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Measuring the changes: how can a perceived cultural mega-event evidence its “value”? Insights from implementing evaluation methodologies for Coventry 2021
Get PDFPurpose:
It is well known that culture is a catalyst for change, helping economies respond to societal problems and demands and that culture is where people turn to in moments of crisis. In this case study around designing and implementing evaluation methodologies/frameworks for Coventry UK City of Culture 2021, it is suggested that in English public policy and within publicly invested arts there is a maturation of thinking around recognising/measuring the public value of culture including its social value. The purpose of this paper is to chart the recent policy of justifying cultural expenditure with social value claims and highlight challenges for evaluating activity within Coventry UK CoC 2021 as a change in wider policy is taking place.
Design/methodology/approach:
This paper provides creative insights into the design and implementation of the evaluation methodologies/frameworks for Coventry UK City of Culture 2021. The authors of this paper as the collective team undertaking the evaluation of Coventry's year as UK City of Culture 2021 bring first-hand experiences of challenges faced and the need for a cultural mega-event to evidence its value.
Findings:
The case study aims to address the concepts of measuring value within cultural events and argues that a paradigm shift is occurring in methods and concepts for evidencing the aforementioned value.
Research limitations/implications:
The case study within this paper focuses on the build-up period to the UK City of Culture 2021 year and the thinking and logic behind the creation of the evaluation/measurement framework and therefore does not include findings from the actual cultural year.
Originality/value:
It is acknowledged that there are papers examining measuring and evidencing the “value” of cultural mega-events, the authors bring real-life first-hand experience of the concepts being utilised by them on the ground in the delivery and evaluation design of Coventry, UK City of Culture 2021
Sicilian sulphur and mafia : resources, working conditions and the practice of violence
No full textThis paper reconsiders the nexus between the abundance of resources and the origins of Sicilian mafia by exploiting a new set of historical data at the municipal level on the Sicilian sulphur industry in the late nineteenth century, obtained from official reports of the Royal Corps of Mining Engineers. Our evidence confirms that sulphur favoured the rise of organized crime, as emphasized in the previous studies. However, we show that the impact of local production on mafia was smaller in the areas richest in sulphur. Moreover, mechanization in the extraction process was associated with lower incidence of mafia. Taken together, our findings suggest that larger lodes encouraged better and more orderly working conditions for the miners, possibly reducing physical and psychic strain and, consequently, their inclination to violence. In other words, the quality of working conditions affected the supply of violent individuals
Out of time : fantasising the French romantic hero in the Netflix era
Get PDFNetflix’s globally oriented French products are commercially bound to negotiate between producing locally legible and internationally acceptable gender types. This article spotlights variations in representing the French romantic hero – traditionally a gallant séducteur – to a global audience hypersensitive to notions of toxic masculinity in two post-#MeToo Netflix Original French romantic comedy narratives: the series Plan cœur/The Hookup Plan (2018-2021) and the film Je ne suis pas un homme facile/I Am Not an Easy Man (Eléonore Pourriat, 2018). Noting that Netflix is now the key export channel for French romcoms, the article draws primarily on textual analysis, while also leveraging psychoanalytic and affective theories, to argue that the platform’s impetus to make French masculinity in particular more widely palatable, and (so) appeal to emergent popular feminism, has the potential to reconfigure parameters of legitimate gender norms, French and beyond
Longitudinal population-level HIV epidemiological and genomic surveillance highlights growing gender disparity of HIV transmission in Uganda
Get PDFHIV incidence in eastern and southern Africa has historically been concentrated among girls and women aged 15–24 years. As new cases decline with HIV interventions, population-level infection dynamics may shift by age and gender. Here, we integrated population-based surveillance of 38,749 participants in the Rakai Community Cohort Study and longitudinal deep-sequence viral phylogenetics to assess how HIV incidence and population groups driving transmission have changed from 2003 to 2018 in Uganda. We observed 1,117 individuals in the incidence cohort and 1,978 individuals in the transmission cohort. HIV viral suppression increased more rapidly in women than men, however incidence declined more slowly in women than men. We found that age-specific transmission flows shifted: whereas HIV transmission to girls and women (aged 15–24 years) from older men declined by about one-third, transmission to women (aged 25–34 years) from men that were 0–6 years older increased by half in 2003 to 2018. Based on changes in transmission flows, we estimated that closing the gender gap in viral suppression could have reduced HIV incidence in women by half in 2018. This study suggests that HIV programmes to increase HIV suppression in men are critical to reduce incidence in women, close gender gaps in infection burden and improve men’s health in Africa
Work and life : the relative importance of job quality for general well-being, and implications for social surveys
No full textWe investigate the relative importance of variations in job quality in accounting for variations in general well-being among employed people in Europe, the USA, Australia and South Korea. We find that the importance of job quality is everywhere of a similar magnitude to that of health, while both are far more important than other conventional determinants, including education, gender, marital status, parental status, age or household income. Job quality accounts for somewhat more of well-being’s variation among men than among women. Within the majority of European countries, the R2 for the variation accounted for ranges between 14 and 19%. The paper’s findings, alongside rising policy interest, support the allocation of a greater priority for job quality in general socio-economic and labour force surveys than hitherto
Current sleep interventions for shift workers : a mini review to shape a new preventative, multicomponent sleep management programme
No full textIntroduction. Shift work can lead to sleep disturbances and insomnia during the sleeping period, as well as excessive sleepiness and fatigue during the waking period. While Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT-i) is recommended as the first line of treatment for insomnia, key elements of CBT-i, such as maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, can be challenging for shift workers, highlighting the need for tailored sleep interventions. This mini review provides a narrative synthesis of nonpharmacological sleep interventions for shift workers and informs the development of a preventative, multicomponent sleep management programme. Method. An informal review was conducted in line with Phase 1 of the Framework for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions. Results. A variety of strategies have been employed to help manage the impacts of shift work on sleep, including: CBT-i, adjusting shift schedules, controlled light exposure, sleep hygiene education, planned napping, caffeine consumption, and mind-body interventions (e.g., yogic relaxation).Discussion. Recommendations, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed; notably, the role of the family, the commute to and from the workplace, and the eating behaviors of employees appear to have been overlooked in current intervention efforts. Digital CBT-i platforms could help to provide an effective, scalable, and low-cost method of reducing insomnia in shift workers
Curated power : the performative politics of (industry) events
No full textSince the turn of the millennium, there has been an increased interest in the social performance of power in international political sociology. At the same time, recent years have seen the growing popularity of event ethnographic research approaches. In this article, we develop the concept of “curated power” as a tool to explore the performative enactment of power at and through conferences and events. A focus on curated power, we argue, can orient scholars of performative power toward conferences and events as an analytical entry point, and orient event ethnographic approaches toward the performance of classed, gendered, and racialized hierarchies as a central research concern. To develop these points, and to illustrate the analytical purchase of the concept, we provide a concrete example of its application by analyzing the performative enactment of social hierarchies at industry events in two alternative financial subsectors: FinTech and Islamic finance. In both sectors, we show that curated power can provide a situated and nuanced understanding of why and how corporate efforts to change finance for the better—whether on the basis of religious principles or advanced technological capabilities—often remain complicit in perpetuating classed, gendered, and racialized hierarchies
