Legacy evaluation and London, 2012 and the Cultural Olympiad

The Summer Olympic Games were held in London from 27th July to 12th August 2012 with the Paralympic Games following two weeks later. In the immediate aftermath, the event was heralded as an outstanding success with praise for efficient organisation, welcoming volunteers and sporting prowess. But how do we evaluate the longer term legacy of an event like the Olympic Games? This article explores developments within the last decade to establish a paradigm for evaluating the legacy of the Olympic Games. The development of the International Olympic Committee's focus on “legacy” planning introduces this article and is followed by a brief synopsis of the contribution that the UK has made to legacy evaluation. The final section suggests that one of London 2012s major contributions to the Olympic movement as a whole may be what an interrogation of the issues surrounding legacy evaluation tell us about legacy as a whole.     

A grey literature review of the Cultural Olympiad

This article considers the development of the UK Cultural Olympiad supporting London's successful bid to stage the Olympic Games in 2012. It suggests that the Cultural Olympiad is a complex event itself and needs to be better understood if any impacts are to be felt in a meaningful sense. The event is thus considered through review of over 50 documents relating to its management, in the context of a number of identified themes: cultural development, developing institutional frameworks, social benefit, educational benefit and promotional benefit.     

Capturing the Cultural Olympiad in Scotland: the case for multi-criteria analysis

This article examines the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad through the lens of a devolved Scotland, exploring how the Scottish cultural programmes and projects are being evaluated, and what this approach might offer for the wider UK and international context. Structurally, the article begins with a discussion of the relationship between sporting mega-events and culture, focusing specifically (although not exclusively) on the sport and cultural nexus around the Olympic Games. The discussion then moves to consider conceptual, policy and practice debates around cultural value, examining the extent to which existing research tools and techniques satisfactorily capture the contribution of culture to major events, public and social policy. Methodologically, the article draws on elite interviews with strategic stakeholders directly involved in the design, delivery and evaluation of Scotland's London 2012 Cultural Programme. The authors conclude that, when taken alongside other cultural evaluations conducted nationally and internationally, there is a need to develop a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) that can more effectively capture cultural value around major sporting events in the UK. This study has demonstrated a level of dissatisfaction within the Scottish cultural community about the limitations of existing mechanisms for measuring the value of culture within the mega-event platform. A robust, but nuanced, impact assessment is required because, unlike the UK as a whole, Scotland has a unique opportunity to undertake a longitudinal study assessing the conditions for legacy put in place as a result of the London 2012 Olympic Games for the subsequent 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. However, further research is required into the efficacy of the MCA for assessing cultural value generally and within the framework of major sports events, in particular.     

Extending the cultural research infrastructure: The rise of the regional cultural consortiums in England

Two distinguishing features of the New Labour Government have been its focus on regionalism and the establishment of a department of state, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), explicitly dedicated to ‘cultural’ policy. This paper tracks the development of a new set of regional cultural organizations, the Regional Cultural Consortiums (RCCs). These were established to contribute to regional development and to deliver the DCMS's national policy goals. The paper examines the RCCs' remit, challenges, achievements and prospects, and locates these in wider debates about evidence-based policy and continuity and change in cultural and regional policy. Particular consideration is given to the RCCs' research and data collection activities and their role in developing a move towards improved capacity in regional cultural research and data collection.     

Two cultures: the use and non-use of hypotheses in cultural policy research1

In the hard sciences research programmes are designed to generate evidence consistent or inconsistent with particular hypotheses. Hypotheses unsupported by evidence are modified or abandoned. The framers and testers of scientific hypotheses are members of the same profession, similarly trained and likely to interpret evidence in similar ways. They have professionally generalized responsibility for the quality and integrity of each other's work. Peer review systems are in place to monitor performance and expose chicanery. This is not the case in the cultural policy research arena. Here, policymakers, arts advocates and academic policy analysts are breeds apart. Their professional affiliations and lines of accountability are radically unlike. We have highly selective “advocacy” evidence on the one hand; highly developed but untestable academic theory on the other, suggesting the hypothetical existence of evidence for which academics are not allowed to look. Policymakers avoid “what if?” questions because they are paid to maintain positions of certainty. Academics ask, but lack the data to answer. Neither approach is satisfactory for shaping the future. This paper explains how the two opposing research traditions came into being and points to some of the problems which poor communication between theoreticians and practitioners can create.     

Cross-country comparisons of cultural statistics: Issues and good practice

Cross-country comparisons are popular in cultural policy. This paper looks at how cultural statistics are used in the making of such comparisons. Analysts have identified a general ‘sloppiness’ in current cultural statistics comparisons. Some of the major problems in both data production and data presentation are documented, and a ‘checklist’ of good practice is provided. The paper aims to provide guidance and ideas for anyone making cross-country comparisons of cultural statistics.     

Evaluating the effects of cultural immersion on counselor trainees' multicultural development and intercultural competence: A metasynthesis of qualitative evidence

This metasynthesis critically surveyed and evaluated the learning impacts on counselor and psychology trainees’ multicultural development and intercultural competence through participating in cultural immersion (CI), based on published qualitative research evidence. Accordingly, this metasynthesis identified and assessed the characteristics, the methodological strengths and qualities, and the thematic findings of 33 qualitative and mixed-methods CI studies resulting from exhaustive database searches. Using a directed content analysis technique, a six-domain analytical framework was applied to code and analyze the themes reported in these studies. The results point to CI intervention as a multifaceted and versatile instructional apparatus that impacted and contributed to trainees’ multicultural development and intercultural learning multidimensionally, across cognitive, perceptual-attitudinal, affective, and skills-behavioral domains. These learning outcomes include trainees’ increased cultural awareness and knowledge (cognitive), enhanced reflexivity on their worldview, positionality, and attitude (perceptual-attitudinal), heightened emotion and growth in cultural empathy (affective), adaptation and display of new behaviors and relational skills and increased multicultural competence (skills-behavioral). Therefore, CI embodies many favorable characteristics of experientially-based learning as stipulated in the existing multicultural counseling and intercultural training literature. These findings lend nuanced empirical support for the application of CI to facilitate counselor trainees’ multicultural orientation, development, and skills, and offer insights into structural facilitators for enhancing immersion training. However, a lack of structural and methodological consistency and theoretical depth among the existing CI studies were observed as major limitations. Implications and recommendations for advancing future CI and multicultural training practice and research are discussed.     

Re-imagining the local in national cultural policy formulation – the case of the Anglophone Caribbean

ABSTRACT

The formulation of cultural policies in the Anglophone Caribbean constantly straddles the demands of global, regional and national imperatives as a function of its position as a region of post-colonial, small-island states. This paper will argue that the role these factors play in the art of policy making problematises conventions in the current global/local (glocal) debate circulating in the arena of Cultural Policy Studies. The paper shows that cultural policy making in the Caribbean constitutes a mélange of approaches that are in a constant state of contestation during the policy-making process. It employs content analysis of cultural policy texts from selected Caribbean states, as well as an analysis of stakeholder views from the national cultural policy consultations in Trinidad and Tobago to derive its findings. A Five Factor framework was developed to illustrate the range of responses that guide and shape local actors and activities in the national cultural policy domain. The research concludes that the relationship between the national and local (nocal) actors has to be re-imagined if cultural policy is to deliver on its promise of social transformation in the Caribbean.     

Arts councils,policy-making and “the local”

ABSTRACT

In the British Isles, national policies for the arts are primarily viewed as the responsibility of arts councils with statutory duties to distribute state funding that meet the requirements of both “arms-length” principles and national strategic frameworks. This paper explores the tensions between policy making for the nation-state and for “the local” through comparative research on the arts councils (and equivalent bodies) in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with senior representatives from these organisations, it explores their notions of, responsibilities to and affiliations with “the local”. Findings suggest that despite their different models and relationships to the nation-state, and the disparities in the scale of investment, these national policy bodies commonly rely on networked governance to facilitate their relationship to “the local” which risks reproducing national interests, limiting the localised agency of place-based approaches and contributing to a culture of competition within cultural policy.     

Cultural plan implementation and outcomes in Ontario,Canada

Since 2005 there has been a surge of cultural planning initiatives in Canada, especially in the Province of Ontario. However, very little research has been conducted in the more established cultural planning contexts of Australia, Great Britain and the United States let alone in Canada to support the assertions that underlie much of the movement's continued success. In particular, there has been an absence of research on the actual outcomes of the cultural planning strategy. This article examines whether the wide range of strategic goals presented in most cultural plans are being met. The method for assessing the effectiveness of cultural plans involved analyzing which strategic objectives were implemented as recorded in progress reports and as reported on by cultural planners. The research findings show that cultural plans are being effectively implemented and the majority of strategic goals contained within most cultural plans are being achieved. In addition, it is observed that the strategic objectives being implemented are not limited to traditional arts sector concerns.     

Uniting sport and heritage: An evaluation of the Our Sporting Life exhibition programme

The year 2012 provided an opportunity to celebrate sporting history during the year when London staged that most historical of international sporting events, the Olympic Games. However, the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) made no reference to sporting history within official documentation, and there was no mention of sport in the Cultural Olympiad programme. This paper aims to understand the role of the Sports Heritage Network in exploring England's sporting heritage, despite being excluded from the official planning of the London 2012 Olympic Games. This affiliation of museums and archives with an interest in England's sporting past recognised the potential of the 2012 Olympic Games and established a community exhibition programme, Our Sporting Life, which aligned with LOCOG's aims and objectives. This paper evaluates the outputs and outcomes of Our Sporting Life and aims to understand why it was not supported financially or integrated into the official Cultural Olympiad programme. The data collection for Our Sporting Life is analysed and critiqued, and the impact of the programme is considered using the Generic Learning Outcomes and the Generic Social Outcomes frameworks. Our Sporting Life delivered over a hundred exhibitions and reached over one million people, with outcomes that included increasing knowledge and understanding, and strengthening public life. It provides an off-the-shelf methodology for future major sporting events and, as such, its omission from the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad can be regarded a lost opportunity.     

Patterns of inequality in private funding of culture across the UK

By calculating an additively decomposable inequality measure following the lines of Shorrocks (1980; see Econometrica, 48(3)) we are able to evaluate regional disparities in private funding of cultural enterprises in the UK in a novel way. The country-wide index of inequality separates funding differences across regions from disparities within regions. Using data on private investment in UK cultural organisations, we consider three datasets: the first includes 139 organisations between 1993 and 2005; the second includes 573 organisations between 2002 and 2005; the third includes 898 organisations between 2005 and 2006. Differences among the 12 UK regions account for between a quarter and a third of overall funding inequalities. The largest contributor to funding inequality of cultural institutions in the UK is the degree of heterogeneity among cultural organisations within each region. We find that successful private fundraising is not significantly associated with the region where the organisation operates or with the particular cultural expression object of its activity. These are significant findings for cultural policymakers working on addressing issues of regional concentration of culture and diversifying sources of funding for the sector.     

Designing policy: collaborative policy development within the context of the European capital of culture bid process

ABSTRACT

How do ideas become policies? What route do they take from inception to implementation and what criteria are used to evaluate one set of proposals against another? This paper examines the development of the Creative Work Fellowship policy proposal in Limerick, tracing the origins of the idea, itself a contended and negotiated object, from discussions between academics and policy-makers through to scoping, pitching and scaling the policy to its eventual users. This policy idea was designed during the Intelligence Unit (IU) commissioned by Limerick2020 as part of the city’s bid to become European Capital of Culture in 2020. The IU took the form of a policy think-tank, tasked with generating insights, ideas and policy proposals into the place of culture within Limerick city and region. The IU structure created a set of actors and an epistemic community capable of both generating and using ideas effectively, chiefly through two mechanisms. The first involved a robust critique and rebuilding process that every element of the policy was exposed to; the second involved feedback from interested parties at specific stages in the process. This created a series of “policy entrepreneurs” capable of taking a fully costed and modelled policy suggestion to government. The findings presented in the paper include an analysis of the collaborative nature of this policy development process, Based on this framework, we also consider the role of the European City of Culture bid process as catalyst for policy development in a regional context, and present findings on this subject.     

Does Cross-cultural Competence Matter when Going Global: Cultural Intelligence and Its Impact on Performance of International Students in Australia

Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is a critical competency in the modern world. By examining 189 international students from an Australian university, this study investigates the impact of CQ and cultural exposure on intercultural adjustment and academic performance. Significant positive relationships are found between facets of CQ and Interactional Adjustment and General Adjustment, but a significant negative relationship with Academic Performance. We also demonstrate the validity of a new construct of Cultural Exposure (CE) including three dimensions (Geographical, Environmental, and Inherited) with both Geographical and Environmental dimensions producing a strong positive correlation with Academic Performance.     

The Gramppian Hills: An Empirical Test for Rent-Seeking Behaviour in the Arts

To remind cultural policy practitioners that rent-seeking theory exists (in recently published cultural economics reference books the theory is hardly mentioned), and to encourage theoreticians further to develop their models of personal and institutional behaviour predicting and explaining it, this article suggests a simple graphical test for rent-seeking behaviour in the non-profit art world. The author hopes to reinvigorate debate about arts rent seeking and about its good and ill effects, about possible diagnostic techniques and about possible control measures.     

The Social Stratification of Cultural Consumption: Some Policy Implications of a Research Project

The paper briefly describes a recently completed research project on the social stratification of cultural consumption, presents some major findings from this project, and considers their implications for public policy in relation to the arts. A central theme is the inadequacy of the ‘homology’ argument, claiming that social hierarchies and cultural hierarchies map closely onto each other. This argument is shown to be empirically unsound and to underestimate the complexity of the relationship between social stratification and cultural consumption, as this is determined by the combined effects of income, education and social status. One question that then arises is what policy response, if any, is required by the fact that many individuals do not participate extensively in the arts even though they have the economic and cultural resources required to do so (self-exclusion rather than social exclusion). And a second is that of how far, in attempts at increasing participation, status-linked motivations might be exploited.     

Cultural practices,age and the life course

Social science studies of cultural activity commonly focus on class, gender and ethnicity and often treat age as an unimportant background variable. This article demonstrates the central importance of age as a factor affecting cultural consumption, using data from the “Taking Part” Survey of England. As well as seeking to describe the main aspects of age differentiation, the article unpacks what is often called, in a simplified way, “age effects”. The socio-historical dynamics leading to the existence of age effects are examined, first theoretically, and second, through some empirical examples (doing sport, playing a musical instrument/singing, cinema, visiting exhibitions or collections of art/photography/sculpture, doing textile crafts). A number of influences are shown to account for the importance of age: health, the individual life course, the different socio-economic background of cohorts and other, more complex cohort effects. Possible interpretations of these cohort effects on cultural practices are discussed at the end of the article.     

The art of the good life: culture and sustainable prosperity

ABSTRACT

The creative economy has seen cultural policy swallowed up by a narrow vision of economic growth, its impacts on the urban fabric captured by property developers, and its promises of meaningful activity challenged by the exploitation and inequities of cultural labour markets. So it needs to be abandoned and re-thought, but on what basis? This paper analyses the potential for cultural work to encourage alternative visions of the “good life”, in particular, how it might encourage a kind of “sustainable prosperity” wherein human flourishing is not linked to high levels of material consumption but rather the capabilities to engage with cultural and creative practices and communities. We critically explore these ideas in three locations: a London borough, a deindustrialised city in England’s midlands and a rural town on the Welsh/English border. Across these diverse landscapes and socio-economic contexts, we look at different versions of the good life and at the possibilities and constraints of cultural activity as a way of achieving kinds of sustainable prosperity.     

No place to call home: Cultural homelessness, self-esteem and cross-cultural identities

This study examined relations between a cross-cultural geographically mobile childhood and adulthood cultural homelessness, attachment to cross-cultural identities, and self esteem. Cross-cultural identities are loosely defined identities (e.g., third culture kids, military brats, missionary kids) that describe some individuals’ childhood cross-cultural experience. The 475 participants spent at least two years before age 18 in a country different from their parents’ home culture, then returned to the latter. They completed an online survey which included general demographic information regarding cross-cultural experiences in childhood, as well as the Cultural Homelessness Criteria, the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale, and items that evaluated the strength of affirmation, belonging, and commitment to a self-labeled cross-cultural identity. Cultural homelessness was related to lower self esteem scores; higher affirmation, belonging and commitment to any cross-cultural identity was related to higher self esteem and lower cultural homelessness. Furthermore, such affirmation, belonging, and commitment buffered the cultural homelessness-self esteem association, whereas just having a cross-cultural identity did not.     

Diaspora as method: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and the Asian Australian Studies Research Network

ABSTRACT

What is the place of the diasporas within the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies movement, and how can Asian diasporas in the West contribute to Inter-Asia's intellectual project of “problematising Asia”? Developing a notion of diaspora as method, this essay highlights the complementary relationship between the Asian Australian Studies Research Network and the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies network. It argues that the Inter-Asia network has much to gain from embracing the Asian Australian diaspora as an interlocutor with shared priorities and concerns, and that Asian Australian studies can also productively learn from Inter-Asia's alternative model of institutionalisation, thereby expanding its theoretical and methodological frames of reference.