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

该提案基于2019-2021年期间进行的为期两年的AHRC资助研究项目的研究结果。尽管长期以来国际上一直有关于参与的讨论，但增加文化参与的方法在很大程度上未能解决受补贴文化部门的社会不平等问题，研究了这种情况是如何发生的，以及为什么发生的。它进一步研究了为什么在面对如此明显的失败时，没有更积极地进行有意义的政策变革。我们发现，在艺术家、组织、资助者和公众之间，不信任、指责和恐惧的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，鼓励了对成功的叙述，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”的潜力（May, 1992），这对于更好地理解政策问题的社会建构是必要的，而社会建构是任何激进政策变化的先决条件。我们为政策制定者、资助者和艺术组织如何更好地承认、学习和采取行动的失败提供了建议，并开发了框架和工具，旨在为文化部门的工作人员，特别是那些参与政策制定和拨款分配的人，以及参与性项目的评估者和管理者提供实际用途。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，文化部门有强烈的兴趣在实践中检验我们的研究成果。我们已经收到许多评估顾问、政策制定者和艺术网络的请求，希望与他们合作，将我们的建议纳入实践。其中一些在本申请所附的支持信中有所体现。因此，本提案寻求资金支持一系列举措，以测试和发展我们在政策和实践研究中设计的建议、框架和工具。为此，它将与包括文化从业者、文化政策制定者和评估人员在内的业界合作，开展一系列从失败中学习的案例研究。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，为研究建立新的受众，以检验我们的研究结果在公共部门其他部分的适用性。资金因此将专门用于——支持至少6冠军从不同的位置和/或不同地区的艺术领域扩展到我们的研究通过促进他们的网络公开讨论失败的机会——与目标集团的资金组织合作,将我们的方法嵌入到政策——与至少2合作组织以外的文化部门测试我们的研究结果的可转移性的新观众,媒体活动为了提高人们对我们的研究的认识——通过为文化部门的专业人士安排一个“失败空间”会议，鼓励更多关于失败的公开对话——创建一个“失败故事”的在线资源库，作为这项工作的长期遗产

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