This document analyzes discourses around cultural participation and non-participation in UK cultural policy. It identifies two subject identities constructed in policy - the cultural participant and non-participant. Cultural participants are seen as open-minded and able to choose experiences, while non-participants are portrayed as lacking knowledge and constrained by barriers. However, interviews reveal that cultural professionals also reject many activities and non-participants regularly participate in popular culture. The document argues this binary oversimplifies cultural behavior and marginalizes non-participants' voices. It questions how policy might change if all were seen as cultural participants choosing from diverse options.

1. The cultural non-participant
versus the cultural participant:
discursive subject identities and desirable models of agency
David Stevenson
dstevenson@qmu.ac.uk

2. Cultural participation
• Despite over a decade of measurement and related
projects, the headline rate of cultural participation in
the UK is little changed
• Funding continues to be disproportionately orientated
towards those cultural activities upon which the
majority appear to place little value or exhibit any
interest
• Yet research continues to attempt to ‘explain’ their
non-participation and to ‘solve’ it as some sort of
societal problem

3. Methodology
• Foucauldian Problematisation
• Seeks to foreground and challenge the critical logics
(Howarth 2010) that sustain problem constructions
• Data consisted of seven policy documents, two
government webpages, and 42 in-depth interviews
• Interviewees were all individuals who were required,
as part of their professional practice, to work towards
increasing participation in culture. e.g. curators,
artists, outreach officers, civil servants etc.

4. Subject identities
• 2 subject identities in the dominant discourse of
cultural policy
• Exist in binary opposition
• Are written on to individuals by others
1. The cultural participant
2. The cultural non-participant
• The first are allowed speak in the field of cultural
policy, the second have their voices co-opted by the
first

5. Non-participants participate in culture
• Cultural non-participants do not appear to be identified
by their lack of cultural participation as measured by
surveys such as the Scottish Household Survey
• Going to the cinema and live DJs were often
mentioned by interviewees as being the likely pastimes
of the people they were working with
• “[Project participants] will have seen commercial work,
they will say they’ve seen a Christmas show, or they
have seen touring work at school, they will have been
to a Mamma Mia or an Abba tribute or something like
that”.

6. Demographic proxies and the ‘search’ for a
cultural non-participant
• Individuals are labelled as cultural non-participants on
the basis of other demographic characteristics
• Non-participants are also likely to be those labelled as
“socially excluded”, “socially deprived” or those “high
on the index of multiple deprivation”
• Other policies influence who is most likely to be
labelled as a non-participant
• “There are sort of flavours of the month, trends and
fashions [of who to engage with]. Young men, that is
quite an interesting one […] and prisoners are another
very popular choice”

7. Non-participants are ‘hard to reach’
• Non-participants are understood as being ‘hard to
reach’, more difficult to communicate with than others
• This renders the ‘problem’ of cultural non-participation
technical, an inability to access or communicate with
certain people
• Yet this technical process of ‘reaching’ individuals
labelled as non-participants is not really that hard
• Many interviewees were able to identify the specific
postcodes and locations that they would ‘find’ the ‘hard
to reach’ in

8. Non-participants are constrained by
‘barriers’
• Barriers are offered as explanations of why, when
reached, ‘hard to reach’ fail to change their behaviour
• They are thus framed as an excluded and hard to
reach minority, eager to participate in the same way
that the supposed majority do
• Yet national and international surveys regularly show
that it is a lack of interest that is the primary
explanation given for not participating
• No legitimate position of considred disesteem for state-
supported cultural activities exists within the discourse

9. Non-participants think ‘it’s not for the likes
of me’
• Most often it was the ‘mental’ or ‘psychological’ barrier
that was highlighted, as cultural non-participants were
assumed to have a ‘not for the likes of me’ attitude
• The primary explanation given for this attitude was that
“they don’t know that they don’t know, that is the irony
of it, you don’t know what you don’t know until you
have learnt that you did not know it”
• It was never made clear why thinking that something
was ‘not for you’ should be understood as a problem

10. Non-participants can never legitimately say
it is not for them
• “yes it is perfectly OK for folks to say that it is not for
the likes of me… but then it is OK for us to go, well try
it again”
• The logic employed at this point is that while the non-
participant may have been reached and participated, if
they have not subsequently changed their opinions,
values and behaviour then the cultural experience had
not been of the right kind
• “Once they have tried it, yeah, as long as they have
been given the right teacher and the right environment,
[…] I would say that they are likely to be engaged”

11. Trapped in a cycle of discursive logic
Have not
been
reached
(properly)
Constrained
by tangible
barriers
Constrained
by
intangible
barriers
Not had a
cultural
experience
Not had the
right
experience
Have been reached
Face no tangible barriers
Not interested in the offer
Taken part, didn’t like it

12. Non-participation doesn’t make you a non-
participant
• Opera and theatre is not really my bag
• I hate ballet and I hate opera with an absolute passion
• I am not a great fan of the ballet I am afraid, I like
opera but not ballet, quite why that is I don’t know!
• I don’t really go to much classical music [Interviewer:
Why?] I don’t like it
• I am really bad at going to new things, it will be based
on what I know…it is always based on what I know

13. “I don’t even got to the theatre myself as a
choice”
• Despite indications that psychological barriers to
altering pre-existing patterns of cultural participation
are faced by the majority in the discursive logics of the
policy problem they are almost solely associated with
the subject identity of the cultural non-participant
• It is only ever those already categorised as cultural
non-participants who have their patterns of
participation questioned and are thus asked to provide
explanations as to why they are different from others
and ultimately encouraged to alter them

14. Non-participation is OK if you are not a
cultural non-participant
• If someone is not socially or economically deprived, or
from a minority group, their non-participation does not
result in their labelling as a non-participant
• Interviewees saw as a joke the suggestion that
outreach work should be done with a group of bank
workers who only ever watched television, played
computer games and read comics (thus statistically a
cultural non-participant in Scotland)
• If someone is not understood as a problem for the state,
then their patterns of cultural participation are of no
interest to those acting on behalf of the state

15. Cultural participants are open-minded
• Cultural professionals label themselves as cultural
participants irrespective of their actual patterns of
participation
• “I wouldn’t be that interested in doing things like that.
But generally I would give everything a go”
• “I don’t go to classical music concerts. But I am open-
minded and I have been to lots of different things”
• “I think most things I am interested in experimenting
with. Whether I would actively choose to book tickets
though is perhaps a different thing”

16. Cultural Participant’s subjectivity is
legitimate
• Cultural participant’s claim to open-mindedness
allows them to reject activities out of hand and to
assert the legitimacy of their own subjective tastes
• “like millions of people in this country, by the time I
have done a full weeks work […] none of us want to
spend money on stuff we are not sure about”
• I’m perfectly able as an individual to be able to decide
what I would and wouldn’t do. Maybe I am reluctant
to try stuff, but you know, ultimately I’m happy with
that. I’m grown up and ugly enough to decide what I
want to engage with myself

17. Cultural participants exhibit desirable
agency
• Cultural participants are assumed to be able to “stretch
themselves”
• Cultural participants are assumed to be complete “I
mean we are finished in that sense, no?”
• Those labelled cultural participants are assumed to
have been ‘transformed’ into complete citizens, thus
their choices are unproblematic and, in fact, desirable
• This allows them to lay claim openness while
simultaneously rejecting many of the same activities
that those labelled as cultural non-participants are
castigated for avoiding

18. Cultural participants control the discourse
• Professional cultural participants write the identity of those
labelled as cultural non-participants
• The cultural non-participant identity assumes lack of
knowledge, experience, openness and/or willingness to learn:
a flawed subjectivity
• Their supposed ignorance resents them as a risk to culture
and allows cultural professionals to co-opt their voices,
silencing their speech, and managing policy towards their own
advantage
• This extends beyond cultural policy as their supposed non-
participation is used to explain their deprivation and low social
position: they are failing to seek out necessary transformation

19. Policy without non-participants?
• If we started with an assumption that everyone is a cultural
participant – the thesis of cultural abundance -how might this
change cultural policy?
• Might we seek to recognise and value the cultural participation
that everyone chooses rather than seeking to change it?
• Might we worry less about audience diversity and more about
the diversity of audiences that cultural policy is supporting?
• Might we commit to equitable support for all forms of cultural
participation?
• Might we measure success through the diversity of activity that
is being supported, rather than the diversity of participants at
supported organisations?

20. Selected References
• Freimuth, V S, and W Mettger. 1990. “Is There a Hard-to-
Reach Audience?” Public Health Reports 105 (3): 232–38
• Jancovich, Leila. 2011. “Great Art for Everyone? Engagement
and Participation Policy in the Arts” Cultural Trends 20 (3-4):
271–79
• O’Brien, Dave, and Kate Oakley. 2015. “Cultural Value and
Inequality: A Critical Literature Review.” London
• Stevenson, David. 2013. “What’s the Problem Again? The
Problematisation of Cultural Participation in Scottish Cultural
Policy.” Cultural Trends 22: 77–85
• Wilson, Nick; Gross, Jonathan and Bull, Anna. 2017. “Towards
cultural democracy: Promoting cultural capabilities for
everyone” Kings College: London