Facilitated participation: cultural value, risk and the agency of young people in care

Since the mid-nineteenth century, cultural practice and its management have been attached to a discourse that constructs participation, in particular kinds of cultural activity, as “beneficial” to individuals on the basis that its effects have resonance beyond the cultural sphere. More recently, “leading edge” cultural practice and programmes have been based on the notion that benefit from such participation occurs via the facilitation of the active agency of participants through the making of their own meanings through co-curation and co-creation. Enlistment and involvement in, what we have termed “facilitated participation”, is, in Nikolas Rose’s terms, a tool of “advanced liberalism” whereby the governance of individuals operates on the basis of the governance of their “freedom”, through making them self-governing subjects [Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge University Press]. In the particular case of young people living in care, we have found that the facilitation of their agency through cultural programmes is limited by an assumption that such groups’ everyday cultural choices lack value and to facilitate them (and thereby their agency) would involve risk. Through a discussion of research undertaken with this group, this paper will explore how different domains of participation are understood by both the facilitators and the facilitated.