The value and impacts of collaborative visual art projects for young artists: an exploration of the national galleries of Scotland’s outreach work

Abstract

The thesis is based on research conducted as part of a collaborative PhD with the National Galleries of Scotland's (NGS) outreach programmes and explores the potential value and impacts of collaborative visual art outreach interventions with young people (referred to as young artists throughout this thesis). Projects like those explored in this thesis are often encouraged in cultural policy and by cultural funders as it is anticipated they will positively boost young artists’ social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986), through improving their health and wellbeing. However, there has been little focussed examination of such projects to understand visual arts’ impacts on young artists, or on how visual art differs to other forms of cultural engagement.

The research draws on a mixed methodology, focusing on qualitative approaches. It includes cultural policy analysis, documentary analysis, visual analysis, interviews, observations, and questionnaires. The iterative nature of the research process allowed for the emergence of themes and patterns, ensuring a layered reflection on the research topic. The study examines the complex nature of visual art interventions, exploring power dynamics, cultural capital, social practice, identity, and recognition in the visual arts. The research draws on the works of influential theorists such as Foucault, Bourdieu, Raunig, de Certeau, Skeggs and Fraser to provide valuable insights into these concepts.

The research challenges existing problematic discourses created in cultural policy and enacted within institutions based on concerns for artistic quality. Young artists valued their artworks as they had the potential to positively impact their social worlds, however cultural policy and in turn the NGS emphasise that it is young artists who are anticipated to change through the process of making art. The research found that within cultural policy, and in turn NGS policies, problematic discourses emerged surrounding those deemed disadvantaged and as cultural non-participants, with many young artists rejecting this descriptor. Furthermore, the research uncovers how the positive impacts young artists experience during art interventions, such as increasing in confidence, change and often diminish over time. The findings problematize how cultural practices are currently evaluated and illuminates previously neglected concerns around the longevity of collaborative visual art projects impacts.

The research highlights how cultural policy, and in turn the NGS, are attempting to undertake acts of recognition (Fraser 1998); targeting arts interventions at groups of young artists who experience forms of social marginalisation, recognising that they need different cultural opportunities to people who do not. However, by not engaging in acts of redistribution (such as redistributing power in the NGS art collections by collecting the work of young artists), young artists remain othered and experience forms of misrecognition.

On the basis of these findings, recommendations are made to inform arts organisations, policy makers, funders, and artists in supporting long-term positive impacts of such projects, through encouraging the development of more meaningful evaluation practices and collaborative cultural policy practices. The recommendations also suggest the importance of challenging concepts such as quality and disadvantage within cultural policy and cultural institutions.

Overall, this research offers an exploration of collaborative visual art outreach projects and their impacts on young people, addressing gaps in existing research and providing valuable insights for practitioners and policy makers in the cultural sector. By centring the experiences of young artists so often talked about in policy, but rarely collaborated with in its creation, this research provides a springboard to positively impact how cultural policy is created and enacted in the future.