Cultural Values

Project Manager: Dominique SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

This project concerns a three year research program, involving researchers in economics, management, geography, sociology, info-com, visual arts, architecture, stage design and urban spread over the Nantes to Angers region on the issue of the definition, construction and evaluation of cultural activities value. This project has been developed from a two day projects study organised by the GRANEM on territorial issues of cultural development under the Regional State Project Agreement (CPER 10) and revolves around five complementary problems:

What are the values (economic, social, ecological, aesthetic, historical, technical identity ...) or the social utility of culture for a territory? How to measure and evaluate these qualities? How to develop this value, including through a regional organisation of cultural players such as cultural areas? 
What works (books, movies, music ...) are part of what territory? What are the mechanisms of construction of the mental image of a location? What is the role of operators in the image production that will be used to support any fictional works created about the location? 
How do people perceive the values of culture? How do they adopt and perceive cultural proposals and how do they participate in the reconstruction of spaces already occupied and the construction of new project areas? 
Firstly, how to construct value hierarchies in the artistic field between high culture and popular culture, between stars and anonymous artists, famous locations and other places? What is the spatial extent of these categorisations? 
Finally, how to build an epistemology evaluation in cultural matters, that is to say why, for who and how are targets and indicators produced and used for evaluating cultural policies?

The Regional Council has funded the first part of this program in order to clarify the issues addressed and put in place the cooperation tools between the program partners.