[Commlist] cfp symposium 'Participation: Norms and Storms'

Participation: Norms and Storms
Date:  April 21st, 10 am-5pm
Venue: Stage One, stage@Leeds, University of Leeds
You are warmly invited to submit abstracts for the Participation 
Research group symposium on Friday 21 April to explore how participation 
in arts & culture, or interdisciplinary research is informed by implicit 
rules or norms. We are also interested in work that investigates 
breaking the rules of participation. We are aware of the proliferation 
and popularity of participatory approaches, for instance ‘co-production’ 
and ‘public engagement’ being two institutionalised initiatives that 
have gained prominence in the UK in recent years. But such wholesale 
adoption of participation can be uncritical, nostalgic, patronising, 
and, as Markus Miessen (2011) claims, indicative of the evacuation of 
political responsibility as it seeks out consensus.
Participation is regulated by specific rules and codes of conduct that 
determine acceptable and fair behaviour. These sets of implicit and 
explicit rules, according to Kirsty Sedgman, are shaped by the ideas of 
“reasonableness” and “common sense” (2018). Sedgman’s analysis of 
theatre audience behaviour highlights how these are far from being 
unproblematic or politically neutral:
 “in setting the boundaries of reasonable behaviour, when does common 
sense becomes uncommon? Who gets to decide the limits of appropriateness 
and to police their transgression? Whose desire and comfort does the 
status quo prioritise, and whose disadvantage does it entrench? And 
within the arts specifically: is the aesthetic experience really so 
valuable as to be worth its exclusionary cost? (Sedgman, 2018, pp.83-84)
While rules are necessary to ensure participatory processes, they can 
exclude people that do not conform to the idea of “reasonableness” from 
taking part. Furthermore, challenging those norms can result in 
innovative and inclusive practices that can broaden both the scope and 
the impact of participation.
Whether you would want to uphold or critique participation, in either 
‘direction’, we are looking for contributions that address specific 
contexts, projects or cases, while attending to how norms are 
established and maintained or else, how they are dismantled, or raise 
critique when they are encountered.

Some of the broad themes your work may speak to:
Participation and (cultural) democracy
Participatory research: methods and rules
Participatory art forms (their implicit rules/ boundaries and who/what 
breaks them)
Participatory governance in arts and culture
Participation, space and place
Aesthetics of participation
Digital participation
Beyond consensus: conflict/ dissensus/ failure in participation

We will have a keynote by Kirsty Sedgman.
How to apply:
To propose a paper or installation, please fill in the google form here: 
https://forms.gle/JrBmoezBkKh33eEH9  We hope to have a small bursary to 
enable an independent/ PGR colleague to participate.
Deadline for submission: Fri 24 February Outcomes announced: 3 March

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