This project proposes a radical re-evaluation of the relationship between participation and cultural value. Bringing together evidence from in-depth historical analyses, the re-use of existing quantitative data and new qualitative research on the detail, dynamics and significance of 'everyday participation', it will create new understandings of community formation, connectivity and capacity through participation. Orthodox models of the creative economy and ensuing cultural policy are based on a narrow definition of cultural participation; one that captures formal engagement with traditional cultural institutions, such as museums and galleries, but overlooks other activities, for instance community festivals and hobbies. This frame, founded historically on deficit based assumptions of the logics for state cultural support, misses opportunities to understand the variety of forms of participation and their (positive and negative) consequences. We argue that by creating new understandings of the relationships between everyday participation, community and cultural value, we will reveal evidence of hidden assets and resources that can be mobilised to promote better identification and more equitable resourcing of cultural opportunities, generate well-being and contribute to the development of creative local economies. The central research questions are: - How, historically, did we arrive at the definitions, fields of knowledge and policy frames informing notions of cultural participation and value today? - What are the forms and practices of everyday participation - where do they take place? How are they valued? And how do these practices relate to formal participation? - How is participation shaped by space, place and locality? - How are communities made, unmade, divided and connected through participation? - How can broader understandings of value in and through participation be used to inform the development of vibrant communities and creative local economies? - How do we reconnect cultural policy and institutions with everyday participation? Using a variety of methodologies, including historical analysis, qualitative work with communities of practice and use, and the reanalysis of existing data on participation and time-use, this project focuses on six contrasting 'cultural ecosystems' to investigate the connections between multiple understandings of community (geographical, elective, identity based etc), cultural value, 'cultural economy' and everyday participation. The findings from the situated case studies will inform four partnership-operated trials of new policy interventions or of professional or community practices. Throughout the project research will be integrated with key partners, stakeholder cultural and community organisations in order to evolve better, shared understandings of everyday cultural participation and the implications of this for policy makers and cultural organisations at national, local and community levels.

Icon? Art and Belief in Norfolk' is a collaborative project, a partnership between the School of World Art Studies and Museology at the University of East Anglia and Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery. The main collaborator at Norwich Castle is Andrew Moore, Senior Curator and Keeper of Art; the key researchers at UEA are Sandy (Thomas Alexander) Heslop and Margit Thofner.\n\nThe project will explore one core question: what is the relationship between religious artefacts and the locality where such objects are made and used? It is a well-established fact that religious works of art can have a power or agency of their own. Such works have inspired and continue to draw responses such as awe, devotion or aggression. But where does this power come from? We think it likely that religious artefacts take a substantial part of their agency from the locality in which they are made or used.\n\nTo explore this idea, to provide it with a meaningful factual basis, the project is focused on one case-study: the making and use of objects for spiritual purposes in Norfolk, an area with a history of religious diversity going back at least 2000 years. Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings all came to Norfolk with their own belief systems and their own religious objects. In the later Roman period, Christians settled in this region and - after a period of conflict - Christianity became dominant. This, however, did not prevent other religions from flourishing. For example, in the Middle Ages there were thriving Jewish communities in Thetford, King's Lynn and Norwich. From the fourteenth century onwards and across the early modern period, religious diversity took the form of a bewildering number of different branches of Christianity, including Lollards, Catholics, Calvinists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Puritans and Quakers. In Norfolk the putatively uniform religion of Christianity was only ever an illusion. Then, over the past two centuries or so, a new pattern of diversity has emerged. To number but a few of the faith-groups now found in this region: Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Neo-Pagans, Baha'i and Sikhs as well as older and more recently formed communities of Jews and Christians. This makes Norfolk a particularly appropriate case-study for our project.\n\nIt must be noted that 'Norfolk' was and still is a fluid category. The definition we shall operate with is partly geographical and partly religious: our project is focused on the medieval diocese of Norwich. It covered most of present-day East Anglia since it was bounded in the south by the river Stour, in the west by the Great Ouse and in the north and east by the North Sea. The term 'spiritual' is similarly unstable. For the purposes of our project it denotes behaviour found both within organised religion and within looser and perhaps more personal belief-systems.\n\nThe project and its most visible outcome / an exhibition in Norwich Castle Museum / will explore the works of art and the artefacts that have both embodied and perpetuated spirituality in Norfolk. In particular, we shall focus on moments of religious conflict, moments when questions of faith became pretexts for iconoclasm and other forms of object-based violence. But we shall also consider works of art which have served or still serve as bridges between different faith communities in this locality. Here we shall pay particular attention to the roles that local institutions such as universities, museums and multi-faith groups may play. Finally, the exhibition will examine the roles that art plays within religion and spirituality in Norfolk today. Our sense of what is local has changed dramatically in recent years: a sculpture with religious contents exhibited in Norwich in October 2007 has caused consternation as far afield as Thailand. Can this shifting sense of locality, driven by technological change, help us understand the sheer power of religious works of art?