Slides used to introduce the discussion at the Dangerous Ground event in Edinburgh, June 2013. More info here: http://culturalvalueinitiative.org/dangerous-ground-project/edinburgh-event-28th-june-2013/

1. Dangerous Ground:
Reframing Cultural Value
Edinburgh event, Dovecote Studios
28th June 2013
#dangerousground & #culturalvalue

2. Dangerous Ground:
Context setting intro by Ele Belfiore
 Cultural value as key issue for the sector:
‘Values represent our guiding principles: our broadest
motivations, influencing the attitudes we hold and how we act’
(http://valuesandframes.org/handbook/1-why-values-matter/).
 What is cultural policy?
If policy is just the final distillation of struggles over cultural
politics, how can we have a more interesting (and political!)
debate around the role and value of the arts & culture, and
how can we ensure wider, active, shaping participation in it,
so that cultural policy is not something that is ‘done to’ the
sector?

3. Why cultural value?
 A topical issue that is here to stay – possibly the defining
debate for the years to come?
 A way out of the instrumental/intrinsic value dichotomy?
 A way to re-inject cultural politics into cultural policy
research (cultural authority) – e.g.: whose cultural value(s)?
 Allows research to move beyond the obsession with
technical problems (e.g. impact toolkit mania) to more
philosophical, political, ethical ones about the kind of
society we want to live in (and the place of arts and culture
within it)

4. Reframing Cultural value:
towards a possible approach
 Challenging the predominance of the economic
rhetoric:
‘In these early decades of the twenty-first century, the master
story is economic; economic beliefs, values and assumptions are
shaping how we feel, think, and act. The beliefs, values and
assumptions that make up the economic story aren’t inherently
right or wrong; they’re just a single perspective on the nature of
reality. In a monoculture though, that single perspective
becomes so engrained as the only reasonable reality that we
begin to forget our other stories, and fail to see the monoculture
in its totality, never mind question it’.
(Michaels, F. S. 2011)

5. Reframing Cultural value:
towards a possible approach
 Questioning the values at the root of the arts funding
system:
The funding system itself an interesting case of cultural value in
operation - Key publicly funded organisations’ cultural authority is
rooted in their perceived/unchallenged cultural value
 BUT: How to broaden the debate to those cultural policy is
meant to benefit: artists & creative practitioners and the
public?
 How to broaden the debate beyond a focus on ‘policy’ and
funding?
 Need for a collaborative agenda

6. The #culturalvalue Initiative
www.culturalvalueinitiative.org
A curated blog, resource, debate arena & meeting
place for different perspectives…
Specific projects as part of the initiative:
 Plans to develop an international cultural value network
with partners in Australia
 A 2-day workshop in June 2012: the start of a
collaboration with A-N and Mission Models Money
 The Dangerous Ground project

7. What we hope to achieve
today
 To capture some of the ideas around cultural value that
artists have developed based on their own practice
 To help articulate the contribution that artists make to
the value debate and think of ways in which that
contribution can be made to feed more consistently in
broader political and policy debates on cultural value
 Explore possibilities for further collaboration on the
theme of cultural value: Do you want to help us try to
develop a new model of cultural policy/politics?

8. What ‘Dangerous Ground’
hopes to achieve
 To develop a collaborative, diverse network of
individuals committed to explore the dangerous ground
of cultural value
 To disrupt the status quo, develop new thinking and a
new vision in order to reframe (hack?) cultural value
 To build a new cultural politics that emphasise the
potential of the arts and culture to create a fairer, more
liveable world
 A few useful resources
 Help us plan the next phase…

9. Some questions for you
(are they the right ones?)
1) What do we mean when we talk about
‘cultural value’? Is it something singular,
homogeneous and existing out there that
just needs to be captured and articulated? If
not, whose cultural value are we referring
to?

10. Some questions for you
(are they the right ones?)
2) Is there a gap between the ‘public’
language of cultural value (in cultural
policy debates, in the rhetoric of
government or funding bodies) and the
‘private’ language of value that you use to
explain to yourself and your peers the
nature and purpose of your practice?

11. Some questions for you
(are they the right ones?)
3) In what ways would you like your work to
be valued and how would these ways
help you develop your practice, deepen
its impact and enable you to have a more
sustainable livelihood?

12. Some questions for you
(are they the right ones?)
4) Does the current interest around matters
of cultural value offer an opportunity for a
‘strong vision’ for the future by the cultural
and creative sector for the cultural and
creative sector beyond narrow
preoccupations with the next funding
cycle? How could this be achieved?