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This chapter takes an ecosystems approach to examine the responses to the pandemic of cultural sector organisations, local government, private sector partners and stakeholders in the ‘exceptional case’ of Greater Manchester, the first devolved UK city region. Through analysis of qualitative interviews with city-regional cultural leaders and policy-makers and with a focus on two case studies, the Greater Manchester Arts Hub and the cultural strategy for Salford, Suprema Lex, we consider how local actors and initiatives were able to leverage place-based knowledge, networks and resources to find solutions to the impacts of Covid-19 which nuanced the national policy response. The chapter finds that a combination of existing networks and values-led frameworks, cultural sector leadership and strong local political buy-in helped to galvanise epistemic communities to test and create new practice. This also helped mitigate the established ‘pecking order’ of arts and cultural organisations locally, laying the ground for more inclusive place-based cultural policy post-pandemic.
Chapter 6 considers the nature of gendered infrastructural violence faced by women in London and Maré in terms of the barriers they face in accessing support when they experience gender-based violence, and as a form of structural violence. It also evaluates how women face difficulties in accessing services more generally. In London, the chapter outlines the challenges faced by migrant Brazilian women when trying to report violence to formal services, especially when they have insecure immigration status. It details their experiences of fear and stigma, coupled with English language difficulties and underpinned by institutional racism. It reflects on how women especially fear deportation if they report and how perpetrators use insecure status as a tool of manipulation. In Maré, the chapter discusses extremely low levels of formal reporting violence, despite the Maria da Penha Law that is supposed to ensure access to specialist police stations. It discusses how some have no choice but to turn to the armed gangs to mete out ‘justice’. Barriers to support for women are thus analysed as a form of gendered infrastructural violence that can also lead to the intensification of further forms of direct gender-based violence. Again, several aspects of the creative encounters highlight how women experience exclusion and re-traumatisation in an embodied and visceral way.
This book aims to understand the ‘painful truths’ of gendered violence in the city and how women challenge it through resistance and creative practices. Drawing on an extensive body of collaborative research with women in the favelas of Maré in Rio de Janeiro and among Brazilian migrants in London, it conceives gendered urban violence as multidimensional, multiscalar and deeply embedded within structural and intersectional power relations. The book develops a ‘translocational gendered urban violence framework’ that foregrounds transnational connections across symbolic and literal borders. The framework emphasises the need to move beyond individual interpretations of gendered violence in cities towards one that acknowledges structural, symbolic and infrastructural violence. It also incorporates the need for an embodied approach that can be captured through engagement with the arts and arts-based methods as well as resistance practices. The book outlines a ‘translocational feminist tracing methodological framework’ that captures transnational dialogue and knowledge production, drawing on a feminist epistemological approach based on collaboration, co-design and engagement beyond the academy. In centring the painful truths of gendered urban violence as revealed by women, the book contributes to a range of debates that include acknowledging such violence as direct and indirect ranging from the body to the global, as well as the need to recognise urban violence as deeply gendered in intersectional ways. Finally, it suggests that creative engagements and arts-based approaches are crucial for understanding and resisting gendered urban violence and in generating empathetic transformation.
Care has traditionally been considered as belonging to the nation-state and the family, where the EU as an institution has not interfered. However, since 2017, old age care has been a right according to §18 of the European Pillar of Social Rights, and in 2022, the EU launched an ambitious new care strategy covering older, fragile persons. This chapter investigates how the political problem of old age and care for fragile, older people is understood in the EU and the needs identified through a feminist discursive policy analysis. Our analysis focuses on problematisation, care needs, intersectionality, and silencing. It identifies how the greying of the population and old age care have been politicised and have emerged as a new policy field within the EU. It poses the following research question: In what way has ageing and care for older, fragile people been framed as a political problem in EU policy papers? The material from 2013–2022 is read and analysed through a systematic discourse analysis. The empirical material consists of policy papers and reports by the European Commission, Council of the European Union, and European Parliament. We identify a polyphonic discourse that includes feminist elements and gender stereotypes, as well as silencing. It applies neoliberal rationales with paternalistic elements.
This introductory chapter presents the rationale for the wide-ranging research project that informs this book. It provides a summary overview of the research context and outlines the aims and objectives of the book, describing and justifying the mixed-methods methodology and the sampling mechanisms deployed. The chapter discusses the overall approach of the research and outlines the areas of synergy between the different strands of the study to draw out common objectives and themes between the different chapters. Its core aim, however, is to set the scene for the rest of the book. It does this by providing a brief analysis of the issues facing the UK’s cultural industries prior to the pandemic. These issues explain the structural challenges that hampered the cultural sector as the Covid-19 pandemic hit and progressed. The final section of the chapter contextualises and introduces the following chapters and offers readers a narrative arc to guide them through the book.
The introduction sets the scene for the book, explaining what ‘painful truths’ means and identifying the main debates to which it contributes. This revolves around the importance of visibilising multidimensional and multiscalar gendered urban violence, a term that encompasses direct and indirect forms of male violence against women and girls. This emphasises the structural causes of gendered urban violence and moves beyond individualised interpretations, spanning the body, community, city and global contexts. Relatedly, the discussion argues for the need to reframe everyday urban violence as deeply gendered in intersectional ways. In outlining the empirical realities of gender-based violence in Rio de Janeiro and London, the chapter explains that this is not a traditional comparative book given the differences in the lives of the women. However, it shows that there are connections between the two cities and groups of women. The discussion introduces the conceptual, epistemological, methodological and empirical approaches developed in the book. These revolve around the translocational feminist frameworks and methodologies that are based on collaboration, co-production and engagement with the arts. The introduction emphasises the importance of working with artists and using arts-based methods to reveal the nature of gendered urban violence. The chapter outlines the core narrative of the book, which is the importance of revealing the painful truths about gendered urban violence in order to be able to fight it in terms of resistance and agency developed by women themselves. The chapter finishes with an outline of the structure of the book.
Care for older people is conceived as a new social risk and a rising issue for contemporary welfare states. In Croatia, unmet and growing needs for care and limited state capacities for the provision of care for older people have opened space for private (profit and non-profit) initiatives in service provision, which by now outnumber public providers. The chapter analyses recent policy and institutional changes in care for older people in Croatia. It specifically focuses on the role of the private not-for-profit and profit sector in the provision of care for older persons (institutional and in-home care), and their relations with the government and public service providers, using the welfare mix as a conceptual and theoretical framework. Characteristics of the welfare mix model are explored from two key perspectives: financing (changes in responsibility for financing services, trends of marketisation, the structure of financing), and service provision (trends regarding the composition of providers: state – profit – non-profit, types of services, deinstitutionalisation, quality of services, etc.). Older people’s care has characteristics of mixed financing, combining financing from public sources (state budget) and private sources (out of pocket). Accessibility and affordability of services differ between private and public service providers. Growing unmet needs and limited capacities in public institutional care have resulted in marketisation trends. The need for changes in the system of older care services in Croatia is evident. However, this area is not a focus of policy. Different social groups at times try to politicise these issues, but without much success.
This book reports on the findings of an eighteen-month UKRI funded mixed-methods
research project that took place in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and
Wales between September 2020 and November 2021. It provides a comprehensive
overview of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK’s cultural sector,
identifying implications for policy, practice and the sector’s future direction.
Over eleven chapters, the book summarises the local, regional and national
policy responses to the crisis, and provides statistical analyses of the impacts
on the UK’s cultural workforce and audiences’ responses to the pandemic. These
insights are further illustrated via detailed case studies of cultural
sub-sectors of theatre, museums and galleries, screen industries, libraries and
festivals, interviews with cultural leaders and an ecosystem case study of the
Greater Manchester city region.
The book identifies recurrent themes
emerging from the research, commenting on policy responses, audience confidence,
shifts to digital engagement and civic responsibility, organisational practice
and recovery. It offers a robust analysis of the short, medium and longer-term
impacts of Covid-19 and highlights their implications for cultural
practitioners, organisations, funders and policymakers. The unique contribution
of the book lies in the presentation of findings which highlight the challenges
faced by cultural practitioners, organisations and audiences from different
backgrounds, regions and art forms. Using lenses which focus on both macro and
micro levels, the book provides fresh insights into the implications for
research on, with, and around the cultural sector, highlighting possible future
directions for arts management, audience research and cultural policy studies.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, workers in the UK’s theatre and performing arts
sector were among those most negatively affected. Some of these negative
impacts relate to historic structural issues, including inequalities within
the workforce, funding gaps and disparities, and unsustainable business
models. During the crisis, the theatre sector made and accelerated changes
to the strategies and modes used to make work and engage with audiences,
including through digital adaptation and distribution. Alongside enforced
and repeated closure of buildings, these shifts challenged organisations of
all scales to make radical decisions and tackle issues of productivity,
quality, capacity and skills. Lockdown experiences of making and watching
theatre have raised important questions about the future roles of physical
spaces, shared or synchronous experiences and definitions of authenticity,
and regarding audience perceptions of the relative value of digital and live
performance. They have drawn closer attention to inequalities of access of
all kinds. Innovative and adapted models for engagement using remote, hybrid
and blended formats have been trialled. Intensified attention has been paid
towards the social and civic role of theatre. In this chapter we examine
these phenomena and discuss their implications. We build on research
engaging with theories and concepts drawn from arts management, cultural
leadership, cultural value, cultural policy studies and audience studies.
At the chapter’s heart are the insights gained from over fifty
semi-structured depth interviews undertaken throughout 2020–2021 with
professionals working in theatre organisations across England. These
experiences are also explored in depth via three short illustrative case
studies.
In Slovenia, care for older people and its gendered consequences entered the policy agenda and public discussion within the framework of 20-year-long political struggles for policy regulation of long-term care. The chapter analyses the implications of the three core care services, i.e. institutional care, family care, and cash benefit, offered to older people by the Long-Term Care Act finally adopted in 2021. In their analysis, the authors use three key concepts, namely (de)familisation, (de)institutionalisation, and public provision, which in the Act’s preliminary assessment are recognised as relevant to the impact of long-term care on the position of women and gender equality. However, the analysis shows that the legislator does not translate this preliminary recognition into concrete policy measures but formulates concrete policy solutions in a way that is controversial in relation to the principles of deinstitutionalisation, defamilisation, and the establishment of a formal, public network of services. In this way, the Long-Term Care Act raises several new dilemmas and opens the way to problematic developments such as informal, low-paid family or (grey) market care, domestication of women, expansion of precarious forms of care work, pressure to lower wages, and deprofessionalisation. The authors see the reasons for such outcomes in the tensions and contradictions that are inherent to each form of organisation of care, which represents an arena where the conflicting aspirations of different actors collide, and call for open discussion in a broad public debate.