Everyday participation and cultural value

[First paragraph] The articles in this special issue present some of the early findings of Understanding Participation – Articulating Cultural Values (UEP), a 5-year large grant, which began in 2012 and is part of the AHRC’s Connected Communities, receiving supplmentary funding from Creative Scotland. The project starts the proposition that the orientation of cultural policy and state-funded cultural towards cultural participation and value is in need of a radical overhaul. argue that there is an orthodoxy of approach to cultural engagement which is based a narrow definition (and understanding) of participation, one that focuses on a set of cultural forms and activities and associated cultural institutions but, in the process, obscures the significance of other forms of cultural participation are situated locally in the everyday realm.