Browsing by Person "Stevenson, David"

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Arts councils, policy-making and "the local"
(Taylor & Francis, 2019-08-01) Durrer, Victoria; Gilmore, Abigail; Stevenson, David
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 England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Drawing on policy analysis and in-depth qualitative interviews with senior representatives from these organisations, it explores their notions of, responsibilities to and affiliations with ‘the local’, particularly in relation to institutional partnerships and their perceived relevance to local strategies for the arts. 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’ thus reproducing national interests, limiting the localised agency of place-based approaches and contributing to a culture of competition within cultural policy (Mould, 2018).
The cultural non-participant: Critical logics and discursive subject identities
(Emerald, 2019-05-07) Stevenson, David
The existence of so-called non-participants are a cultural policy problem in the UK and beyond. Yet the very notion of a cultural non-participant seems nonsensical against the palpable evidence of lived experience. This paper aims to understand ‘who’ a cultural non-participant is by first comprehending ‘what’ the cultural non-participant is and why it exists. Drawing on primary data generated in the form of 40 in-depth qualitative interviews, this paper employs a discursive methodology to explore the critical logics (Howarth, 2010) that underlie the problem representation (Bacchi, 2009) of cultural non-participation and in particular the discursive subject identity of the cultural non-participant. Beginning with a discussion about how cultural non-participants are represented as socially deprived and hard to reach, the paper moves on to highlight how they are also presumed to lack knowledge and understanding about what they are rejecting. Their supposed flawed subjectivity is then contrasted with the desirable model of agency claimed by the cultural professionals who seek to change the cultural participation patterns of others. The paper concludes with a consideration of how the existence of the cultural non-participant subject identity limits the extent to which those labelled as such can meaningfully contribute to the field of cultural policy and obscures the extent to which such individuals are culturally disenfranchised.14 Because of the chosen research approach and the geographical limitations to the data generation, the research makes no claim to generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the discursive logics identified at alternative discursive sites. Practical Implications: This paper proposes a change in the language used by cultural professionals accompanied by changes in practice that abandoning the identity of the cultural non-participant would demand. This paper challenges a taken for granted assumption that cultural non-participants exist 'in the real'.
Cultural participation in Europe: shared problem or shared problematisation?
(Taylor & Francis, 2015-05-26) Stevenson, David; Balling, Gitte; Kann-Rasmussen, Nanna
Europe has a 'problem'; it is becoming a 'less cultural continent' as fewer Europeans are 'engaging in cultural activities'. This conclusion has been reached due to the findings of the latest cross national cultural participation survey. This paper questions the existence of this 'problem' and instead suggests that there is a shared problematisation across Europe sustained by common discursive archaeology that employs various discursive strands in relation to a dominant institutional discourse. The argument is that the 'problem' of 'non-participation' legitimates a 'solution' that predates its emergence: the state subsidy of arts organisations. The paper recaps the comparable problematisations that the researchers have previously identified in the policy texts of their respective countries. It progresses to consider three distinct but interwoven discursive strands upon which the problem representation in both countries, and potentially across Europe, appears to rely. 2015 Taylor & Francis
Cultural participation: Stories of success, histories of failure [Editorial]
(2020-09-01) Jancovich, Leila; Stevenson, David
This editorial introduces a special edition of Conjunctions that explores how cultural participation policies, projects, and practices could be improved through recognising the pervasiveness of past failures. It introduces current policy debates on cultural participation and posits that the dominant focus on ‘cultural deficits’ and ‘non-participants’ rather than on how activities are currently funded has resulted in a failure to increase the number and diversity of people participating in state subsidised cultural activities. It further suggests that a culture of evaluating success, rather than critically reflecting on failure, results in cultural participation policies and projects that replicate past failures and maintain an inequitable status quo. This special edition attempts to challenge existing narratives of unqualified success by offering alternative narratives that consider failure from different perspectives and at different points in the design and implementation of cultural participation policies and projects. In doing so it highlights the extent to which success and failure coexist and the richness of insight that comes from considering both. This matters because it is only such open and honest critical reflection that has the potential to facilitate the social learning needed for those who can exert the most power in the cultural sector to acknowledge the extent of the structural change required for cultural participation to be supported more equitably.
Cultural Policy is Local: Understanding Cultural Policy as Situated Practice
(Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2023-08-27) Durrer, Victoria; Gilmore, Abigail; Jancovich, Leila; Stevenson, David; Durrer, Victoria; Gilmore, Abigail; Jancovich, Leila; Stevenson, David
This Open Access edited collection calls for a greater understanding of ‘the local’ within the ways the arts, culture and creative practices are governed, promoted, regulated, resourced and valued. Cultural policy studies tends to privilege the national (and international) as the primary site at which cultural policy is enacted, and focuses on the ‘local’ as a case study of practice, rather than a site of policy in its own right. While this may make global policy transfer manageable for national policy agencies, it ignores the contingent relationships, diverse geographies and distinct identities of localities. This volume addresses this gap and is structured around three themes: disciplining the local, which examines key concepts from different academic fields of study; managing the local, which identifies policy approaches that engage with the idea of ‘the local’ in different ways; and practising the local, which offers case studies of how ‘local’ cultural policies are being enacted in places of differing scale and geography.
Enriching Britain: culture, creativity and growth
(Taylor & Francis, 2015-04-07) Stevenson, David
Episodic volunteer management at festivals: The case of Valletta Film Festival, Valetta, Malta
(Routledge, 2018-10-10) Dickson, Lesley-Ann; Stevenson, David
A film festival now opens every 36 hours somewhere in the world (Archibald and Miller, 2011, p. 249). As argued elsewhere (Dickson, 2017a), the extraordinary rate at which the number of festivals has increased signals a growing appetite for consuming film in event contexts and points to the increasing importance of multi-layered events in an experience-led economy. Likewise, over the last five years, there has been mounting interest in film festivals as objects of study by film and media scholars who consider them crucial sites for understanding film economies, politics and cultures. While film festivals have been considered through a variety of lenses and conceptualisations – imagined as religious orders (Bazin, 1955/2009), geopolitical networks (de Valck, 2007), open systems (Fischer, 2013), public spheres (Wong, 2016) and social constructions (Dayan, 2000), within this growing body of work there appears to be common agreement that film festivals are both exhibition circuits for the film industry and channels for cultural exchange. In this regard, film festivals oscillate between commercial, cultural and aesthetic agendas as “unique institution[s], which straddle art, commerce and governance” (Rhyne, 2009, p. 10).
Failure seems to be the hardest word to say
(Taylor & Francis, 2021-02-24) Jancovich, Leila; Stevenson, David
Policy interventions, to increase participation, have long been informed by data demonstrating inequity in the subsidised cultural sector. However, it is less clear how evidence is employed to judge success or failure of initiatives to create greater equity. Indeed, quantitative surveys suggest a failure to change patterns of cultural participation. Despite this a large body of evaluation reports celebrate the ‘success’ of participatory projects. This article presents findings from UK research that explores how cultural participation policies might be improved by better acknowledgment of failures. The research involved interviews, questionnaires, workshops, observations and documentary analysis involving over 200 policymakers, cultural practitioners, and participants. It identified a cultural policy landscape that is not conducive to honesty or critical reflection and argues that without this it will persistently fail to learn or to deliver the scale of change required to create the equity it professes to desire.
Failures in Cultural Participation
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2022-12-08) Jancovich, Leila; Stevenson, David
This open access book examines how and why the UK's approach towards increasing cultural participation has largely failed to address inequality and inequity in the subsidised cultural sector despite long-standing international policy discourse on this issue. It further examines why meaningful change in cultural policy has not been more forthcoming in the face of this apparent failure. This work examines how a culture of mistrust, blame, and fear between policymakers, practitioners, and participants has resulted in a policy environment that engenders overstated aims, accepts mediocre quality evaluations, encourages narratives of success, and lacks meaningful critical reflection. It shows through extensive field work with cultural professionals and participants how the absence of criticality, transparency, and honesty limits the potential for policy learning, which the authors argue is a precondition to any radical policy change and is necessary for developing a greater understanding of the social construction of policy problems. The book presents a new framework that encourages more open and honest conversations about failure in the cultural sector to support learning strategies that can help avoid these failures in the future.
Failures in Impact Evaluation
(Oxford University Press, 2025-07-28) Jancovich, Leila; Pitches, Ceri; Stevenson, David
While many definitions of research impact exist, what most share is a belief in the responsibility of research, and researchers, to support positive change in wider society. But this article outlines the growing body of literature on both evaluation and impact that raises concerns with this approach. On the one hand an assumption of positive change may not only ignore the potential for negative impacts but also discourage research which is critical, exploratory or risky. The authors of this article further argue it may encourage narratives of success that mask stories of failure. This article discusses The FailSpace project, research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), which examined how evaluation might better identify, acknowledge, and learn from failures This article embodies the principles of FailSpace by reflecting on the failures, rather than successes, of this research project, regarding its intended impact based on findings of an autoethnographic evaluation of FailSpace’s impact. In so doing the authors consider what might be gained from the inclusion of failure metrics in impact evaluations.
Failures in Impact Evaluation [Datasets]
(2025-07) Jancovich, Leila; Pitches, Ceri; Stevenson, David
Datasets associated with: Jancovich, L., Pitches, C. and Stevenson, D. (2025) ‘Failures in Impact Evaluation’, Research Evaluation [Preprint]. https://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14328
Four observations on The Arts (2015) by Jeremy Corbyn
(Taylor & Francis, 2015-11-13) Stevenson, David; Selwood, Sara; Bonham-Carter, Charlotte; Dâmaso, Mafalda; Doeser, James
National Evaluation of the Culture Collective programme Part one: ‘Unprecedented and revitalising’ - Emerging Impacts and Ways of Working: Reflections from the first year of the Culture Collective, Reporting from Queen Margaret University March 2023
(Creative Scotland, 2023-03) Blanche, Rachel; Stevenson, David; Schrag, Anthony; McGrath, Alice; Beattie, Bryan; McKinnon, Caitlin
The Culture Collective is a network of 26 participatory arts projects, shaped by local communities alongside artists and creative organisations, and funded by Scottish Government emergency COVID-19 funds through Creative Scotland. This report captures a snapshot of the programme a year into their work.
National Evaluation of the Culture Collective programme: PART THREE. ‘PROCESS, NOT OUTCOMES’ A final summary and reflection of the Culture Collective programme. Reporting from Queen Margaret University, October 2023
(Creative Scotland, 2023) Blanche, Rachel; McGrath, Alice; Schrag, Anthony; Beattie, Bryan; Stevenson, David
National Evaluation of the Culture Collective Programme: Part Two. ‘ALMOST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE’ Case Studies from the Culture Collective Reporting from Queen Margaret University, October 2023 
(Creative Scotland, 2023) Blanche, Rachel; McGrath, Alice; Schrag, Anthony; Stevenson, David; Beattie, Bryan
Policy perspectives (editorial)
(Taylor & Francis, 2016-11-15) Stevenson, David
Policy perspectives and book review (Editorial)
(Elsevier, 2017-02-13) Stevenson, David
Policy perspectives and book reviews
(Taylor & Francis, 2017) Stevenson, David
Policy perspectives and reviews (editorial)
(Informa UK Limited, 2017-11-15) Stevenson, David
Policy reviews
(Taylor & Francis, 2015-07) Stevenson, David