Exploring young people’s understanding of culture: a study from Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the need for greater understanding of the role that historical, socio-cultural and political context play in shaping perceptions of culture and cultural value. Findings draw on the annual attitudinal survey of 16-year-olds in Northern Ireland, Young Life and Times (2016), and four follow-up focus group discussions. Results complement existing cultural participation research, which relates forms of engagement with intersectional factors: age, location of residence, gender and income. Reflecting, to some degree, the specificities of the study’s location in Northern Ireland, we also found that cultural participation and understandings of what counts as culture have strong connections to history, place, religion, tradition and family. Furthermore, while participants placed a high level of personal importance on the informal activities in which they engage daily, those activities associated with tradition and family were perceived as having higher cultural importance.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural participation
• cultural value
• young people
• Northern Ireland

Notes on contributors

Victoria Durrer is Senior Lecturer in Arts Management and Cultural Policy at Queens University Belfast. She is the co-founder of the Cultural Policy Observatory Ireland and the AHRC funded research network, Brokering Intercultural Exchange. From January 2020 she will be an Ad Astra Fellow in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy at University College Dublin.

Martina McKnight is a Research Fellow with ARK. Her research interests include gender, young people, conflict and transition in Northern Ireland and qualitative methods.

Grace Kelly is a Research Fellow with the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work at Queen’s University Belfast. Her main area of work is social policy, with particular research interests in deprivation, poverty, social exclusion and equality.

Dirk Schubotz studied Social Sciences in Berlin and Belfast and obtained his Dr phil. from Kassel University. He worked as a Research Fellow at Ulster University (UU) and Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) before becoming a Lecturer in Social Policy at QUB in 2012. Dirk has directed ARK’s Young Life and Times (YLT) survey since 2003. Dirk’s research interests include children and young people, (participatory) research methods, sexuality and sexual health, identity, education and community relations.

Notes

1. The establishment of a commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition in 2014 began consultation work in 2016 and is evidence to an acknowledgement on the part of the Northern Irish state that it can not ignore the issue.

2. Since the completion of the consultation process, the Strategy is currently stalled in government.

Additional information

Funding

The Young Life and Times (YLT) survey is part-funded by: NI Executive Office, the Department of Education, the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Border Regions of Ireland, the Community Relations Council, the Carnegie Young People Trust, and Sport NI. The Centre for Evidence and Social Innovation, Queen’s University Belfast provided funding for the cultural component of the survey and focus groups.