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Reading the Present Through the Past: A Critical Introduction

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Histories of Cultural Participation, Values and Governance

Part of the book series: New Directions in Cultural Policy Research ((NDCPR))

Abstract

This introduction contextualises the key themes explored in this edited collection—participation, values and governance—against the backdrop of current academic debates on cultural policy. We flesh out the broader methodological and theoretical standpoints from which the collection originates, expounding the contribution that a historical perspective can offer to understanding contemporary debates on politics and policy. Thus, this collection fulfils an important need for researchers and practitioners in the fields of cultural policy, arts management, heritage, museum, theatre and leisure studies in providing much-needed historical insight that sheds light on contemporary issues of cultural value and governance which are of great topicality. Approaching participation as an historically and spatially situated phenomenon, and articulating the effects of heritage, context and place by historicising and deconstructing present-day understandings of participation and cultural value is central to this endeavour and will open up new avenues of research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through Connected Communities Large Project funding for ‘Understanding Everyday Participation: Articulating Cultural Values’, 2012–2018, AH/J005401/1.

  2. 2.

    In the context of the wider project, we define cultural ecosystems as ‘a historically wrought, physically situated assembly of formal and informal cultural resources, participation contexts, practices and communities, which reflect the interplay of local structures of investment, supply and demand, and as such constitute distinct economies of participation’ (Miles and Gibson 2016, 153).

  3. 3.

    The UEP project also included a work package focusing on cultural participation in two Scottish ecosystems, Aberdeenshire and the Western Islands, which was supported by additional financial support by Creative Scotland. This strand of work is not discussed in detail here, but Miles and Ebrey (2017) is a good introduction to this part of the project.

  4. 4.

    For more on UEP and the question of the research-policy-practice nexus, see Belfiore (2016); for examples of UEP scholarship that have led to fresh thinking on policy and practice, see Gibson and Edwards (2016), Gilmore (2017), Miles and Ebrey (2017).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

    Eleonora Belfiore

  2. School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Lisanne Gibson

Authors
  1. Eleonora Belfiore
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  2. Lisanne Gibson
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Correspondence to Eleonora Belfiore .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

    Eleonora Belfiore

  2. University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Lisanne Gibson

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Belfiore, E., Gibson, L. (2019). Reading the Present Through the Past: A Critical Introduction. In: Belfiore, E., Gibson, L. (eds) Histories of Cultural Participation, Values and Governance. New Directions in Cultural Policy Research. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55027-9_1

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