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| 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 |
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. |
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| In our fieldwork, arts venues and organisations emerged as nodes in a cultural hub, which at their best can bring people together and allow them to practise their individual and collective wellbeing. . | By taking a more ecological perspective, arts organisations could assist their audiences to navigate their individual and collective arts ecologies more meaningfully. . | So the arts help people to be, rather than just think, reflect and rationalise. . | They need to be mindful of their phenomenological role as sites of profound cultural engagement; as privileged places of artistic insight and exchange. . | Ultimately, it is hoped that this fresh approach to capturing artistic experience will reframe the terms of the Cultural Value debate and inspire new anthropological approaches to exploring it.. | The arts seemed to provide an ideal vehicle for both participants and audiences to conceive of their anxieties in alternative ways and forms, and to explore them through different modes and lenses in order to effect change and heal. . | The fact that most of our co-researchers had been actively encouraged to engage in the arts as therapy was also significant in that it had visibly trained them to reflect on their artistic engagement and to consider this as a vehicle for wellness. . | Hanging out with our participants confirmed the positive role the arts can play in promoting positive mental health and wellbeing, and reflected Schopenhauers vision of the arts as a source of release and refuge from the anguish of everyday life. . | This perhaps explains the participants focus on the importance of feeling welcome in arts spaces and venues. . | Really good artists can see in a different way and reflect the world in a different way. . | For artists, arts organisations, arts educationalists and academics, this shift might involve renegotiating traditional relationships with audiences and participants, from capturing their data to actively thinking-with them (by hanging out more alongside them and getting to know them as people). . | It might also require arts organisations to create spaces that facilitate and set the optimal conditions for deep hanging out to occur -welcoming, hospitable spaces in which participants and audiences will want to linger and exchange as they navigate their personal arts ecologies. . | Ive realised that this is where Im happiest - being creative, being inspired by the arts and culture of the city and region. . | However, within a phenomenological perspective that other has value and meaning in its own right, as it is through conscious reflection that individuals make sense and invest meaning in their experiences. . | What we dont fully know is how people use the arts as a vehicle to engage with each other and with the world, and to discover their role and identity within it. . | Barry feels that his painting and writing activities enabled him to develop new techniques of coping and self-expression; to recognise who he was as a person; and to interact more meaningfully with others. . | Rather than attempting to reify cultural value itself (and reduce it to a series of outputs), a richer and more fruitful endeavour might be to capture the processes of arts and cultural engagement and explore the emotions and other phenomenological insights to which these processes give rise. . |
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