UNCHARTED
Understanding, Capturing and Fostering the Societal Value of Culture
The UNCHARTED project is a research and innovation action about understanding, capturing and fostering the societal value of culture. In recent decades, with the growing emphasis on the creative economy, culture has tended to be increasingly seen in political circles under the exclusive lens of the economy and its contribution to it. To counteract this tendency, it is necessary to define the social values associated with culture on a different basis from the traditional one. The work focuses on the valuation practices of the actors involved in cultural life. In this respect, three areas and three types of fundamental actors in the value dynamics of culture are distinguished:
- the field of cultural participation, in which citizenship is the protagonist
- the field of cultural production and heritage, where the professionals of creation and preservation are the ones who take the initiative
- the field of cultural administration, in which it is the experts and politicians who decide.
These are the starting point to structure the study of the different aspects involved in this evaluative dynamic: the emergence of values, the configuration of a value order and the political impulse of values.
Objectives
- To examine the key factors in shaping the values of culture in Europe: gender and rising diversity; urbanization and social and spatial segregation in cities; globalisation and digitisation; neoliberalism; and the European historical and political experience
- To identify the plurality of values that emerge in cultural practices (economic values, public values and personal values) and to study them in different arenas of practices (cultural participation in live arts and culture and through media, cultural production and heritage management, cultural administration)
- To understand the tensions relating to how different actors in the cultural field (i.e. citizens, professionals, public administrators) construct, measure, compare and rank the values they attribute to culture
- To assess cultural policies for benefits to the society
UNCHARTED will deliver a set of instruments to provide continuation to sharing results and collaborating on investigation and research about understanding, capturing and fostering the societal value of culture.
These instruments are:
- policy briefs and recommendations for the use of policy makers
- guidelines, and examples of best practices for communities engaged with production, management and use of culture.
- case studies, scientific papers and a wide range of practical resources made available to researchers
- the UNCHARTED book.
Universitat De Barcelona (ES), Coordination; Promoter srl (IT), Technical Coordination; Eotvos Lorand Tudomanyegyetem - ELTE (HU); Centro de Estudos Sociais (PT); Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di
Bologna (IT); Stiftelsen Telemarksforsking (NO); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - CNRS (FR); Universidade do Porto (PT); Goldsmiths' College (UK); Université Paris 8 - Vincennes SaintDenis (FR)