McCormick, Lisa

Stevenson, David

Warran, Katey

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

2022-02-01T14:07:06Z

2022-02-01T14:07:06Z

2021-12-06

‘Measuring’ or ‘capturing’ cultural value is a key endeavour for those who seek to justify the provision of public investment in arts and cultural activities. This approach is commonly manifested in the literature exploring the ‘impact’ of arts festivals, emphasising their transactional ‘benefit’ to individuals and host cities. In this thesis, I explore an alternative approach to value, analysing it as a meaning-making process in the context of the world’s largest arts festival: the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Using Randall Collins’ (2004) theory of Interaction Ritual Chains (IRCs) as a theoretical framework, I examine data collected through ethnographic observations, researcher reflections, documentary analysis, and two-stage focus groups with 18 small groups (production companies and community groups). Grounded in this fieldwork, the study argues that groups are able to derive meaning from Fringe experiences when they align with a shared morality, such as believing in the intrinsic value of art objects and the importance of preserving the Fringe as an ‘open access’ festival. For groups who share this morality, the Fringe acts as a ‘sacred site’ at which to annually ‘perform’ and reaffirm shared beliefs in a public setting, and where meaning is cultivated before and continues after the period of attendance. Further, an emotional contagion effect for ‘believers’ within and across groups is created through successful IRCs, which buttresses and maintains the sacred status of the Fringe. The thesis concludes that the cultural policy focus on ‘capturing’ cultural value is fruitless because there is no ‘objective’ cultural value. Rather, meaning-making is an on-going and interactive process that extends outwards from art objects and is connected to shared emotions, morality, and beliefs. The major implication of this research for arts organisations and policymakers is that this new way of approaching value can be used to explain why one-off transactional encounters with art objects have only short-term effects. The thesis recommends a shift in focus from individual transactions to group processes, and from short-term funding models to ones that have the potential to facilitate deeper engagement with meaning-making across time and contexts.

https://hdl.handle.net/1842/38506

http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/1770

en

The University of Edinburgh

arts festivals

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

shared beliefs

meaning-making

Interaction ritual chains at the Fringe

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy