Cold spots, crap towns and cultural deserts: The role of place and geography in cultural participation and creative place-making

This article considers cultural participation in relation to locality, by looking at the case of Macclesfield, a town in northwest England. It does so in the context of current arts policy, which aims to rebalance arts participation patterns across localities. Such policies are grounded in particular forms of evidence of differentiated levels of participation, which indicate the position of places within league tables and indices of activities according to the “volume and value” of arts participation and engagement. However, these obscure other cultural practices related to a different understanding of places and their on-going production. The article argues that arts initiatives predicated on situated, vernacular and sometimes ostensibly mundane practices, often excluded from formal definitions of “the arts”, can help such policies to negotiate local “structures of feeling” Taylor, I., Evans, K., & Fraser, P. (1996). A tale of two cities – global change, local feeling and everyday life in the North of England. A study in Manchester and Sheffield. London: Routledge and the multiple trajectories and stories of place, in order to engage those who do not usually attend or participate in the arts. It calls for a different approach to evidence, which draws on historical and relational aspects of space and place, to reveal the specificity and contingency of cultural participation for even the most “unexceptional” place – the “crap town”.