Inclusion by live streaming? Contested meanings of well-being: movement and non-movement of space, place and body

ABSTRACT

The article explores how the ideological discourses and practical actions that aim to increase well-being by means of art are possible to understand from the point of view of different kinds of mobilities and immobilities. An empirical case of a concert series live streamed to seniors and prison inmates by a concert hall is examined. The concerts aimed to enhance cultural inclusion, but in practice, live streaming highlighted the complexity of the network, where social spaces, places and bodily resources of the individuals were negotiated through movement and non-movement.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility of institutions
• the arts
• live-streaming
• inclusion
• governmobility
• kin-aesthetics
• mobile methods

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the two anonymous referees, whose comments on previous version of this paper were instrumental in helping to improve it. We are also grateful to the research team examining the remote concert together with us — various discussions during and after the project planted the seed of an idea for this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The study field of the ‘arts as well-being’ is vast, and it is not possible to discuss it in detail here. There are many variations in terms of how the topic is located in the political agenda of different European countries (e.g. Alasuutari 2017). However, generally speaking, one of the most debated issues has been how to measure the evidence of art-based interventions (e.g. Daykin et al. 2017).

2. In the project, we followed the ethical guidelines set by the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity (2013). Every person who participated in interviews signed an informed consent form, and they were reminded that participation was voluntary and they had the right to withdraw from the study at any stage. In reporting the results, as in this article, the group endeavoured to protect the identities of the participants by anonymising any details that would result in the recognition of individual participants, such as names and other personal information. All of the research material is preserved by the research team.

3. This video is freely available on the internet. The research material obtained from the mental hospital is not used in this article because the research group had limited permission to gather data due to hospital privacy policies.

4. Meri refers here to K.R.I.S, a Swedish-born organization that also operates in Finland and helps former prisoners adapt to the society after a prison period.