About the project

Culture is the dimension often sidelined in concerns about social and urban inequalities. In both academic research and the public agenda, we intensely discuss inequalities in income, health, or education, but less so about inequalities in the exercise of cultural rights.

The DEPART project addresses this issue by connecting two areas of research that have received limited attention, particularly when it comes to analyzing their interrelations. On one hand, it studies inequalities in the cultural sphere, specifically in the exercise of the right to participate in the cultural life of the city. On the other hand, it analyzes the policies and projects that respond to these inequalities.

DEPART poses three research questions:

• First, what factors condition the inequalities in the right to participate in the cultural life of the city?
• Second, what types of cultural policies are developed to address these inequalities, and how is the public problem of inequality constructed within these policies?
• Finally, what implications does promoting equity in cultural participation through specific programs and projects have?

To answer these questions, the research is based on a case study and various subcases in the city of Barcelona (during the period 2019-2022), including the analysis of cultural participation surveys, public policy frameworks, and specific cultural programs and projects.

The research seeks to test the following hypotheses:

1. Inequalities in the right to participate in the cultural life of the city are multidimensional: they affect its four dimensions (access, practice, community, and governance).
2. These inequalities are conditioned by multiple factors simultaneously. This research highlights the importance of three of them: the territory of residence, the origin of individuals (migration experience), and gender.
3. The inequality of participation in non-legitimized cultural activities and practices is lower than that of legitimized culture. However, hybrid participation profiles are detected, representing a new logic of differentiation and hierarchy.
4. Inequalities in the right to participate in the cultural life of the city have increased during the pandemic. Digital participation does not overcome pre-existing inequalities.
5. In cultural policies, the issue of inequalities in cultural participation is constructed without recognizing the diversity of participation forms, reproducing hierarchies in participation and placing more responsibility for the problem of inequality on individuals than on institutions.
6. Only certain programs and projects manage to address the problem of inequality. These are cases that place equity at the center, recognize cultural assets, and promote cultural participation as a continuum between legitimized culture and non-legitimized culture.
7. Cultural policies responding to the impact of the pandemic mainly focus on issues within the professional cultural sector and, to a lesser extent, on the inequalities regarding individuals’ and communities’ rights to participate in cultural life.

This project has been selected in the competitive call for Knowledge Generation Projects 2022 PID2022-138429OA-I00, funded by CIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by FEDER, EU.