Project title: ‘Cultural Infrastructure and Cultural Ecology’
In the early phases of our work, research was concerned with the concept of ‘place’ and with what made West Cumbria such a singular place: its tangible and intangible cultural heritage, its unique history and topography, its peripheral location. Addressing issues related to an initial focus on ‘place development and promotion’, we found that the challenge of making the region more visible to outsiders depended to some extent on discovering or developing a unique sense of place – an image of place, or place identity – that might convey something of the cultural distinctiveness and unity of a sub-region that is, at the same time, comprised of many smaller places with their own distinctive identities and senses of place.
John’s role included a substantial practical element, through which he developed a range of collaborations and partnerships with local cultural actors (organisations, institutions and individuals). Building on what has been learned from the initial phases of research and the collaborative and partnership networks that we have developed, our sustained focus on ‘cultural infrastructures’ and ‘cultural ecology’ will underpin the broad approach to examining issues around questions of place and culture for the duration of this plan. This necessitates new research to investigate the interrelationship of the various cultural, economic, social spheres of life in the region, not only as an aspect of understanding how they shape present knowledge, policy and practice, but in terms of how the coming together of interests – for purposes that are often temporary or contingent in nature – illustrates new forms of partner-ship working. One aspect of the research in this regard is to understand the ways in which cultural policy in the region is often defined not through forms of governance that would situ-ate local authorities as a key player, but through the emergent practices of make-do initiatives, and / or the efforts of unofficial and non-funded cultural actors in the region. This is linked intimately to the well-known lack of economic diversity in the region, which also restricts the development of cultural infrastructure.
One aim of developing a body of conceptual and descriptive work on the nature of cultural infrastructure and cultural ecology is to be able to more effectively communicate the nature and realities of place to those within fields of policy and practice who, in seeking to be more responsive to public needs, can benefit from our specialist knowledge and understanding.