This project proposes a radical re-evaluation of the relationship between participation and cultural value. Bringing together evidence from in-depth historical analyses, the re-use of existing quantitative data and new qualitative research on the detail, dynamics and significance of 'everyday participation', it will create new understandings of community formation, connectivity and capacity through participation. Orthodox models of the creative economy and ensuing cultural policy are based on a narrow definition of cultural participation; one that captures formal engagement with traditional cultural institutions, such as museums and galleries, but overlooks other activities, for instance community festivals and hobbies. This frame, founded historically on deficit based assumptions of the logics for state cultural support, misses opportunities to understand the variety of forms of participation and their (positive and negative) consequences. We argue that by creating new understandings of the relationships between everyday participation, community and cultural value, we will reveal evidence of hidden assets and resources that can be mobilised to promote better identification and more equitable resourcing of cultural opportunities, generate well-being and contribute to the development of creative local economies. The central research questions are: - How, historically, did we arrive at the definitions, fields of knowledge and policy frames informing notions of cultural participation and value today? - What are the forms and practices of everyday participation - where do they take place? How are they valued? And how do these practices relate to formal participation? - How is participation shaped by space, place and locality? - How are communities made, unmade, divided and connected through participation? - How can broader understandings of value in and through participation be used to inform the development of vibrant communities and creative local economies? - How do we reconnect cultural policy and institutions with everyday participation? Using a variety of methodologies, including historical analysis, qualitative work with communities of practice and use, and the reanalysis of existing data on participation and time-use, this project focuses on six contrasting 'cultural ecosystems' to investigate the connections between multiple understandings of community (geographical, elective, identity based etc), cultural value, 'cultural economy' and everyday participation. The findings from the situated case studies will inform four partnership-operated trials of new policy interventions or of professional or community practices. Throughout the project research will be integrated with key partners, stakeholder cultural and community organisations in order to evolve better, shared understandings of everyday cultural participation and the implications of this for policy makers and cultural organisations at national, local and community levels.

This Network brings social and health science scholars into dialogue with museum scholars, leaders and policy makers to create a sustainable research agenda focused on the museum attendance and benefit gap. The network will draw in scholars with expertise in inequality, poverty and low educational attainment, experts in culture and health, public health, health and cultural attendance, and scholars of implementation science with expertise in rigorous approaches to intervention development and harnessing research for large-scale change. The Network explores the hypothesis that a deeper understanding within museums and museology of (1) the nature and experience of inequality and (2) how large-scale social and behaviour change is approached in fields such as health, will open up the capacity to understand, theorise, design, implement, evaluate and sustain practices which may address the museum attendance and benefit gap. Data from the official Taking Part Survey, which includes the attendance gap between Upper and Lower Socio-economic Groups in England, show that it has increased from 22.7 percentage points (pp) to 24.7pp over the past 15 years. The same pattern is evident in the rest of the UK. Sociologically, museum visiting reflects the socio-economic gradient, closely tracking inequalities in education, income, employment, mental health and other indicators of social wellbeing. This analysis is supported by decades of research in cultural sociology internationally which, regardless of methodological or theoretical approach, confirms that people who participate in and benefit from state-sponsored cultural forms including museums, are, in the main, from upper socio-economic groups and that the single most important predictor of museum visiting is not class, ethnicity or income but level of prior educational achievement. Population-level studies in the epidemiology of culture, which tell us that simply visiting a museum may have positive health benefits, emphasises the lack of fairness in the current distribution of cultural resources and the way museums reflect and contribute to established inequalities in health and wellbeing. Despite 40 years of concerted efforts by museums of all genres and scales, supported by national and local government policy and targeted investment, including more than £5 billion of Lottery Funding, the strategies used by museums in the UK to reduce inequalities in museum visiting are not working. Whilst pockets of positive transformation have been achieved, museums have failed to find ways to understand, consolidate, share and sustain progress. Focused on measuring small-scale impact and without an evaluation framework linking the activities of individual museums and the ways in which they utilise visitor research with the macro data from surveys like the Taking Part Survey or with the sociological literature on inequality, museums' current uses of research cannot offer insights into the larger question of representative participation. To begin to positively impact deeply entrenched and unequal patterns of attendance and benefit and make credible claims about their contribution to society, museums need to understand the extent to which the attendance and benefit gap is driven by societal factors, which museum interventions are most likely to have an impact, and how they can harness and grow their research capacity to move beyond 'intuitive' approaches to inequality and social change. The new partnerships and synergies the Network will generate are urgent: increasing inequality, the long-term impact of post-2011 austerity, and the dramatic impacts of COVID and new technologies are changing patterns of visiting, often in ways that increase inequalities. As the cultural sector seems likely to face a new round of austerity, having a clearer, more realistic, understanding of how museums might make a greater and more transparent contribution to society will be invaluable.

This project brings together the Centre for Cultural Value, the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and a national consortium of researchers and partners to analyse existing datasets and conduct targeted empirical research on the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on cultural organisations, practitioners and audiences. It will provide a clear national picture and identify immediate and longer-term implications for policy and practice. We will map and track the sector longitudinally over 18 months using a mixed-methods design to assess the extent of organisational exit and sectoral adjustment, as well as evolving cultural engagement behaviours amongst the public. We will use a workstreams approach to provide a holistic and nuanced analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on the cultural industries. Workstream 1 will produce a meta-analysis of cultural sector surveys relating to COVID-19, bringing together the fragmented datasets observed to date, and developing a range of illustrative, representative case studies from the core sub-sectors of the cultural industries. Workstream 2 will examine cultural supply and demand in the digital space, incorporating a longitudinal tracking survey, social media analysis and analysis of content uploaded to an online community-based storytelling platform. Workstream 3 will analyse the impacts of UK policy responses and compare international policy responses. It will include a case study of a regional cultural ecology; examine impacts of intervention packages made available by the UK governments and funders; and convene a reference group of c.20 cultural industry membership organisations, trade associations, advocacy bodies, funders and policymakers.

It is people who drive digital change in the museum. Irrespective of the focus on 'technology' (on hardware and software, standards and systems, products and platforms), it will, in fact, always be the leaders and curators, partners and stakeholders, who enable the digital capability of museums. And yet, the lived professional experience of individuals inside the organisation, in the workforce, around digital change is little understood, much overlooked, and frequently generalised upon. Plainly put: the very dimension that we now know is fundamental to digital change in the museum, is that about which - in our scholarship and practice - we know the least. Moreover, at a time when museums are not only attempting to understand new forms of visitor participation and digital experience, but are doing so within a moment of both institutional and individual precarity, this need to understand the human (and not just the technical) dimension of museum digital change, becomes crucial. And so, it is to this issue - and this gap in our knowledge of museum digital maturity - that this project looks. '3 by 3' is an 18-month, multi-partner, transatlantic research collaboration, bringing together cultural institutions, academics and professional bodies to open new directions for leading empathetic and equitable digital change in museums at a time of institutional and individual precarity. The project asks what new models of 'empathic leadership' might be needed to enable the holistic institutional adoption of (and adaption to) digital, as well as which inequalities exist in the landscape of digital change in museums, and how can these be confronted. In doing so, '3 by 3' attempts to initiate a retelling of what successful digital leadership in museums looks like - in human and not just business and technological terms. This research confronts and articulates a new set of questions on equity, inclusion and diversity within the digital workforce, workplace and culture of museum digital change, re-locating museum technology as a socially purposeful subject and set of practices. In this way, the project is leading an 'emotional turn' in museum computing and digital heritage, characterised by a new sensibility to the emotional labour, affective practices and personal storytelling underpinning digital work in museums. Led by the University of Leicester and Southern University New Orleans (and supported by Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University), '3 by 3' is a unique research collaboration, bringing together the leading sector bodies in the UK and US: the American Alliance of Museums with the UK's Museums Association, and the Museum Computer Network (US) with the Museums Computer Group (UK). At the core of the project is a transatlantic partnership of cultural organisations, with digital leads across the Smithsonian Institution partnering with their counterparts in the Science Museum Group, Victoria and Albert Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, and National Museums Scotland. Driving this practice-based research of '3 by 3', are '3' researchers following '3' key themes (on 'empathy', 'precarity', 'equity'), through a series of live interventions within the working environments of the partner museums. Real-world tests of new approaches to leading digital change. As well as producing a series of practitioner-facing resources, a new reflective podcast series for the sector, and the synthesis of its findings into a cohesive 'Framework for New Digital Leadership in Museums', '3 by 3' will also partner with its policy-making and industry collaborators (that include Arts Council England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Culture24) to produce a 'Sector White Paper', setting out the challenges and opportunities for UK and US organisations as they lead digital change (empathetically and equitably) in these times of individual and institutional precarity.

Given that digital continues to disrupt and transform the parameters of visitor participation and experience, how should museums respond organisationally to deal with this change? '2 by 2' is a nine-month, multi-partner, interdisciplinary, action research project (led by the University of Leicester and Southern University at New Orleans), aiming to develop a new, sector-wide transatlantic partnership around digital leadership and skills - helping museums to build the organisational conditions to support new forms of visitor experience and participation at a time of social change. Taking a practice-based approach, the project uses a Design Thinking to inform the structure and logic of its fieldwork, with researchers delivering a series of action-research interventions in four different museum contexts - each intervention acting as a 'stage' to animate and understand different sets of issues (and possibilities) around new forms of organisational leadership, business process, institutional culture and professional practice. To deliver this work, '2 by 2' brings together national professional bodies and established communities of practice, with leading digital heritage scholars and a core group of eight museum teams with an international reputation for digital leadership, as well as an group of outstanding advising institutions - Microsoft, Arts Council England, Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University. Our 'Commissioning Partners' (the American Alliance of Museums, and Museums Association) with their extensive professional membership base, oversee the direction of the partnership and help us to identify strategic opportunities for the research. Our 'Community Partners' (the US Museum Computer Network and UK's Museums Computer Group), bring their nationwide communities of practice, working together to help share the activity and outcomes of the project to a wider 'muse-tech' community. Appropriately, however, it is our 'Museum Partners' who are at the centre of the research, providing both the environment and the expertise to explore these issues around organisational digital capability. Ambitiously, '2 by 2' pairs teams across Smithsonian Institution (at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the cross-organisation American Women's History Initiative) with four 'critical friend' UK partners (Science Museum Group, Victoria and Albert Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, and National Museums Scotland) all of whom, as IROs, serve as the project's Co-Investigators. Throughout the project, four 'Community Days' provide a means for a set of wider constituencies to input into our research insights. Each event (a 'Study Day' for early career practitioners; a 'Demo Day' for technology companies delivered with the Balboa Park Online Collaborative; a 'Leaders' Day' for museum directors and executives delivered with Culture24; and a 'Practitioners' Day' for curators and professionals) helps to inform the project's findings, but also lays the foundations for a cohesive, trusting, on-going partnership in this subject area.