- Costa, P.; Lopes, R.V.; Perestrelo, M.; Tomaz, E. (2024), “Behavioral Changes Resulting from Artistic Participative Processes: Assessing the Quality of Participation Through a Toolkit Co-Constructed in the Stronger Peripheries Project”, presentation to the 34th RESER International Conference, “Co-creating sustainable solutions for Future-proof Societies”, hosted by VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, Helsinki, Finland, 31st October – 2nd November 2024 OBJECTIVES: Participatory processes in art have been growing and diversifying broadly in recent years and have been subject to considerable debates (Bourriaud, 1998; Bishop, 2012; Butler, 2015; Matarazzo, 2019; Bonet et al, 2018; Bonet and Negrier, 2018; Dupin-Meynard and Négrier, 2020). However, cultural institutions have been confronted with the challenge of assessing and improving the quality of those participatory processes and to reflect more broadly on their potential, their difficulties and lessons that can be drawn for their action and for inspiring policy making. More specifically, it will be also important to explore the behavioural impacts of participatory art and creative participative processes and the ways cultural agents, cultural audiences and communities face the new challenges these bring in terms of innovation, social cohesion, physical and psychological well-being, education, environment, individual and social identities, among many other aspects that frame social and individual comportments. The co-construction of a toolkit to assess participation quality was included as part of the Stronger Peripheries project, and was process coordinated by the research team which delivers this presentation. "Stronger Peripheries: a Southern Coalition" is a large-scale cooperation project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, which is being developed, between 2020-2024, through an informal network that brings together cultural organisations and research units from ten European countries in southern and eastern Europe. It assumes itself as a space for dialogue, collaboration and joint learning, questioning and discussing the notions of "south" and "peripheries" through various collaborative artistic strategies. It is a project that involves fourteen partners (eleven cultural organizations or networks and three universities, in addition to a fourth research unit, indirectly associated with the project) from ten countries in Southern Europe and the Balkans. These have very diverse profiles, including cooperation and cultural programming networks in the territories, theatres and cultural venues, festivals, spaces for artistic creation and universities. Being a project that combines the components of artistic creation and research, it aims, in its matrix, to question the concepts of "south" and "peripheries" (assumed more as cultural concepts than purely geographical), seeing culture and artistic practices as ways to promote the negotiation of collective identities and create dynamics of emancipation and opportunities for empowerment of communities that question the dynamics of power in the cultural field and dichotomies between north and south, or between center(s) and periphery(s). The artistic creation program (carried out from "Tandems" that cross the various partners – and their communities – in the process of territorially anchored artistic creation) is developed under 6 transversal topics of reflection and debate, which reflect social and political challenges prevalent in the "peripheral south": "Work and Happiness", "Connecting Dots", "Daily Bread", "Having a Voice", "Bridging the Gap" and "Right to the Future". These are themes that allow, on the one hand, a mediation strategy in the dialogue with local communities, being interpreted and materialized locally through the relationship between artists, participants and audiences, and on the other hand, they are key aspects for the more academic and scientific discussion (and public debate with the artistic communities in the various countries involved) carried out throughout the project. In the scope of this project, a toolkit to assess the quality of participation was developed, in a co-construction process with the involvement of both “artistic” and “research” partners in its development. In other recent text (Costa, Lopes, Dupin-Meynard and Perestrelo, 2024) we had the opportunity to present the process undertaken to develop this toolkit and the results achieved with it. That is, on the one hand, to present the toolkit that will be available for people’s use beyond the scope of this project (by both the 11 cultural organizations and networks involved in the project and by other cultural agents in general); and on the other hand, to reflect on the specific results coming out of the application of this toolkit to the activities within the project itself Drawing upon that work, in this presentation we aim to explore specifically the behavioural impacts of cultural participative processes, through the analysis of the results of the application of the toolkit to this project’s activities at the lens of the potential impacts it had in the behaviours of the diverse stakeholders involved. METHODOLOGY The toolkit includes a set of grids to collect and systematize information that is gathered through interviews, focus groups and direct observation during the development of the cultural production (from research and creative residencies to final presentations), with the artists, the communities and the cultural institutions involved. In the basis of the different grids for collecting this information is a set of four analytical dimensions (and several subdimensions) regarding the impacts expected from this participatory process for: - The participants of the community(ies) involved - The cultural institutions (and their relations with audiences) - The artists and the creative processes; and - The cultural policies. The toolkit has been applied from mid 2022 to spring 2024, in the several tandems. In this paper we analyse the perceived impacts expressed by the different project stakeholders (institution partners, artists, participants in hosting communities) for these 4 dimensions, extracting the relevant aspects regarding their behavioural change that can be inferred by the answers that were registered in the sever all grids and systematized in the several project assessment frames. To do this, we analyse the Project Assessment Frameworks for each Tandem, to outline the impacts of these processes in the four domains considered (the artists, the cultural institutions, the participant communities, the public policies). EXPECTED RESULTS: Reading the results from these multiple angles brings a complementary global perspective, which helps to shed a light on the state of the art of participative practices, in all their diversity. We grasp the specific components of the 4 dimensions that imply behavioural change and systematize general challenges and conclusions on this. The paper is organized as follows. In a first moment the objectives and the methodology of co-construction of the toolkit are panoramically explained, as well as the frame in which this process occurred: the stronger peripheries project. Secondly, a brief presentation of the toolkit itself and its components is made as well as the way it was operationalized in the scope of project Stronger Peripheries. After that, an analysis of the results on the quality of participatory processes brought by its application within this project are putted forward, through the lens of the “behavioural change” induced in each of the four dimensions considered. A concluding note gives notice of some challenges for the exploration of behavioural aspects in culture/creative processes in future applications of this toolkit in other contexts. Bibliography Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells: participatory art and politics of spectatorship. London, NewYork: Verso Books. Bonet, L.; Calvano, G; Carnelli, L; Dupin-Meynard, F.; Négrier, E. (Eds.) (2018). Be SpectACTive! Challenging Participation in Performing Arts. Spoleto: Editoria & Spettacolo Bonet, L.; Négrier, E. (Eds.) (2018). Breaking the Fourth Wall: Proactive Audiences in the Performing Arts. Elverum: Kunnskapsverket Bourriaud, N. (1998 [2002]). Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presses du réel. Butler, J. (2018 [2015]). Corpos em aliança política e a política das ruas: Notas sobre a teoria performativa de assembleia. Civilização Brasileira. Costa, P.; Lopes, R. V.; Dupin-Meynard, F.; Perestrelo, M. (2024). A Quality of Participation Assessment Toolkit: a Co-Construction Process with Stronger Peripheries Partners (Forthcoming in Stronger Peripheries project book, title to be confirmed) Dupin-Meynard, F.; Négrier, E. (Eds., in coordination with Bonet, L.; Calvano, G.; Carnelli, L.; Zuliani, E.) (2020). Cultural Policies in Europe: a Participatory Turn?, Toulouse: Éditions de L’Attribut et Occitanie en scene Matarasso. F. (2019). A Restless Art: How participation won, and why it matters, London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, UK Branch

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Cultural Participation,Quality of participation,Participatory artistic practices,Knowledge co-construction,Behavioural change