Understanding the cultural value of 'In Harmony-Sistema England'

The value of young people's participation in arts activity has been hotly debated over recent years. Following the 'subsidy revolution' (Elliott 1997), which granted youth-based participatory arts activities greater prominence in the UK since the late 1990s, questions about the value of such activities, and the most appropriate ways of understanding their outcomes, have been raised from a number of quarters (see, e.g., Belfiore, 2002, 2004; Merli 2002; Belfiore and Bennett 2008, Galloway 2009). Indeed, for many commentators, the growing emphasis on assessing and evaluating what have been termed the 'instrumental' outcomes of young people's arts participation risk ignoring what are, for most participants, the very aspects of the participatory encounter which serve to motivate them to engage in the first place: its 'intrinsic' value as arts activity.

This project seeks to contribute to recent debates urging the need to transcend the 'instrumental' vs 'intrinsic' impasse (Knell & Taylor 2011) by exploring the ways in which cultural value is understood by stakeholders involved in one novel participatory youth-focussed and music-based initiative currently developing in England: In Harmony-Sistema England. Our choice of this initiative offers a particularly fascinating case for exploration because, where most attempts to link music to forms of social good have employed popular music forms (as part of an effort to appeal to the disadvantaged young people with whom they work), In Harmony-Sistema England, taking its lead from the highly successful Venezuelan El Sistema initiative, adopts an orchestral model and engages young people using the 'high art' form of classical music. While the El Sistema model explicitly invokes the intrinsic dimensions of musical activity as a means of engendering growth and development in participating individuals, it does so with the conscious intention of generating spill-over effects which register at the level of what have been elsewhere termed 'instrumental' outcomes. Yet prioritised throughout projects' activities are those explicitly artistic goals and achievements which serve to motivate young people's participation. While the project has seen great achievements in Venezuela, it remains the case that relatively little is understood, within scholarly circles, about the transformative components of the programme and the ways in which participants' valuation of the cultural dimensions of the project translate into other kinds of (broader) effects.

In recognition of the different models of delivery and project partnership currently involved in the different incarnations of In Harmony-Sistema England, as well as the importantly differing local cultural conditions and subjective understandings of cultural value brought by different participants and stakeholders, this project will engage with the concerns sketched above by exploring three different In Harmony projects, located across England.

This project is designed to impact directly upon the evidence-base that informs cultural policy. In particular, it will allow those responsible for initiatives like 'In Harmony-Sistema England' to understand their success. It will do this in four ways.

First, the project will offer a particular approach to the understanding and measurement of 'cultural value', one that negotiates the - often unproductive - dichotomy of 'intrinsic' and 'instrumental' value.

Secondly, the project will provide findings based upon this alternative approach. By interviewing participants of 'In Harmony-Sistema England' projects, it will illustrate how project participants, teachers and others understand the benefits that have been derived from the initiative.

Thirdly, the project will compare different forms of the 'In Harmony-Sistema England' initiative. This will allow us to comment on how the cultural value attributed to 'In Harmony-Sistema England' projects varies according to the factors which distinguish one project from another (e.g., geographical location and local cultural conditions; make-up of participating groups and host communities; nature of project delivery partnership and participating institutions; involvement of broader community beyond IHSE participants; mode, intensity and duration of project participation).

Finally, through the theoretical and conceptual advancements made in approaching questions of 'cultural value', the research project will feed into the community arts evaluation literature, thereby connecting with wider debates about the value of community-based arts interventions and their potential effectiveness.