Cultural Strategies have been developed at all tiers of English local authorities, including district and borough, metropolitan and unitary authority, county and regional levels. This article discusses the development of Local Cultural Strategies in England and reviews information on those strategies that have been developed. It examines the different approaches local authorities have taken towards this task, the methodologies for consultation employed, the frameworks for monitoring and the evaluation of cultural provision they offer. It considers the benefits and problems associated with the production of Local Cultural Strategies as strategic development frameworks for local culture, and questions the future of this process following their ‘subsumption’ into Community Strategies as part of a broader package of reforms for local government. In doing so, it examines how these documents offer an opportunity to examine local approaches to cultural planning.     

A cultural map of the United Kingdom, 2003

This paper employs Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to map cultural participation and taste in the UK. It constructs what Bourdieu calls a space of lifestyles from evidence collected in a national random sample survey of the British population in 2003. MCA constructs the space relationally on the basis of similarities and differences in responses to questions about a large number of cultural items in several sub‐fields including music, reading, TV and recreational activity. These items are mapped along two axes and their clustering indicates affinities between tastes and practices across sub‐fields. The cultural patterns are described. We then superimpose socio‐demographic variables, including class, educational qualifications and age, the distribution of which indicates tendencies for certain categories of person to have shared tastes. The analysis reveals meaningful, socially differentiated patterns of taste. The space of lifestyles proves to be structured primarily by the total volume of capital (resources) held by respondents and by age. Strong oppositions are revealed. An older, educated middle class shares ‘legitimate’ established cultural preferences. The repertoire of a younger middle class group contains more contemporary and ‘popular’ items. Less well‐educated, working class groups are characterised often primarily by lack of cultural participation, but also, especially among the young, by an aversion to ‘legitimate’ culture.     

Under construction: Towards a framework for cultural value

This article explores, in the context of prevailing discourses around the value of the arts and culture, the reasons why the UK's Arts & Humanities Research Council launched a research project on cultural value and sets out the character of that project. It is concerned with arts and cultural engagement across the commercial, subsidised, amateur, and participatory sectors; embraces the full range of arts and cultural forms; and seeks to reach beyond dichotomies such as intrinsic and instrumental, high and low art, quantitative and qualitative evaluation, and public and private experiences. The article explains the project's thinking around the components of cultural value and the methodologies for evidencing them, and highlights some of the key research being funded.     

Shaping screen talent: Conceptualising and developing the film and TV workforce in Scotland

Together with “creativity”, the concept of “talent” has emerged within UK and global policy discussions as being central to unlocking economic success within the creative industries. At a crucial time of political and technological change, Scotland finds itself competing within a highly competitive global market to identify, attract and retain creative talent and strengthen its skills base. As such, developing “talent” is a key aspect of the Scottish Government's Strategy for the Creative Industries. However, while creativity has been interrogated across academic disciplines in recent years, talent remains under-theorised within the academy and lacks a clear definition across policy and industry. Taking the screen industries as its focus, this paper draws on empirical data derived from a series of knowledge exchange workshops funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh designed to initiate dialogue between academics, policy-makers and stakeholders within Scotland and beyond. In doing so, it scopes out some of the key ways in which screen “talent” is conceptualised by these groups and raises questions regarding how particular understandings may impact on policies designed to identify, attract and retain a diverse range of skilled workers within the sector. We argue that greater precision should be used in policy discourse to emphasise the importance of developing particular and discrete craft skills rather than privileging a workforce that is highly flexible and mobile. We also suggest that policy-makers and educators must acknowledge and encourage transparency regarding the precariousness of building a career within the screen industries.     

Patterns of inequality in private funding of culture across the UK

By calculating an additively decomposable inequality measure following the lines of Shorrocks (1980; see Econometrica, 48(3)) we are able to evaluate regional disparities in private funding of cultural enterprises in the UK in a novel way. The country-wide index of inequality separates funding differences across regions from disparities within regions. Using data on private investment in UK cultural organisations, we consider three datasets: the first includes 139 organisations between 1993 and 2005; the second includes 573 organisations between 2002 and 2005; the third includes 898 organisations between 2005 and 2006. Differences among the 12 UK regions account for between a quarter and a third of overall funding inequalities. The largest contributor to funding inequality of cultural institutions in the UK is the degree of heterogeneity among cultural organisations within each region. We find that successful private fundraising is not significantly associated with the region where the organisation operates or with the particular cultural expression object of its activity. These are significant findings for cultural policymakers working on addressing issues of regional concentration of culture and diversifying sources of funding for the sector.