University of Warwick
15th July 2014
Cultural value and social justice: towards a collaborative agenda
This workshop is an integral part of the AHRC funded project The politics of cultural
value: Towards an emancipatory framework, which aims to develop a social justice
approach to current debates around cultural value, cultural politics, and cultural
policy, especially in relation to arts funding and development strategies. The project
is led by Dr Eleonora Belfiore, of the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at Warwick
University in partnership with David Lambert and Leanne Taylor of the independent
cultural consultancy cultural solutions UK.
The workshop will be an opportunity for the team to share interim findings and
incorporate insights, reflections and critiques emerging from the day in the final
project report. We also hope that the day of intense debate will result in the
formation of new relationships, co-operations and conversation to develop a shared,
collaborative and interdisciplinary research and practice agenda that straddles the
academia/cultural sector/policy divides.
Venue: Seminar Room G50, ground floor, Millburn House, Milburn Hill Road,
University of Warwick, CV4 7HS
Contact number: Entrance to Millburn House may require a university card for
access. If you’re stuck, call or text Eleonora on 07708 288724.
Programme
9:30 – 9:50 coffee
9:50 – 10:00 Introductions
10:00 -10:30 ‘Whose cultural value? Power, politics and cultural policy’, Dr Eleonora
Belfiore, University of Warwick
10:30 – 11:10 ‘Sites, Schools & Civil Rights? - Gypsies, Travellers & the British State’,
Prof Colin Clark, University of the West of Scotland
11:10 – 12:20 ‘Our Big Real Gypsy Lives’, project presentation and discussion led by
David Lambert and Leanne Taylor, cultural Solution UK.
This session will provide a reflective account of OUR BIG REAL GYPSY LIVES, a
Heritage Lottery Fund project offering Lincolnshire Roma Gypsies and Irish Travellers
creative and cultural opportunities, whilst harvesting their stories and aspirations,
which has provided a case study for the AHRC project ‘The politics of cultural value:
Towards an emancipatory framework’. Emerging findings from the research will also
be presented that illustrate the challenges, opportunities and policy infrastructure
issues that are involved in this form of participatory and social engaged creative
work. The project web page can be found on the Lincolnshire Traveller Initiative web
page: http://www.lincolnshiretravellerinitiative.org.uk/our-big-real-gypsy-lives/
12:20 – 13:10 LUNCH
13:10- 13:40 Artist provocation by Delaine Le Bas: ‘Art On The Frontline: Mandate
For A People's Culture after Angela Davis’
13:40 – 15:40 Facilitated discussion (facilitator: Ruth Leary, University of Warwick)
15:40-16:00 Emerging reflections and next steps
SPEAKERS’ BIOS
Dr Eleonora Belfiore, University of Warwick
Dr Eleonora Belfiore is Associate Professor in Cultural Policy at the Centre for
Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. Her research interests focus on
the politics of cultural policy-making and the analysis of the discursive formations
around cultural value and the justification of public funding for the arts. She has
written extensively on the social impact of the arts and the politics of their
measurement and evaluation in a policy-making context, the role of research
evidence in policy development, and cultural value. In the Summer of 2012, she
founded The #cuturalvalue Initiative (www.culturalvalueinitiative.org) an online
resource and curated blog, and she is Arts Director of Studies of the Warwick
Commission on the Future of Cultural Value
(http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/research/warwickcommission/futureculture/), a large
scale public engagement project that aims to foster a national conversation on the
value of the arts and creative industries and to help develop fresh policy thinking.
She tweets as @elebelfiore.
Prof Colin Clark, University of the West of Scotland
Colin Clark is Professor of Sociology & Social Policy at the University of the West of
Scotland. Previous to taking up this post, in September 2013, he worked at the
Universities of Strathclyde, Newcastle and Glasgow. Colin's PhD is from Edinburgh
University where he was very lucky to work with the anthropologist Professor Judith
Okely. Colin's primary research interests are located within the broad field of ethnic
and racial studies and he has a specialist interest in Romani/Gypsy/Traveller Studies indeed, most of his funded research and publications are in this particular area.
Issues of mobility, identity, diversity and language are central to his research. Colin
also has interests in intersectional approaches to social theory and research
methods, as well as the practice and writing of ethnography. Colin's current work is
mainly focused around European socio-economic and political ‘concerns’ regarding
Roma migration, integration and citizenship. Recent publications include: Clark, C.
2014. ‘Glasgow’s Ellis Island? The integration and Stigmatisation of Govanhill’s Roma
population’, People, Place and Policy, 8(1): 34-50 and Clark, C. and Taylor, R. 2014. ‘Is
Nomadism the problem? The social construction of Gypsies and Travellers as
perpetrators of ‘anti-social’ behaviour in Britain’, in Pickard, S. (Ed.) Anti-Social
Behaviour in Britain: Victorian and Contemporary Perspectives, Basingstoke:
Palgrave. Colin also finds time to 'tweet': @profcolinclark
David M. Lambert, cultural solutions UK
David is Managing Director and founder of cultural solutions UK
(www.culturalsolutions.co,uk), a Lincolnshire-based arts and cultural
consultancy/organisation. David has worked within the private and public sectors for
the past thirty years. He was the architect, fund-raiser and manager of Lincolnshire
Creative Solutions Initiative, a £900,000 ERDF/Arts Council/Lincolnshire County
Council funded programme in support of Lincolnshire’s creative and cultural
sector. Ground-breaking work with Burns Owens Partnership saw the commissioning
of the region’s first in-depth analysis of Lincolnshire’s creative rural economy.
David devised and was Executive Producer of Golden Fables 2012, Lincolnshire’s
contribution to the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. The project involved 120 artists
commissioned to produced a poetic drama inspired by Lincolnshire's myths and
fables, premièring at SO Festival 2012 before going on to Latitude Festival 2012.
David led on the Lincolnshire Coast’s Cultural Mapping and Regeneration Strategy.
This work has become the foundation of much of the cultural regeneration found on
the Lincolnshire Coast. cultural solutions UK devised and delivered The Alchemy
Project – www.alchemyproject.eu - a Home-Office funded project addressing issues
of anti-social behaviour and race hate crime through cultural interventions with
British and eastern European communities in Boston and its surrounding area.
cultural solutions UK is currently working with Lincolnshire County Council on the
creation of a six-month artistic response to the 800th anniversary of the signing of
Magna Carta .
Delaine Le Bas, artist
Delaine Le Bas is a part of large family of English Romani Gypsies based in the South
of England, a multi media artist, she lives and works in various locations across the
U.K and Europe. Delaine's artistic practice consists of various sized installations that
combine mixed media and include the use of sound and performance. The works
deal with issues of exclusion and stereotypes that are far reaching and ingrained into
the human consciousness. Untold histories, exclusion based on difference and mis
representation loom large in the works, bi-lingual texts which are produced with her
son Damian James Le Bas, cultural symbols that make reference to 'others' whoever
'they' may be and how one way of 'inclusion' of difference has been by destroying
the culture of 'others'.
Recent project To Gypsyland co-curated by Barby Asante is currently at 198
Contemporary Arts & Learning, To Gypsyland has toured to Tramway, Glasgow,
Metal, Peterborough and Bolton Museum & Art Gallery. Witch Hunt her multi media
installation commissioned by Aspex in 2009 has toured the UK, been exhibited in
Berlin and in 2012 was part of Roundtable, Gwangju Biennale, it continues to tour
and will be in Sarajevo this Autumn.
Delaine's works were included in Paradise Lost, The First Roma Pavilion, Venice
Biennale 2007. Refusing Exclusion, Prague Biennale, 2007. Safe European Home? an
installation and project created with Damian Le Bas outside the parliament building
in Vienna May/June 2011, was at the CHB in Berlin for June 2013 and Gorki, Berlin
for November/December 2013 and continues to tour already being booked for
Dresden in Autumn 2015. Delaine is at this time working with Arts Council England
on a series of projects. Delaine's paper Navigating A Non Roma World was presented
at 3rd Former West Conference, Utrecht, September 2012 www.formerwest.org.
Performance works: Crystal Ball Genocide, January 27th 2012, has been included in
the publication Das Schwarze Wasser Denkmal Fur Die Im National Solialismus
Ermordeten Sinti und Roma ISBN 978386228034 and Minister and Ghost A Prophecy
performed at Reconsidering Roma is included in We Roma A Crtiical Reader ISBN
9789077288160.
Ruth Leary, University of Warwick
Ruth Leary is a Senior Teaching Fellow and Director of the MA in Creative and Media
Enterprises at the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick. She is
especially interested in cultural and social entrepreneurship, socially engaged arts
practice, digital R&D in the arts and copyright, creativity and management in the
creative industries. Ruth is also a pioneer of Open Space Learning, an innovative
pedagogic method using space and performance at Warwick, and continues to
develop her expertise in facilitation and experiential learning techniques. She
regularly works as a facilitator for Warwick Business School and working groups
across the University.
Leanne Taylor, Freelance consultant
Leanne Taylor, Creative Consultant has worked in the Cultural Industries for the last
16 years working in both the public sector and on a freelance basis in the East
Midlands. Her portfolio includes the following strands, strategic arts management,
project coordination, event management, drama/creative workshop facilitation and
school creative curriculum work with Creative Partnerships. Having worked as an
Arts Development Officer for over 8 years and as a freelance Creative Consultant she
has been able to work on a wide range of initiatives and programmes. Work
includes, project evaluations, Cultural Strategy Development, recruitment,
programme development, evaluation and monitoring and funding applications.
ABSTRACTS
Dr Eleonora Belfiore, University of Warwick
‘Whose cultural value? Power, politics and cultural policy’
The intellectual starting point for this presentation is the adoption of a social-critical
approach to the study of the arts and culture. This is predicated on a focus on the
social production of the aesthetic as championed, among others, by Janet Wolff
(1983). This stance entails an approach to cultural value that centres on the study of
the mechanisms through which ‘value’ is either allocated to artistic and cultural
forms and practices, or denied to them, by certain groups in particular social
contexts. Power relations are therefore central to struggles over cultural value. From
this premise, it can be argued that strategies for the encouragement of ‘access’ and
cultural participation at the heart of contemporary cultural policy in England are
largely based on a deficit model, which attributes value to certain forms of cultural
participation (largely those that are supported by public funding) and not others.
This model, indeed, characterises the groups that do not participate in traditional,
‘legitimate’ forms of cultural consumption as ‘disengaged’ and therefore in need of
targeted intervention (whereby cultural value is bestowed on the group as a result of
such intervention). The paper challenges this model, which has been in any case
unsuccessful in raising levels of participation and engagement in funded arts
activities, and begins to sketch a different model of arts development which places
concerns with social justice at its heart.
Prof Colin Clark, University of the West of Scotland
‘Sites, Schools & Civil Rights? - Gypsies, Travellers & the British State’,
For generations of Gypsy and Traveller families living in Britain there has been but
one truth: the state detests them in both words and actions. Now the word ‘detest’
may seem hard or forceful in this context. However, it is, if anything, diplomatic. For
even during those rare times when the state enacted legislation and policies that
were designed ostensibly to ‘care’ for or ‘protect’ such families in terms of social
policy the logic behind such actions was always one shaded by notions of discipline,
control and restriction. Across two key areas of social policy - education and
accommodation - the presentation will show this to be the case both in historical
and contemporary times. It will be argued that the evidence suggests that
contradictory and self-defeating policies of exclusion, containment and assimilation
have been doomed to failure, mainly on account of the often creative and ingenious
ways that many families have steered an almost impossible course through policy
ineptness, neoliberal red tape and bureaucratic fascism – again a word that may
seem extreme to some but this is the truth of the matter – and the experiences – of
Gypsy and Traveller families caught at the sharp-end of evictions from sites and
exclusions from schools. A new agenda needs to be formulated at the highest of
levels – one where civil and human rights are assured and delivered rather than
promised and stalled.
Delaine Le Bas, artists
‘Art On The Frontline: Mandate For A People's Culture after Angela Davis’
This presentation and provocation is based on the essay by Angela Davis: "Art On
The Frontline: Mandate For A People's Culture"
Taking as a starting point Cultural leaders Angela Davis and Stuart Hall I will be
looking at the following:
The structures, policy and the power that continue to dominate cultural policy and
appropriation.
What about a question of choice from the cultural base where the appropriation is
taken from? Or is this too much of a political undermining of the structures that
dominate?
Is it time for Pedagogy Of The Oppressed to be fully in place or is that too much to
ask?
This presentation and provocation is part of an ongoing series that continues to
question cultural appropriation and dominance from a western perspective.
Part performative, part on going dialogue this is also about participation and the
other participants of the day will be part of the provocation, which will start with a
series of questions that Delaine will give to all participants at the beginning of the
day.