UNCHARTED: Understanding, Capturing and Fostering the Societal Value of Culture

Project Information

UNCHARTED

Grant agreement ID: 870793

DOI

10.3030/870793

Project closed

EC signature date 13 November 2019

Start date 1 February 2020

End date 31 January 2024

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 2 999 716,70

EU contribution

€ 2 999 716,25

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - UNCHARTED (UNCHARTED: Understanding, Capturing and Fostering the Societal Value of Culture)

Reporting period: 2022-08-01 to 2024-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The social values of culture are multiple. In the European case, the strategic nature of culture is especially noticeable. This is true for several reasons. The wealth that Europe treasures in terms of heritage and cultural expression is the basis of the strength of its CCIs, which translates into an exceptionally high volume of employment. But the economic dimension is not the only relevant aspect in this respect. Culture is also an element of crucial importance for Europe because it constitutes a fundamental resource in the face of some of the most pressing problems today: the integration of immigrant populations; social cohesion, weakened by the crisis; and the necessity of strengthening the critical capacity of citizenship. In this sense, it is particularly important that culture in Europe is valued in all its intrinsic diversity.

However, the plural strategic value of culture is largely lost due to the economism that currently prevails in politics. In recent decades, with the growing emphasis on the creative economy, culture has tended to be increasingly seen in political circles under the exclusive lens of the economy and its contribution to it. Cultural policy, although imbued with the idea of the plurality of values of culture, has also been led to adopt this perspective. It has not been able to produce an alternative vision and generate other evaluation systems that could be opposed, in the political arena or public discourse, to the persuasive evidence of monetary measures. The economic perspective obscures the non-economic dimensions of culture and makes it difficult for politics to take on the effective promotion of the plurality of its values.

In our view, a meaningful understanding of the plurality of the values of culture in Europe is only possible if we consider the multiplicity of agents who participate in valuation processes and the diversity of evaluative practices in which they engage. Consequently, our work has focused on the valuation practices of the actors involved in cultural life. Through the systematic analysis of these practices in different areas of the cultural sphere the project aimed to provide an alternative vision of the societal value of culture in Europe, and on the other hand, a roadmap for cultural policy action favourable to the plurality of cultural values.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During WP1 (Feb. 20 - Nov. 20), we investigated how different factors (gender and rising diversity, urbanisation, spatial and social segregation, globalisation and digitisation, and neo-liberalism) have influenced European cultural values. The study of these critical factors allowed us to glimpse the valuation field opened up by the crisis of cultural autonomy and the values of artistic excellence, a space defined by new value vectors and structured by new value tensions.

WP2's (Sep. 20 – Sep.21) main aim was to identify the plurality of values and tensions that emerge in four fundamental arenas of cultural practice: cultural participation in live arts and culture, cultural participation through media, cultural production and heritage management, and cultural administration. The valuations and tensions identified in the four domains, considering the contexts of emergence, the actors involved, and the conflicts and tensions between the valuations detected, make up a complex cartography of values.

WP3 (Oct. 2021 - Feb. 2023) aims was to understand the diverse systems of (e)valuation characterizing the four topical areas in which the work package is articulated. The goal was achieved by analyzing tensions and conflicts in how citizens, professionals, and public administrators construct, measure, compare and rank the values they attribute to culture. Axial tensions and conflicts have been further investigated in WP3 analyzing how they are managed in different regimes of evaluation using different evaluative tools and developing different tension resolutions. In this sense, our analysis has allowed us to identify the contextual conditions that activate tensions in different domains.

WP4 (Feb. 2023 - Jan. 2024) addressed the central challenge of assessing the strategies and effectiveness of cultural policy and institutions in taking full advantage of the potential benefits of culture for society. It is divided into two strands. The first strand focused on the coherence of cultural policies in Europe regarding the values they promote. The second strand focused on the action of cultural institutions, the way they promote the plurality of cultural values and how they perceive their impact in this matter. The impact towards providing concrete guidelines for reorientating cultural policies in a pluralistic sense was delivered through a roadmap.

WP5 (Oct. 2021 - Jan. 2024) aimed to monitor and examine concrete experiments and demonstrations carried out by citizens, professionals, administrators, and policy makers, all in relation to the development of cultural values. The main question of methodology was therefore to trace the modalities of how cultural policies and valuation strategies can be developed in co-creation processes in three axes: Cultural strategic planning, Culture-led urban regeneration, and Cultural information system. As a final outcome of WP5, the assessment report identified benefits and obstacles that are met by those organisations that aimed to take the results of the project and to put them into action.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

UNCHARTED has generated theoretical and practical contributions to the understanding of value plurality in Europe. In theoretical terms, we have analysed the factors, contexts of emergence, main tensions, and mechanisms of evaluation of culture in Europe. Through these analyses, we have produced new perspectives on the dynamic of valuation and evaluation in different areas of the cultural sphere. In practical terms, we have validated our analytical findings through several experiments and co-creative demonstrations carried out by citizens, professionals, administrators, and policymakers in three institutional fields: strategic cultural planning, culture-led urban regeneration, and information systems. In this way, we have included a great number of meetings with public administrators, profesionals, and stakeholders. Moreover, as public engagement and promotion, the project stressed reaching out to a wider public: towards the UNCHARTED Community and those who were interested in the project activities and results. On the other hand, we also developed a comprehensive policy analysis of cultural administrations and public cultural institutions, in which we examined the coherence and impact of cultural policies in relation with the cultural values that they try to promote. The result of this process was the elaboration of a roadmap, where we re-examined the evidence and the accumulated elaborations of the whole project, on the dynamics of the social emergence of the values linked to culture, the very complexity of the societal value of culture, and the effectiveness of cultural policy institutional configurations and strategies of action, to identify the cultural policy models and orientations that can best favor the promotion and full exploitation, in its intrinsic plurality, of the societal value of culture. Finally, we planned a conference, where we will address the challenges and opportunities provided by the new perspectives on the plurality of values of culture produced by the project and the sister projects MESOC and INVENT.

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