Use or ornament? The social impact of participation in the arts

for art to serve social imagination, it has to be organised in ways that allow time for it to be absorbed and adapted, so that it becomes an act of co-creation rather than just an act of consumption or an enjoyable way to pass the evening.15 If it is only an object for the passing gaze, then it is, perhaps, bound to fail. Experiences that are share

social engagement to sustain democracy, people’s shared exercise of power. All of these essentials of social life are jeopardized by contemporary cultural trends which damage communication and prioritize self-interest.

art works better as a way of seeing than as a way of showing. The arts can document and sometimes pre-empt changes in how people view the world around them, pointing to multiple perspectives or clashes, deconstructing and reconstructing, taking people up to the cosmic or down to the microscopic. They can do this in compelling ways that reach large

Who gets to do what, where, when and how in this cultural practice, and how does this affect people? What are this practice’s relationships to social engagement, communication, social justice, equality and democracy; how might it contribute to or weaken them? If it invites participation, who can participate and on what terms? What is the quality of

The question of the significance of participation, though vital to much contemporary work, is one that should be treated with some suspicion. The mere involvement of the actions of audience members is not enough to assume a vital or direct relationship to the work of art …. How the exchange of participation takes place must be carefully framed, so

Over the last two decades, there have been thousands of studies with outcomes illuminating the reasons diverse arts practices, both as the maker and as a beholder, improve our psychological state.

These subsequent chapters often look at a greater range of art and performance beyond the participatory forms outlined above and in Chapter 1, because they ask how participation in culture is more broadly and fundamentally affected not just by artistic practices but also by policy-making, spatial organization and arts funding.