Entering the Field: Valuation and Evalua

Full course description

This course introduces you to key research on, as well as practices in, the fields of arts and heritage. We take an interdisciplinary approach by building on insights from cultural sociology, cultural economics, and cultural policy studies. By examining theories on valuation, in past and present, you will come to view arts and heritage practices primarily as sites of value creation and value contestation. This will provide you with a solid basis for the themes and topics in your courses later in the year.

Throughout these eight weeks, you will develop an understanding of the main characteristics of the arts and heritage fields. Together, we’ll find out what these characteristics mean for how these fields are organized, for the position of arts and heritage in society, and what the implications are for (your) professional practice. You will deepen such understanding by applying your insights in a research project on current arts and heritage practices in the Netherlands.  

For your own research project in this course, you will analyse a cultural policy or funding program in relation to themes that are current in both research and professional practice (i.e. participation, inclusion, sustainability). By identifying and analysing key themes, values and discourses in your research on a current policy program, you learn to distinguish between structural and context-specific characteristics and conditions, and to compare across different periods, as well as geographical and social contexts. At the end of the course, you and your peers will apply your newly developed academic and professional skills by designing a funding proposal for a cultural project that fits with your research topic and policy program.