Failspace (previously Cultural Participation: stories of success, histories of failure)

这项建议建立在AHRC资助的一个为期两年的研究项目的基础上，该项目在2019-2021年期间进行。它审查了如何以及为什么，尽管关于参与的国际讨论由来已久，增加文化参与的方法在很大程度上未能解决受补贴的文化部门的社会不平等问题。它进一步审查了为什么面对如此明显的失败，有意义的政策变化没有更主动地进行。我们发现，艺术家、组织、资助者和公众之间的不信任、指责和恐惧文化在多大程度上导致了一种政策环境，这种环境产生了夸大的目标，接受了低质量的评估，鼓励对成功的叙述，并且缺乏有意义的批判性反思。在我们的学术研究成果中，我们认为，缺乏透明度和诚实限制了“社会学习”的可能性(1992年5月)，这是更好地理解政策问题的社会建构所必需的，这是任何根本政策变化的先决条件。我们就政策制定者、资助者和艺术组织如何更好地认识失败、从失败中吸取教训并采取行动提出建议，并制定了框架和工具，旨在对文化部门的工作人员，特别是参与决策和赠款分配的人员，以及参与性计划的评估者和管理人员具有实际意义。通过在我们早期的研究过程中采用参与式研究方法，并与我们的研究参与者共同创造知识，我们让政策制定者和实践者在我们的研究中获得了真正的利益。因此，文化界强烈希望在实践中检验我们的研究成果。我们已经收到了一些评估顾问、政策制定者和艺术网络的请求，要求与他们合作，将我们的建议嵌入到实践中。其中一些在本申请所附的支持信中有所代表。因此，这项提案寻求资金，以支持一些举措，以测试和发展根据我们在政策和实践方面的研究而设计的建议、框架和工具。它将通过与业界合作，包括文化从业者、文化政策制定者和评估者，就一些从失败中吸取教训的案例研究来做到这一点。它还将通过与保健工作者以及青年工作和社区服务进行可行性研究，为这项研究建立新的受众，以测试我们的研究结果是否适用于公共部门的其他部分。因此，资金将专门用于-支持至少6位来自不同地点和/或艺术领域不同领域的冠军，通过促进他们的网络公开讨论失败的机会来扩大我们的研究范围-与目标资助组织合作，将我们的方法嵌入政策-与至少2个文化部门以外的组织合作，测试我们的研究成果对新受众的可转移性-开展媒体宣传活动，以提高对我们研究的认识-通过为文化部门专业人士安排“失败空间”会议，鼓励对失败进行更开放的对话-创建一个“失败故事”的在线存储库，作为工作的长期遗产

This proposal builds on the findings from a two-year AHRC funded research project which was undertaken between 2019-2021. It examined how and why, despite a long-standing international discourse about participation, approaches to increase cultural participation have largely failed to address social inequality in the subsidised cultural sector. It further examined why meaningful policy change has not been more forthcoming in the face of such apparent failure. What we found was the extent to which a culture of mistrust, blame and fear between artists, organisations, funders and the public has resulted in a policy environment that engenders overstated aims, accepts poor quality evaluations, encourages narratives of success and is devoid of meaningful critical reflection. In our academic research outputs we argue that this absence of transparency and honesty limits the potential for "social learning" (May, 1992) which is necessary for greater understanding about the social construction of policy problems, something which is a precondition to any radical change in policy. We offer suggestions as to how failure might be better acknowledged, learnt from, and acted upon by policy makers, funders and art organisations and have developed frameworks and tools which are intended to be of practical use to those working within the cultural sector, in particular those involved in policymaking and grant distribution, but also to evaluators and managers of participatory programmes. By employing participatory research approaches during our earlier research process and co-creating knowledge with our research participants, we have given policy makers and practitioners a real stake in our research. As a result there is a strong appetite from the cultural sector to test our research findings in practice. We have already had requests from a number of evaluation consultants, policy makers and arts networks to work with them to embed our recommendations in practice. Some of these are represented in letters of support attached to this application. This proposal therefore seeks funding to support a number of initiatives to test and develop the recommendations, frameworks and tools designed out of our research in policy and practice. It will do this by working in collaboration with industry, including cultural practitioners, cultural policy makers and evaluators on a number of case studies of learning from failure. It will also build new audiences for the research through feasibility studies with health workers as well youth work and community services to test the applicability of our findings on other parts of the public sector. Funding therefore would specifically be used to - support at least 6 champions from different locations and/or different parts of the arts sector to extend the reach of our research by facilitating opportunities for their networks to discuss failures openly- partner with a targeted group of funding organisation to embed our approach in policy- partner with at least 2 organisations outside the cultural sector to test the transferability of our findings to new audiences - deliver a media campaign to raise awareness of our research- encourage more open conversations about failure to take place by arranging a 'Failspace' conference for cultural sector professionals- create an online repository of 'Failstories' that will act as a longer term legacy of the work