NEGOTIATING THE FIELD Towards a Relational Understanding of Power in the Arts: A Case Study of Oldham Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Claire Louise Burnill-Maier [RPG] University of Leeds | Leeds, UK School of Performance and Cultural Industries May 2021 1 Declaration of Academic Integrity The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement The right of Claire Louise Burnill-Maier to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by Claire Louise Burnill-Maier in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 2 Acknowledgements There are overwhelming numbers of individuals who have contributed to the completion of this thesis, without whom, both my sanity and this inquiry would have unravelled. Whilst I shall endeavour to mention as many as possible, I will surely forget someone – and I hope they will forgive me. To those who initiated this journey and gave me the confidence to begin, thanks to Prof. Dr Gernot Wolfram, Prof. Dr Alyosh Agarwal and Prof. Dr Robert Kaspar. You have been wonderful friends, colleagues and mentors and I am indebted to each of you – there will be wine. For friendship, support, and solidarity across the miles between Leeds and my home in Oberwössen, I would like to thank all of my fellow PCI postgraduate researchers for always welcoming me warmly. Likewise, all the staff in the School of PCI. Special thanks to Clare Martynski for her kindness, hospitality, wisdom, and friendship. To my sister, Rebecca Lee, and all her family who opened their home and hearts to me so often during my field research, to Jake and Megan Lee for their boundless joy and to Dean Lee, whose first-hand knowledge of Oldham helped me enormously. A huge thank you to all of those working within the Oldham Arts and Cultural field who agreed to participate in this enquiry. Thank you for your time, your stories, and for the new friendships we forged. Thanks also to the academics who volunteered their time and shared their knowledge over the course of this project especially to Dr Dave O’Brien, Dr Clive Gray, Prof. David Hesmondhalgh, Dr Maria Barrett, and Dr Brett Lashua. To my closest friends and neighbours, to those who have looked after my children, provided me with gin and cocktails, and picked me up in the darkest of PhD moments; Alexandra Stein, Monica Pop, Dr Yasmin Patel-Agarwal - you are wonderful humans. For guidance and unwavering support from the side-lines thanks to Prof. John McLeod whose friendship, love of music, encyclopaedic knowledge of Leeds hostelries, and provision of good reads have been invaluable. Also, to Dr Julian Matthews of the University of Leicester, thank you for the laughter, ideas, and patient listening. Finally, to Leila Jancovich, Ben Walmsley, and my family. Leila and Ben - you have been unfaltering in your support and inspirational at every step. It is most 3 deliberate that I acknowledge you here, alongside my family, who too have stood by me throughout this journey. You have all shown such patience with me, I am forever indebted to each of you. Holger, thanks for your love, support, and for being there both for me and for our two amazing girls who have sacrificed so much on my behalf. Helena and Miranda, you make me smile every day. I cannot wait to finally have some more time with you. Thank you. 4 Abstract Against a backdrop of growing interest in localised cultural policy, this inquiry locates Oldham, an ‘overshadowed’ town (Pike et al., 2016), on the edge of Manchester (UK) as a case study to explore how a range of non-economic capitals are gained, utilised, and understood in the arts field. Locating this study in a town on the outskirts of a metropolitan area, this inquiry engages with both ‘formal’ professional (Gilmore, 2013) cultural offerings as well as voluntary-amateur organisations to explore field understandings amongst arts and cultural organisations. Drawing from the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1990, 1991, 1992; Bourdieu and Johnson1993) and from organisational theory (Thornton et al., 2012), the inquiry adopts a relational approach to explore the ways in which organisations within the field understand their operating environment and how they access and maximise non- economic capitals to exert organisational agency. Using a mixture of data collection methods including ‘go-alongs’ (Kuesenbach 2003), utilising Dickinson and Aiello’s (2016) scholarship on movement and materiality, participant-produced network maps, and the analysis of documents, this research contributes new methodological approaches to researching the arts and cultural field. Whilst there is strong evidence of the policy rhetoric of inclusion and participation as well as evidence of continued efforts to democratise the arts and cultural sector, the field is highly institutionalised, hierarchical, and increasingly professionalised. Although cultural policy endeavours to use local arts infrastructure to build local capacity, this thesis points to a situation in which those organisations in towns at the edge of a metropolitan city remain unable to gain the status enjoyed by their metropolitan counterparts. Organisations in satellite towns are heavily reliant on harnessing the support of elite individuals and dominant, established organisations which lie beyond their immediate local context to secure legitimacy for themselves and their activities. This thesis furthers scholarly understanding of inter-organisational and institutional relationships within the arts and cultural field. Future avenues for research include developing understandings of voluntary-amateur organisational structures to combat institutional blindness. It also suggests arts and cultural policy discourse should shift emphasis from positioning policy instruments as imposed, towards a more nuanced understanding of policy instruments, which recognises that field conditions, 5 including policy instruments, become institutionalised and thus may be readily exploited to benefit some organisations within the field. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY ........................................................................................ 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................... 2 ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 9 1.1 BACKGROUND .................................................................................................................................. 9 1.2 CULTURAL CITIES AND PLACEMAKING - SITUATING THE STUDY ................................................................. 15 1.3 INTRODUCING THE RESEARCH APPROACH ............................................................................................ 18 1.4 LOCATING THE STUDY: OLDHAM ....................................................................................................... 21 1.5 SCOPE .......................................................................................................................................... 31 1.5.1 COVID-19 .................................................................................................................................. 33 1.6 THESIS STRUCTURE ......................................................................................................................... 34 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................. 37 2.1 INTRODUCING THE LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................................................. 37 2.2 STRUCTURE, AGENCY, AND THE SOCIAL ............................................................................................... 38 2.3 SOURCES OF CAPITAL ...................................................................................................................... 50 2.4 POWER ......................................................................................................................................... 55 2.5 CONSTRUCTING LEGITIMACY – POSSESSION OF POWER, OR POSSESSION OF RESOURCES? .............................. 60 2.6 INSTITUTIONAL FIELDS ..................................................................................................................... 68 2.6.1 FIELDS ....................................................................................................................................... 74 2.6.2 NETWORKS AS FIELDS ................................................................................................................... 75 2.7 CULTIVATING AN INSTITUTION – NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT ................................................................. 78 2.8 DEMONSTRATING VALUE ................................................................................................................. 82 2.9 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................. 93 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY AND METHODS