Accounting for quality: arts evaluation,public value and the case of “Culture counts”

Arts policy has a longstanding relationship with the concept of “quality” and the ways in which organisations measure, evaluate and account for it. Culture Counts, an evaluation system and digital platform, compiles data from standardised evaluation surveys of different stakeholder groups – organisations, audiences, critics, funders and peers – and provides the means to compare and triangulate data in an accessible format. As a result, it claims to provide a more effective, democratic tool for quality measurement of art, which demonstrates the public value of funding [Department of Culture and the Arts, & Knell, J. (2014). Public value measurement framework: Measuring the quality of the arts. Perth: Department of Culture and the Arts.]. Through qualitative research with two consortia of organisations involved in Culture Counts pilot projects in Manchester, England and Victoria, Australia, we explore these claims, comparing the reception and promotion of the system in both countries and considering its potential incorporation into policy assessment frameworks and adoption within arts organisations’ existing evaluation capacities.     

Business Giving,the Tsunami and Corporates as Rock Stars: Some Implications for Arts Funding?

Financial and cultural aspects of corporate giving by UK and non-UK companies in response to the December 2004 South Asia Tsunami disaster are explored in this article. Literatures on corporate giving rationales, concepts of disaster and donor activity in disasters provide an underpinning. The article seeks to make connections between this high profile if short-lived business giving and the funding of the arts that is sought from business; and to draw tentative lessons for arts funding when seeking business support. The giving accounts in the wake of the Tsunami from a non-probability sample1 1. A probability sample is one in which each person (or company in this case) in the population has an equal chance (probability) of being selected. In a non-probability sample some people (in this case, companies) have a greater chance than others of being selected. For this study the availability of public information on the companies was the deciding factor on being selected. View all notes of 56 UK companies and 16 non-UK companies were examined. Reported online to the UK charity Business in the Community, these accounts were accessed in February 2005 and scrutinized thematically. Concurrently, company financial profiles to accompany giving figures were constructed. Although linkages between donation levels and financial performance were lacking, emerging themes included the role of employees, influencing company giving and creating a climate of expectation of firms' contributions. These developments may have important implications for business funding for the arts, where leading philanthropists are prominent as individuals in the giving landscapes; but employees' collective involvement is not marked. Alternatively, cultivation of employees as would-be donors, indirectly via their firms, may be a more secure, if lower level route to funding for some arts organizations than dependence on high profile business leaders. The article considers alternative scenarios for company giving in disaster contexts, including as a sustained and lasting giving theme or as company support as a ‘one-off’ event, rock-star style. The likely development of employee power as a key element in company giving is explored; and its wider meanings for funding in arts settings, (where the giver as rock star heroine/hero is also prominent) are considered.     

“Good” organisational reasons for “ineffectual” research: Evaluating summative evaluation of museums and galleries

New displays, galleries and exhibitions in museums and galleries are increasingly subject to summative evaluations, wide-ranging investigations that examine how visitors respond to and engage with particular initiatives. These evaluations provide insights into the behaviour and attitudes of visitors and the ways in which particular exhibitions, exhibits and information resources facilitate engagement, participation and learning. Unfortunately, however, summative evaluation has relatively little impact either on the particular initiative or more generally in contributing to our knowledge of visitor behaviour and understanding of best practice. In this paper, we suggest that the relative lack of impact of summative evaluation is not primarily due to any methodological shortcomings or the idiosyncrasies of some of the approaches that are used. Rather, the organisational and institutional context in which summative evaluation is commissioned, undertaken and received can impose contradictory demands and undermine the opportunity of learning from and applying the findings of evaluation.     

Christians and Muslims Faced with the Wrath of Abū Marwān al-Yuḥānisī, a Thirteenth-Century “Friend of God”

This article examines the nature of the wrath of Abū Marwān al-Yu[hdot]ānisī, a thirteenth-century Andalusi saint, and the protagonist of the Tu?fat al-mughtarib of al-Qashtālī. I have divided the study into two main parts. The first sets out and analyses various occasions on which the saint committed violent acts against Christians. Two of them died as a consequence of these aggressions. All the cases in this first part took place in the Muslim East during the saint's stay in this area. The second part examines cases of violence committed against Muslim people from al-Andalus. The victims suffered the consequences of the wrath of the saint, although he was not directly involved in the aggressions themselves. The stories are narrated by al-Yu[hdot]ānisī himself, and we do not know whether they really took place. Regarding these manifestations of violence, the hagiographic sources not only justify all the violent acts committed by the saint, murder included, but they present the saint to society as an “example” to follow, and indeed as a “hero”.     

“I am well-cooked food”: survival strategies of North Korean female border-crossers and possibilities for empowerment

Abstract

More than the half the people who cross the North Korea–China border are women, with most leaving home to seek food, economic benefits and a more comfortable life. From the human rights perspective, it is clear that the dangerous nature of their journeys across the border and their illegal status in China place them in a very vulnerable position with regard to human trafficking and many types of sexual and physical violence. However, some women voluntarily and strategically use migration, marriage and gender as arenas of agency through which to improve their lives and empower themselves. This paper aims to reveal the complexity of these experiences, which occur where specific forms of gender, intimacy and mobility meet. In doing so, I hope to argue for the possibility of agency beyond an overly simplified victim discourse of North Korean border-crossing. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in South Korea and China to reveal the trajectories of North Korean female border-crossers who developed survival strategies, and employed their gender and sexuality to skilfully use marriage-migration for their own purposes, empowering them to settle or keep moving on to better places. This instrumental orientation to empowerment worked alongside a more normative orientation to helping their “blood” families back in their homeland through remittances or through being able to bring along children from previous marriages. They were willing to adopt the role of temporary “wife” in order to be good “daughters,” “sisters” and “mothers” both now and later. In this sense, the North Korean women and their experiences imply an ambivalent approach to marriage and family.     

A Review of “African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900–1960”

The Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013 created a new kind of discomfort in the United States about “self-radicalized” terrorists, particularly related to Muslim immigrants. The two suspected bombers, brothers with Chechen backgrounds, had attended U.S. public schools. News media portrayed the brothers as “immigrants” and often showed them as having a struggle between their Chechen and U.S. identities. This article proposes that educators consider reframing the talk and discourses about immigrants and immigration toward a more complex understanding of transnationalism. The author demonstrates her work as a former English language learner teacher and her current research in the area of transnationalism to argue for educators to teach meaningfully about this concept. The goal, the author argues, is to help create a deeper understanding of newer arrivals to the United States so that the more newly arrived have greater choices about who they become and the identities they perform.     

Sick bunnies and pocket dumps: “Not-selfies” and the genre of self-representation

ABSTRACT

This article develops and troubles existing approaches to visual self-representation in social media, questioning the naturalized roles of faces and bodies in mediated self-representation. We argue that self-representation in digital communication should not be treated as synonymous with selfies, and that selfies themselves should not be reductively equated with performances of embodiment. We do this through discussing “not-selfies”: visual self-representation consisting of images that do not feature the likenesses of the people who share them, but instead show objects, animals, fictional characters, or other things, as in the practices of #EDC (“everyday carry”) and #GPOY (“gratuitous picture of yourself”) on platforms such as Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and reddit. We present an account of self-representation as an emergent, recognizable, intertextual genre, and show that #EDC and #GPOY practices are best conceptualized as instances of self-representation.     

“Sharenting,” parent blogging,and the boundaries of the digital self

ABSTRACT

This article asks whether “sharenting” (sharing representations of one’s parenting or children online) is a form of digital self-representation. Drawing on interviews with 17 parent bloggers, we explore how parents define the borders of their digital selves and justify what is their “story to tell.” We find that bloggers grapple with profound ethical dilemmas, as representing their identities as parents inevitably makes public aspects of their children’s lives, introducing risks that they are, paradoxically, responsible for safeguarding against. Parents thus evaluate what to share by juggling multiple obligations—to themselves, their children in the present and imagined into the future, and to their physical and virtual communities. The digital practices of representing the relational self are impeded more than eased by the individualistic notion of identity instantiated by digital platforms, thereby intensifying the ambivalence of both parents and the wider society in judging emerging genres of blogging the self.     

The “scouse wedding” and other myths: reflections on the evolution of a “Liverpool model” for culture-led urban regeneration

This paper considers the development of a “Liverpool model” for culture-led urban regeneration, based on an analysis of the competition to become the UK's first City of Culture (UKCC) for 2013. The paper outlines New Labour's developing approach to culture-led regeneration, placing the UKCC in the context of the use of culture for various local development policies, particularly city branding and urban regeneration (Evans & Shaw, 2004; McGuigan, 2005). Within this context, the paper considers how Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2008 has been narrated by New Labour and the manner in which this narrative has influenced the development of the UKCC programme (Department for Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS], 2009; Garcia, Melville & Cox, 2010). The paper demonstrates how this narrative overlooks the ultimate specificity of Liverpool's success (Liverpool Culture Company, 2009; Garcia et al., 2010), which suggests a unique combination of political circumstance, cultural leadership and public and private investment are at the root of the perceived success of Liverpool's ECoC 2008, rather than an exportable, replicable policy (O'Brien & Miles, 2010) described by the policy literature, and substantiated by the competition to select the UKCC 2013 (DCMS, 2009). The paper's conclusion problematises the prospect of another city repeating the Liverpool experience. The “Liverpool model” of culture-led regeneration is shown as one which limits prospective cultural policies to a narrow vision of the possible, a vision which is unlikely to be sustainable in the foreseeable future.     

The Big,Bad Wolf: Resisting Corporate Evil in “Damages” and State of Play

Popular culture requires readily identifiable villains. Subcultural groups often serve this role, creating controversies. Controversies based on religion are especially bitter. As a rule, religion in the movies is inoffensively sentimental, but The Da Vinci Code is both popular and provocative, treading on the dangerous ground of Jesus's mortality. An Inconvenient Truth, another unexpectedly popular recent movie, is not as amusing, but it concerns issues Jesus cared more about.     

Re-examining public opinion preferences for migrant categorizations: “Refugees” are evaluated more negatively than “migrants” and “foreigners” related to participants’ direct,extended, and mass-mediated intergroup contact experiences

Although migrant categorizations (e.g. “migrants”, “refugees”) are often conflated in political and academic discourse, they may be ascribed to different people and inspire different preferences in public opinion. Previous research in Western Europe has identified more positive attitudes toward “refugees” than toward “migrants” due to the legitimate need for international protection of “real refugees” compared to the perceived illegitimate claims by “economic migrants”. However, little evidence suggests that the same preference also exists in Eastern European countries that have historically received smaller numbers of refugees and had fewer frequent experiences with migrants and foreigners compared to West European countries. Moreover, the term “refugee” was intensively recategorized as “bogus” and de-legitimized in East European political discourse. To provide new evidence, we conducted a pre-registered comparative survey-based study with a sample of young Slovak adults (N = 873) to compare evaluations of three commonly used migrant categorizations in Slovakia -- “refugees”, “migrants”, and “foreigners” -- on multiple attitudinal and behavioural measures. In addition, we also tested the intergroup contact hypothesis about the relationship between participants’ evaluations and their experiences of direct, extended, and mass-mediated contact with these target groups. We found that “refugees” invoked less favourable feelings, attitudes, trust, and greater social distance compared to “migrants” and “foreigners”. These evaluations related to the valence (and less to the quantity) of participants’ experience of intergroup contact. These results challenge previous findings about public opinion preferences for “refugees” over “migrants”, support the intergroup contact hypothesis, and make a case for a more contextualized research.     

Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Similarities in the Norman Influence,Contact and “Conquests” of Sicily,Southern Italy and England

The establishment of the so-called “Norman World” is a debated phenomenon. The influence of the Normans can be found throughout Europe in matters of politics, warfare, and cultural interaction. The empire established by the Normans from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries was based upon the fighting prowess and military might of a people led by notable men such as William the Conqueror and Robert Guiscard. The similarities and differences between the Norman conquests of the eleventh century reveal reciprocity in contact, influence, and exchange among Norman populations. Similarly, the autonomy and distinctness of Norman populations from England to the Mediterranean remained. This article explores the extent of Norman contact, areas of influence and methods of exchange during the most active Norman conquests of the Middle Ages.