Mapping youth arts participation in

NottinghamPat Thomson and Becky Coles

Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and LiteraciesFebruary 2016

the “Bubble” project• Was funded by the East Midlands youth arts bridge organisation, The

Mighty Creatives• Was led by New Art Exchange and involved five other Nottingham

based arts organisations – Nottingham Contemporary, City Arts, Lakeside, Castle Museum, Nottingham Playhouse• Additional funding was provided by the Centre for Advanced Studies

The University of Nottingham, for a postdoc to work on mapping the youth cultural offer of the six organisations and support each to do an action research project

some notes on mapping• Maps are usually a snapshot at a particular time. Some maps however are dynamic. • We can only ever map some things, so what we decide to include and exclude is

important. • Bubble Maps are partial – they are focused on partner organisations. We did not look

at schools for example. School by school information is hard to get and with the demise of the LA it could become even harder.• Maps benefit from standardised information. This is not the case here. Different

Bubble partners had different kinds of data collections.• Bubble partners’ programmes were of different orders - so what counts as

participation as seen by one organisation is different. Differences cover not only art form but also duration and the degree of ownership/agency of the young people involved.

• Different organisations have different capacities to collect and process data. The larger the organisation the more likely they are to have a data friendly infrastructure.• Bubble maps are provider led. The take no account of more general

cultural participation, of community sponsored events and programmes, individual artists and vernacular and traditional practices.

• Nevertheless, even partial maps can tell us something…

Bubble and linkages with some other organisations in the city

We were given information about the programmes offered by each of the Bubble partners

Outer regions not as well served as inner – where does the city end?

Why map?

Cultural Mapping Toolkit, Creative City Network, Canada.

Using maps to support planning

Bigthought.org – Dallas, USA

Examining Both Supply and DemandThe prevailing approach to addressing lack of participationhas been to view it as an issue of limited supply. Thosewishing to address inequities in OST arts participationask: “What can we supply the market with (e.g., programs,teachers, underwriting) that changes the status quo?” Butthis question assumes the problem is only one of unmet demand,that “if we build it, they will come.”But such a supply-oriented approach is only part of the solution.A more balanced and comprehensive method lies inpairing supply solutions with a stronger consumer demandorientation. Effective marketers seek to understand whattheir potential customers want and how they make their decisions,and then do what is necessary to meet those needsand desires. As applied to OST arts, we might ask whetherthe market need might not be simply more programs, butrather different kinds of programs.Businesses often do consumer research with tweens andteens, but they rarely make such research public out of competitiveinterest. Our study offers an unusual public glimpseof what influences urban, low-income youth as consumersin how to spend their free time and make decisions abouttheir various choices. …

Extending mapping to include young people

From Something to Say, Wallace Foundation, 2013

Where to now?• A dynamic map would require ongoing or regular data updates. • There would need to be agreement about shared categories, common

data definitions boundaries and exclusions• The process would need to not place additional administrative burden

on organisations, noting that this would be disproportionate to size.• We would need to be clear about the things that we wanted to know –

e.g. particular art forms and particular postcodes or neighbourhoods.• We would need to decide whether the benefits to the city and to the

arts organisations would justify the time and expense of developing a dynamic map.