Suburban neighbourhoods as places for everyday cultural participation: the case of Jyväskylä in Finland

The research on and policy related to cultural participation calls for more attention to how people include culture in their everyday lives and local surroundings. We analyse the everyday cultural experiences of people spending free time in suburbs in a Nordic context. We analyse the characteristics of our case suburban neighbourhoods as spatial contexts of cultural participation and reflect on the methodology for analysing everyday cultural participation in place. We show that (1) other meaningful activities at a certain location affect cultural participation, (2) cultural offerings outside the neighbourhood affect the motives for and patterns of cultural participation in and from the neighbourhood (3) other public policy sectors than the actual cultural sector influence the support of cultural participation in a certain location.