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Research
Research Projects
Informal Economy and Culture
A partnership with the Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre to investigate the relationship between the Informal Economy and the Cultural Economy in the Global South.
Relative Values: the toolkit
Funder: ARHC/UK. Developed with four partner arts organisations (Agency of Youth Networks, BAC, Contact Theatre, and Maré Development Networks) in Relative Values I, and tested and adapted by young cultural producers working in vulnerable territories and by arts organisations supported by a national arts funding programme
Relative Values I
Funder: AHRC- UK. Relative Values set out to construct a new narrative about the socioeconomic impacts generated by cultural activities, through a co-creative research partnership with four arts organizations in Britain and Brazil. It represents the first steps towards building a system of multidimensional indicators that can calibrate, identify, record and disseminate elements derived from cultural practices that seek to make real and transformational change within the contexts where they work.
The focus of this pilot project has been to build indicators in collaboration with all of the arts organisations and to work with them to produce and analyse data that would quantify elements of their impact. The results that the indicators from the pilot provide are not definitive, and do not allow statistical inferences about the participants in the study: it is intended that the indicators created here will be consolidated through future iterations of the research methodology.
The focus of this pilot project has been to build indicators in collaboration with all of the arts organisations and to work with them to produce and analyse data that would quantify elements of their impact. The results that the indicators from the pilot provide are not definitive, and do not allow statistical inferences about the participants in the study: it is intended that the indicators created here will be consolidated through future iterations of the research methodology.
Counting Culture (short report I)
The British creative economy model and the discourses of Brazilian cultural policy (2003-2016).This Bulletin examines the policy discourse of successive Ministers of Culture in Brazil between 2003 and 2016, and looks at the influence UK cultural policy has had on Brazil’s approach.
Beyond Exchange
Funder: AHRC UK. Beyond Exchange (Relative Values II) aimed to adapt the Relative Values methodologies so that they could be used at a micro-scale by artists and cultural producers working in fragile urban territories subject to multiple stress-factors (socio-economic exclusion, high levels of violence, etc) in Brazil.
In the project, we engaged 40 participants who produced coherent and comparable data about what their projects achieve, resulting in the application of over 1,000 quantitative questionnaires with residents from Rio de Janeiro’s most vulnerable and socially excluded communities. The research has produced unique evidence of engagement in arts practices by a population that is usually disregarded by any standard measurements of cultural engagement, enabling new data to inform evidence-based policy making.
In the project, we engaged 40 participants who produced coherent and comparable data about what their projects achieve, resulting in the application of over 1,000 quantitative questionnaires with residents from Rio de Janeiro’s most vulnerable and socially excluded communities. The research has produced unique evidence of engagement in arts practices by a population that is usually disregarded by any standard measurements of cultural engagement, enabling new data to inform evidence-based policy making.
Counting Culture
Funder: British Academy (Newton Funding). What do we need to know about how the creative economy can deliver equitable, just and sustainable development in Brazil and the UK? This literature review looks to understand developments in UK cultural policy between 1919 and 2020, and focuses on three questions: What defines the UK’s cultural policy model? How have policies been implemented and evolved over this period of time? Who enacts UK cultural policy?
Counting Culture (short report II)
Public Spending on Cultural Initiatives in Brazil and the UK. This bulletin analyses the policies of Arts Council England and the Brazilian Government and their investment in the creative sector between 2008 and 2019. Specifically, it asks: What is each country’s cultural policy? How does it operate? What reporting data is available? How are the resources allocated in different regions? The bulletin ends with a comparative analysis of the extent to which each country’s funding mechanism succeeds in delivering its policy aims and of the challenges ahead.
Counting Culture (short report III)
The response to the global COVID-19 pandemic – including stay-at-home orders and social distancing – wreaked havoc on the world economy. The creative and cultural sectors that rely on public attendance were particularly hard hit. This bulletin asks: How was the labour market in the cultural industries affected by COVID-19 in Brazil and the UK? What measures were taken by the respective governments to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on the creative and cultural sectors, and what are their main impacts so far?
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