Teenage Kicks: Exploring cultural value from a youth perspective

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There are growing concerns that many young people are increasingly being excluded from the arts and cultural activity as these subjects are being sidelined in schools and lack of funding for the arts is affecting their reach. This study asks a diverse group of young people about the kind of cultural experiences they value and what they feel that they gain through these encounters in order to build a robust argument for the arts to be reinstated in the lives of young people. In contemporary accounts of cultural value young people's voices and accounts have largely dropped off the radar. Where they remain, they have tended to be restricted to analyses of young people's encounters with culture and 'creativity' in more formal cultural institutions and in schools or to debates on the implications of digital cultural spaces. Accounts have often been dominated by instrumental tales of potential future economic benefit and skills development.This project works collaboratively with young people and a network of cultural organisations to explore young people's experiences and analyses of cultural value in order to inform contemporary discussion of cultural value. Building on recent generational and digital culture analyses of youth culture, as well as longstanding theorisations of 'youth cultures' in sociology, cultural studies and cultural geography the study will explore in detail young people's experiences of culture in relation to both the everyday and informal cultural experiences and their experiences of more formal cultural institutions. We believe that young people's voices may cut into the debate about cultural value in new and refreshing ways.The study will be conducted in the wider policy context of the Henley Review of Cultural Education and will feed into policy and research debates around the value of the arts and culture in the development of 'well-rounded' young people. Cultural organisations involved in the project and others nationwide and internationally will gain a better understanding of the diversity of young people's cultural experiences and their responses to it. This will inform changes in policy and practice in relation to arts and cultural provision for young people. Our aim is to increase the evidence available for those working to ensure that all children and young people have meaningful access to the arts and culture in this difficult economic climate.