Engineering cohesion: a reflection on academic practice in a community‑based setting

Social policies in the United Kingdom have undergone a ‘community turn’ over the last two decades, with emphasis increasingly on ‘community cohesion’ rather than ‘social disadvantage’ and exclusion. Whilst academics have explored this trend, there is less reflective work on academic community-based practice that operates on the same terrain. This chapter offers critical self-reflection of our academic practice within the community budgeting and commissioning phase in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. Reflecting on the processes of bringing different parts of the Balsall Heath community together for the project, we consider not just the challenges of ‘constructing community’ in this way, but also, the logics that underpin it.

The creative economy, the creative class and cultural intermediation

This chapter presents an overview of recent work on cultural intermediaries and the ‘creative class’ in relation to social inequality. The chapter looks at Britain’s ‘creative class’ in relation to workforce patterns, tastes, social attitudes, and their faith in the transformative power of culture. Ultimately the chapter suggests we need caution when thinking about the impact of cultural intermediaries on social inequality.

Conclusion: Where next for cultural intermediation?

The book concludes by arguing not about the need to increase funding for cultural intermediaries, but rather for a critical examination of the role of culture in tacking entrenched inequality. The cultural sector is largely a closed shop, dominated by the white middle classes in south east England. Realistically, only the very talented and very lucky can count on the creative sector as a route out of poverty, regardless of how many well-meaning cultural activities run in deprived neighbourhoods. The chapter calls for a clearer delineation of different types of intermediary function, noting that the excellent work done by intermediaries based in deprived communities tackling skills and confidence building should not be unreflexively conflated with the activities of large arts organisations engaging in wider practices of marketing cities to middle class consumers. The chapter concludes that cultural intermediation will continue to play a role in building confidence and skills among a relatively small number of people. Unfortunately, in the face of a right-wing agenda that seems determined to entrench inequality, the capacity of cultural activity to transform society remains highly limited.

From the inside: reflections on cultural intermediation

This chapter draws upon the author’s personal experience gained in a career as an arts practitioner, between the production of performance and other forms of production as well as policy formulation and analysis. It reflects upon and assesses intermediation processes ‘from the inside’, reflecting particularly on the culture of the art world and the aesthetics of cultural production – in intent and outcome. The chapter suggests how this is an issue often neglected in discussion of the politics, policies and practicalities of participation and intermediation. It commences with a reflection on the culture of practice that has nurtured social engagement in the arts, exploring the work of Visiting Arts, where the author is Executive Director, reflecting on the evolution of the ‘Square Mile’ project. This venture is international in scope and gives a wider perspective on intermediation and engagement and the particularities of those projects and milieu dealt with across this book.

Participatory budgeting for culture: handing power to communities?

The concept of participatory budgeting was developed as a means of bypassing corrupt local elites and creating better governance in developing countries. Applied in the global north, it attempts to give power back to communities to set spending priorities within their neighbourhoods. This chapter examines two attempts at participatory budgeting for the arts in Birmingham – the city council’s Arts Champions scheme and a participatory action research project led by the author. Two key problems highlighted by the case studies are identified. First, funders being reluctant to hand full control to neighbourhoods over how spending is undertaken, with a tendency to push communities toward the funders’ spending priorities. Second, and related to this, is a lack of capacity at neighbourhood level to move beyond the “ideas generation” stage, toward having the confidence to design and commission cultural projects to realise those ideas. This speaks to wider problems in deprived communities – notably education, skills and confidence – that cannot be tackled simply by adding cultural activity.

Governing the creative city: the practice, value and effectiveness of cultural intermediation

This chapter rejects the binary between top-down and bottom-up approaches to the creative city. It argues that we need to pay greater attention to the ‘grey spaces’ in the cultural urban economy, where a range of engagement practices are being undertaken by local cultural organisations under difficult circumstances. This chapter re-appropriates the vocabulary of ‘cultural intermediation’ to reveal, revalue and reassess the role of cultural organisations that operate within local contexts to bridge between formal and informal ways of understanding culture and creativity. It shows how local organisations are engaged in meaning making, market making, community making and making do under conditions of austerity. We need a more ecological approach to the creative city, in which alternative spaces, practices and norms are made visible and valued

Intervention: Some cities

This chapter contains reflections from photographer Dan Burwood about his Some Cities project. This combined classes for budding photographers, community-based commissions for new photographic work and a social media aggregator which allowed locals to upload their own images. The varied communities of the city were thus given a shared platform to present their different understandings of the city through their own visual practice. Although the project was a success, the chapter also reflects on how projects designed to bring communities together themselves ebb and flow. The author and his collaborators moved on to new schemes at the end of the project, not all of which share the community focus of Some Cities.

‘An area lacking cultural activity’: researching cultural lives in urban space

Focussed on the Balsall Heath area of Birmingham, this chapter explores the specific ways in which individuals are situated by intermediation practices, policy imperatives, discourses and imaginaries as cultural consumers, participants and sometimes producers. In tandem with the attention afforded its demographic diversity, levels of deprivation Balsall Heath has been an object of cultural policy initiatives seeking to engage disadvantaged and ‘hard-to-reach’ communities. The chapter first outlines the particular socio-economic character of the area and discusses the method of walking interviews that was employed to engage with residents. The method does not offer am exhaustive picture of cultural engagement, conceived instead as a means of ‘thinking with’ participants within a local landscape of social, material and religious relations that shape individual agency.

Strategies for overcoming research obstacles: developing the ‘Ordsall method’ as a process for ethnographically informed impact in communities

This chapter describes how a £1million research project on exploring the role of ‘cultural intermediaries’ and ‘hard-to-reach’ communities was perceived when carried out in practice. A low-income community in Salford, NW England was a prime target for research. However questions about ‘culture’ among those already living precariously on very limited incomes and with few options for work produced a strong and negative reaction. These perceptions stimulated a project redesign to match local priorities and so ultimately generated enthusiastic engagement and participation in the research. The adaptive and responsive approach to project design and delivery helped achieve impact through our research activities and the Ordsall Method was born from that experience.

Screening films for social change: origins, aims and evolution of the Bristol Radical Film Festival

Festivals have tremendous power to engage diverse audiences with new forms of cultural consumption, but also provide opportunities for enlightening debate and encouraging action for social change. The Bristol Radical Film Festival (BRFF) takes place annually in venues throughout the city of Bristol, in the South West of England, presenting a curated programme of ‘radical’ films and documentaries which are screened in non-traditional venues. Drawing on ideas of Latin American radical film making, the organisers explicitly sought to use the festival to connect community activists within the city. This chapter examines how festival organisers used the cultural capital of their association with the University of the West of England to help legitimise their activities, under the radar of university managers to create a novel form of societal impact.