Making Culture – Children's and Young People's Leisure Cultures

Nordisk kulturfakta Making culture Children’s and young people’s leisure cultures Editor: Anna Sparrman Postal address Box 1001 SE-405 21 Göteborg Visiting address: Södra Vägen 54 Phone: +46-31-395 20 00 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.kulturanalysnorden.se © Kulturanalys Norden 2019 Cover illustration: Astrid Cederlund Design: Södra tornet kommunikation Print: Taberg Media Group AB, 2019 ISBN: 978-91-87046-60-5 Making culture Children’s and young people’s leisure cultures Content Preface .................................................................................................. 4 I: Introducing the topic Children’s and young people’s leisure culture ...................................... 7 Anna Sparrman Children’s and young people’s cultural and creative activities ........... 18 – Surveys from the Nordic countries Mats Björnsson II: Situating creativity Children’s creativity (s) ...................................................................... 28 Yelyzaveta Hrechaniuk Cosplay and cosplayers ....................................................................... 33 – A global phenomenon in a local context Mie Buhl Fanfiction: Remixing race, sexuality and gender (s) ........................... 47 Jennifer Duggan Make it or break it ............................................................................... 51 – Grappling with inclusion in the maker movement Sophie Landwehr Sydow Small children’s use of digital media (s) ............................................ 63 – Consuming or creating? Stine Liv Johansen III: Cultural pleasures On the possibilities of saying 'No’ (s) ................................................. 68 – Reimagining ‘meaningful leisure time’ at a summer camp for disabled children and youths Daniel Gustafsson Children’s media music ...................................................................... 73 – An aesthetic device for pleasure Ingeborg Lunde Vestad Folkbildning and creativity in leisure time hip-hop ............................ 84 – Towards a pedagogy of trust Johan Söderman Smartphone kids ................................................................................. 97 – Digital media use among Finnish children Jani Merikivi, Sami Myllyniemi and Mikko Salasuo Befriending through online gaming (s) ............................................. 106 Ilkka Arminen and Sanna Tiilikainen IV: Cultural participation Enabling cultural participation (s)..................................................... 111 – The case of Swedish children’s libraries Frances Hultgren Indigenous, Nordic, and digital? ....................................................... 115 – How Sámi-language users negotiate access to digital media Niamh Ní Bhroin Windows, holes, and touchstones ..................................................... 127 – Creating cultural expression in Greenland Ruth Montgomery-Andersen Survey-based research ...................................................................... 137 – Challenges when studying children’s and young people’s use of culture and media Kjartan Ólafsson V: Concluding remarks Configuring the doers ....................................................................... 150 Anna Sparrman Contributing authors ......................................................................... 154 Preface The Nordic Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis (Kulturanalys Norden) has been tasked with producing statistics and knowledge useful for policy makers who want to develop Nordic cultural policy and strengthen cultural life in the Nordic countries. Through statistics and analysis, we highlight questions regarding the conditions of cultural life in the Nordic region. The Nordic Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis was initiated on behalf of the Nordic Ministers of Culture and is financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Our host organisation is the Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis. During 2018 and 2019, the Nordic Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis has worked with a knowledge base on the cultural habits of children and young people in the Nordic countries. The report, En gemensam nordisk undersökning av barns och ungas kulturvanor [Joint Nordic Studies on the Cultural Habits of Children and Young People] was a first step in this work, and the present research anthology is a further development and deepening of this work. The texts in the anthology illustrate and describe different examples of cultural practices among children and young people in the Nordic countries. In focus is children’s and young people’s leisure culture. Cultural habits of children and young people are, however, an extensive field of research, and the anthology does not give a complete picture, but instead seeks to raise questions and themes about the cultural life of children and young people who to date have had a relatively hidden away place in cultural policy discussions. This book therefore contributes reflections and revitalises the dialogue and discussion about children’s and young people’s cultural habits. There were several guiding factors when producing this anthology. The first was to present a book with a broad Nordic representation. The texts address examples of children’s and young people’s leisure culture in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Greenland. Another aspect important in the selection of texts and themes was to capture the political cross-sectional perspectives. Therefore, the anthology chapters address leisure culture of children and young people in relation to LGBTQ issues, gender, functional diversity, and ethnic minorities. Another important point of departure has been that the research anthology shall contribute to the visibility of present-day activities and that it should be a special focus on children’s and young people’s own creation and how children’s and young people’s own creation is integrated with their consumption of cultural experiences. The Nordic Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis sees several themes in the texts that should be relevant to recognise within cultural policy and research as well as by those who work on cultural policy evaluation and follow-up in the Nordic countries. One example that is important primarily from a cultural policy perspective is the pervasive impact of digitisation on the cultural habits of children 4 and young people. Digitisation can often contribute to the increased inclusion of marginalised groups and can enable self-expression and visibility of experiences that would otherwise not be allowed to emerge. There are several such examples presented in the anthology, but there are also examples indicating that digitisation might be associated with barriers and exclusion, which is addressed in the chapter on the use of social media by young Sámi people. In this context, there are important social and geographical aspects to consider – not all groups and locations are affected in the same way by new technologies; for example, it depends on which (language) group you belong to or where you live or spend your time. Another discussion that should follow from the texts in the anthology, and that is relevant to cultural policy and for those working with the evaluation of cultural habits of children and young people, is how the concept of culture today should be understood and operationalised. Quantitative surveys of cultural habits are available in the Nordic countries, but they differ in both content and form and do not provide a sufficiently comprehensive picture of the cultural habits of children and young people. There is too much that risks falling outside the scope of the measurements being done. The anthology therefore contributes with complementary and deepening knowledge about what the cultural habits of children and young people look like today, which includes both new activities and new perspectives on how cultural habits should be understood. The texts also show how integrated children’s and young people’s own creation is with the consumption of cultural activities and how relational the cultural life of children and young people is and how it transgresses age. These are questions and lessons that the Nordic Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis perceives as important to address in cultural policy, in cultural habits surveys, and in research. In the work with this anthology, we have had a very valuable collaboration with the external editor, Professor Anna Sparrman at the Department of Thematic Studies–Child Studies of Linköping University in Sweden, the contributing researchers, and our scientific board. The researchers themselves are responsible for the content in their respective chapters. Gothenburg, September 2019 Sverker Härd Head of Agency 5 I. Introducing the topic Children’s and young people’s leisure culture Anna Sparrman Introduction This is a research anthology about children’s and young people’s leisure cultures in the Nordic countries. Children’s and young people’s practices take centre stage in this book for the purpose of exploring culture from within their own practices, focusing on what they do (Sparrman, Samuelsson, Lindgren & Cardell 2016; Sparrman, Sandin & Sjöberg 2012). In this book, this is expressed through, how leisure culture creates social mobility, how children move between and multitask digital technologies and platforms, and how they on a regular basis are engaged and active in multiple cultural activities such as going to the theatre, singing, or online gaming. It also engages with leisure culture in terms of venues where people, objects, ideas, imaginations,

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