MESOC Serapeum | Where culture meets AI

Id		205
Author		Walmsley, B.,
Title		Deep hanging out in the arts: an anthropological approach to capturing cultural value
Reference		Walmsley, B. (2018). Deep hanging out in the arts: an anthropological approach to capturing cultural value, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 24(2): 272-291. DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2016.1153081
Keywords		Cultural value; Deep hanging out; Audience engagement; Relational aesthetics; Anthropology
Link to article		https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2016.1153081
Abstract		This article presents the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project carried out from September 2013 to March 2014 by five researchers at the University of Leeds (UK), who paired off with five audience-participants and engaged in a process of ‘deep hanging out’ at events curated as part of Leeds’ annual LoveArts festival. As part of AHRC’s Cultural Value project, the overarching aim of the research was to produce a rich, polyvocal, evocative and complex account of cultural value by co-investigating arts engagement with audience–participants. Findings suggested that both the methods and purpose of knowing about cultural value impact significantly on any exploration of cultural experience. Fieldwork culminated in the apparent paradox that we know, and yet still don’t seem to know, the value and impact of the arts. Protracted discussions with the participants suggested that this paradox stemmed from a misplaced focus on knowledge; that instead of striving to understand and rationalize the value of the arts, we should instead aim to feel and experience it. During a process of deep hanging out, our participants revealed the limitations of language in capturing the value of the arts, yet confirmed perceptions of the arts as a vehicle for developing self-identity and expression and for living a better life. These findings suggest that the Cultural Value debate needs to be reframed from what is currently an interminable epistemological obsession (that seeks to prove and evidence the value of culture) into a more complex phenomenological question, which asks how people experience the arts and culture and why people want to understand its value. This in turn implies a re-conceptualization of the relationships between artists or arts organisations and their publics, based on a more relational form of engagement and on a more anthropological approach to capturing and co-creating cultural value.
Metodology		Following a preliminary literature review and a creative workshop conducted with nine regional arts organisations, the core research questions were articulated. In order to achieve the research aims and provide some meaningful answers to the research questions, the research methodology needed to be qualitative and empirical, and an anthropological approach is been considered the most suitable. Within the overall framework of a grounded theory approach, the project followed a collaborative, anthropological methodology, inspired by the established (if poorly explicated) method of ‘deep hanging out’, which may be described as the fieldwork method of immersing oneself in a cultural, group or social experience on an informal level.
Technique		Observation; Literature review; Visits; Workshop; Deep hanging out; Personal narratives