Teenage Kicks

Years active: 2013-2014
Funded by: AHRC Cultural Value

Working in collaboration with a network of 11 cultural and arts organisations across one city the project’s overarching objectives were:

  • first, to build a better understanding of young people’s understanding of cultural value
  • second, to use these insights to inform the design and provision of cultural and creative activities across a city.

Our intention in this project was to explore the complex ecologies of the cultural lives and everyday participation of young people in one city in order to inform contemporary discussion of cultural value.

Over the period of nine months our research involved:

  1. Recruitment of around 70 young people between the ages of 12-18 years old and a steering group including representatives from local cultural organisations in the city.
  2. Running two youth only workshops in seven locations across the city involving approximately 10 young people in each location. The workshops elicited evidence of young people’s perceptions of cultural value across different cultural experiences an explored how historic conceptions of ‘youth culture’ might act as prompt for critical reflections on young people’s views of cultural value today.
  3. An event bringing together the 70 young people who had been involved in the initial workshops and adults working as policy makers, cultural leaders, youth workers and others. Researchers and young people here presented the project findings and young people engaged in creative workshops to elicit more data and reflect on data collected so far.
  4. Researchers then coded the data collected from these workshops, pulling out identified components of cultural value according to the headings provided in the funding call document but alert also to emerging themes, similarities and differences across the groups and in relation to class, race and gender. These codes were then further analysed in collaboration with the steering group to form an adapted framework for cultural value that accounts for young people’s views.

Principal investigator

  • Helen Manchester

Co-researchers

  • Emma Pett

Publications