Cold spots, crap towns and cultural deserts: The role of place and geography in cultural participation and creative place-making

Abstract

This article considers cultural participation in relation to locality, by looking at the case of Macclesfield, a town in northwest England. It does so in the context of current arts policy, which aims to rebalance arts participation patterns across localities. Such policies are grounded in particular forms of evidence of differentiated levels of participation, which indicate the position of places within league tables and indices of activities according to the “volume and value” of arts participation and engagement. However, these obscure other cultural practices related to a different understanding of places and their on-going production. The article argues that arts initiatives predicated on situated, vernacular and sometimes ostensibly mundane practices, often excluded from formal definitions of “the arts”, can help such policies to negotiate local “structures of feeling” [Taylor, I., Evans, K., & Fraser, P. (1996). A tale of two cities – global change, local feeling and everyday life in the North of England. A study in Manchester and Sheffield. London: Routledge] and the multiple trajectories and stories of place, in order to engage those who do not usually attend or participate in the arts. It calls for a different approach to evidence, which draws on historical and relational aspects of space and place, to reveal the specificity and contingency of cultural participation for even the most “unexceptional” place – the “crap town”.

Keywords:

• arts participation
• place
• evidence
• policy
• everyday
• local

Acknowledgements

This article draws on papers given at the Arts Engagement and Participation Knowledge Exchange Seminar, on 20 September 2011, Design Academy, Liverpool, and Conference (in conjunction with Cultural Trends) on 7 July 2012, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and also a paper presented to International Conference for Cultural Policy Research 2012, 11 July 2012, Barcelona. I am grateful to all comments received from seminar and conference delegates, and to all peer reviewers and to Franco Bianchini and Leila Jancovich for their constructive and helpful criticism during the drafting of this paper. I would like to acknowledge and thank those who contributed through interviews and conversations – in particular Andrew Miles, Olive Ambrose, Hannah Barker, Freda O'Brien, Nigel Lea, Jon Whaling, Owen Hutchings and Calvin Taylor.

Notes

This research runs concurrent with the five-year, AHRC Connected Communities research project, Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Value (www.everydayparticipation.wordpress.com). It is my intention that it contributes to the theoretical and methodological aims and outcomes of the project.

Table 1 provides data from the Active People survey for a larger geographical area, following changes to local authority boundaries when Macclesfield Borough Council became part of unitary local authority Cheshire East in 2010.