Fields of participation and lifestyle in England: revealing the regional dimension from a reanalysis of the Taking Part Survey using Multiple Factor Analysis

Abstract

This paper addresses the concerns of the Understanding Everyday Participation project with the relationship between cultural participation and space. Here we approach the notion of space in two different but complementary ways. Our main focus is on geographical variations in participation, which we explore at the regional level in England. However, in order to do so, we begin by re-evaluating the nature of the cultural field itself and the way that this is arranged in social space. The issue of regional disparities in the funding of cultural activities and venues from the public purse has become a heated issue. Yet, in contrast to the avowedly regional focus of much cultural and creative industries policy following the advent of the first New Labour administration in 1997, issues of place have been largely overlooked in recent studies of cultural consumption, and therefore little is known about the spatial dynamics of participation practices. Using data from the UK government’s Taking Part Survey, we adopt a novel methodological approach, known as Multiple Factor Analysis, to re-examine and represent the English cultural field. Our findings reveal the hitherto underestimated importance of informal everyday cultural practices in configuring the sociology of lifestyles. Alongside and beyond the familiar North–South divide and London effect, they also indicate that the English cultural field is characterised by a complex regional geography.