PIE Discussion Paper 3 - Culture, Learning & Development

In his briefing paper Peter Kearns compiled important information and supported it with some perceptive comments. With his statement: “The city is often the context in which cultural and education/learning policies interact in ways that impact on the quality of life of citizens“, he pointed out that the cities themselves have opportunities to influence the development and the quality of life of their inhabitants. In doing so, he also confronted them with a big challenge: for in view of the multi-faceted problems, the insight that integrating culture into the learning process may help to improve the success of learning, from our perspective at the same time includes the corresponding obligation to act.  

From a Bielefeld point of view, the question raised: “Should culture, learning, and sustained development be seen as the distinctive PIE triangle for development” can easily be answered in the affirmative. While education is the key to active participation in the life of society for every individual, well-educated and well-informed citizens are the precondition for the sustainable and future-oriented development of any community. The integration of culture into the education issue uncouples learning from the strictly formal approach and reaches out to include non-formal learning with its diverse contents. In addition, concerning oneself with culture as described in the broad definition of the term laid down in the Mexico City Declaration will on the one hand lead to a better understanding of one’s own cultural heritage and to intercultural acceptance and tolerance on the other. Both are preconditions for a future-oriented development based on social peace.    

For us a further aspect of cultural education has become crucial: Sociological research in Bielefeld has proved that educational disadvantage is concentrated in certain neighbourhoods. In their majority, these neighbourhoods are characterised by a large proportion of migrants and language deficits in their population. Needless to say that it is helpful to tackle this state of affairs by offering language training, though the success of language classes is limited, as the structures of disadvantage and failure have evidently become engrained in many of these neighbourhoods.  In contrast, our experience has shown that cultural projects are potentially appealing, motivating and inspiring to children and adolescents – maybe even to persons of any age – irrespective of their social background and language skills and may thus be able to break through hardened structures. Obviously cultural topics in particular allow “learning with all senses“. Integrating music, dance and other creative forms of expression or offering other hands-on cultural contents for learning will create many more alternatives for reception. While formal school education is rather geared towards intellectual comprehension (thereby presuming linguistic competence), cultural projects also appeal to the emotions, interests and talents. Children regularly experiencing difficulties in formal teaching environments suddenly discover that they can achieve success in dancing, making music, painting or other activities. They learn that they are not determined by their role of disadvantaged youngster. This kind of success can apparently have a trailblazing effect for further success and the development of their personality. The concrete mechanisms effective in these situations and the concrete schemes to be put in place to be successful will have to be researched further and proved in further evaluations.

In order to continue the PIE dialogue it would be interesting for us to learn whether other local authorities have made similar experiences and which concrete examples for successful projects in cultural education may be available. In particular we would be interested in information about scientific evaluations regarding this topic. 

I was very interested to read Peter’s Stimulus Paper No 3, which raised many issues and asked a number of questions, including a request for useful resources.  

One of the suggestions for rethinking cultural policy was the use of the wider definition of culture:

In its widest sense, culture may now be said to be the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterise a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs.

I think this definition is very useful, but the very breadth of the definition can lead to a lack of clarity about the role of organisations which specialise in producing culture.  Within the broader definition, all institutions are cultural – the family and the school reproduce the cultures of the community, banks and religions have their own cultures.  How do    what would ordinarily be seen as cultural organisations – museums, libraries, performing arts – relate to the wider definition of culture?  

Cultural organisations deploy resources (staff, money, buildings) explicitly in the performance of recognised cultural forms, in which symbolic meanings are explored, created and evaluated.  Sometimes these performances are heritage forms, either from local or global cultures.  Sometimes they celebrate identities, or analyse or criticise these local or global cultures.  As BP3 suggests, culture in the broadest sense includes negative aspects as well as positive – using the wider definition which includes the ‘whole complex’ doesn’t mean that a consensus position is achievable, or even desirable.  For example there can be conflicts between ‘the fundamental rights of the human being’ and the ‘value systems, traditions and beliefs’ which can provide justifications for the oppression of groups within a culture (classically women and the poor) and people from outside the dominant cultural group (people who are ‘different’ in some way).   So, yes, organisations should honour all ‘value systems, traditions and beliefs’ – but not if they conflict with  ‘the fundamental rights of the human being’ .  The most widely accepted definition of those rights is that of the United Nations.  It has sometimes been argued that this definition is very Western and individualistic. In fact, the committee which drafted them, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt,  included scholars from Egypt,  India, Iran, Lebanon, Panama, the Philippines and Uruguay.  

The other important aspect of the definition is that it does not make explicit why culture is important;  its very breadth makes it difficult to say how culture is different from social life in general.  Culture is the medium in which people make their lives meaningful, in which they swim like fish in the sea.  There are human universals – we are born as vulnerable bodies which are dependent on others to grow into adulthood. Love, loyalty, friendship, belonging to family and group, loss, mortality, dying and death are experienced by everyone. But the meanings attributed to these experiences vary hugely across cultures.   The power to create meaning is one of  the reasons why people who work in cultural organisations are so passionate about what they do. It is also why cultural difference is sometimes seen as a matter of life and death.  Cultural organisations may be tempted to say that the wider definition of culture is too difficult, and we should stick to performance within our little bubble. However, if we are genuinely creating human meaning, we cannot be cut off from the  sea in which we swim. We have no choice but to define where we stand in relation to the fundamental rights of the human being, and shaped our  organisational practices accordingly.

Resources

The Cultural Impact of Cultural Experiences

I would suggest anyone trying to draft a cultural policy, or to link culture to other societal domains (the economy, learning, tourism, health and wellbeing) should look at  INtrinsic Impact: How Audiences and Visitors are Transformed by Cultural Experiences in Liverpool, a report by Baker Richards and WolfBrown. Tackling the tired old issue of ‘intrinsic’  versus ‘instrumental’ value head on, the study analyses research on how audiences experience visual art, live music and theatre in Liverpool.  It looks at peoples’ ‘readiness to receive’ the art and six constructs of intrinsic impact: captivation, emotional resonance, spiritual value, intellectual stimulation, aesthetic growth and social bonding.  It makes the all-important point that so-called ‘instrumental’ impacts can only be achieved if the cultural experience is sufficiently engaging and of sufficient quality to generate these responses. It also has important things to say about the different needs of experienced and first time/novice attenders, which cultural organisations can use when thinking about attracting new audiences.  The report can be found at:

http://www.larc.uk.com/uploads/news-downloads/LARC-Intrinsic

The Health Impact of Cultural Experiences

In terms of the evidence that cultural attendance has an impact on health and wellbeing, I began to explore this about three years ago. I had become increasingly worried that that the many small scale projects which cultural organisations run simply do not add up to enough to make a difference at community level.  The professional arts and museums journals, and occasionally the mainstream media, frequently publish accounts of very creative, transformative projects which work intensively with small groups of people.  Usually the numbers involved are between ten and twenty, very rarely more than 100.  While these are undoubtedly significant events for most of those who take part (staff as well as public), it seems unlikely that this approach will ever reach enough people to make a difference at a community level.  Perhaps this is inevitable and this is the contribution cultural organisations can make, in the hope that other institutions will make parallel contributions. 

But I also began to wonder if there was any evidence that less intensive working  with larger numbers could make a difference?  For example, did simply going to concerts or visiting museums regularly, without engaging in active creative work, made a difference to people?  There was very little about this in the many reports commissioned by governments and arts councils about the impact of the arts, most of which were based on extrapolations from small group work. Due to the wonders of Google however, I found a rich vein of relevant research.  There is a surprising number of large scale studies by public health epidemiologists which shows that people who attend cultural institutions regularly lived longer.  These studies are controlled for class, gender, age, education, income, chronic illness and smoking and they demonstrate that the health benefit of cultural attendance is separate from the social benefit.   I tried to summarise this research here:

http://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/policy-research/Pages/Cultural-Attendance-and-Public-Mental-Health.aspx

This raises very significant questions for cultural organisations.  Could the resources they put into small intensive projects be more effectively used to enable larger numbers of people to attend the core institution?  Are the small projects with excluded groups genuinely about creating access to the core, or are they a way of appearing to be accessible, while maintaining the organisation, its staff and patrons in their  comfort zone?  If large numbers of novice attendees started turning up, are cultural organisations really ready to welcome them?  Do front of house staff (not special education staff) have the skills to teach people, unobtrusively and sensitively, to use institutions which may be unfamiliar and intimidating?  Does the core programme need to be modified to be relevant and engaging for these new audiences?

Some time ago we put in a bid to the European Commission for funding to develop an interactive exhibition that would be displayed in public spaces such as shopping centres, town halls, etc - anywhere where people congregated in large numbers. Mark will remember it. It was of course rejected as being too complex and with security issues. The original was about lifelong learning and engagement in a learning city, and I still believe that if we wish to get over any important information about the future, including cultural insights and issues, to large numbers of people, it has to be both attractive and visible in the street. My region of France is not regarded as very entreprebeurial, but in Perpignan every Thursday in August there is an evening of music and street theatre at several open air venues on the city's pavements. The crowds coming to this are enormous - and the income coming into the city is incidentally also large. Learning Festivals also attract huge audiences - why not celebrations of local culture and heritage along the same lines? I'm sure it happens - but in the street, the shopping malls etc?