Linda Wilks

Should we do away with teleworking? An examination of whether teleworking can be defined in the new world of work

This empirical paper analyzes data gathered from self-employed tele-workers, matching this against tele-workings defining characteristics, which appear in the literature. Our evaluation leads us to question whether the term tele-working has lost much of its value in todays working world. We therefore suggest the new term home-anchored worker as a less complex and more useful replacement.

Bridging and bonding: social capital at music festivals.

This paper uses the theoretical concept of social capital as its framework to examine festivals in the context of social and cultural policy. Government policies have cited the arts as a tool for combating social exclusion, overcoming barriers between people and fostering community cohesion. Social capital theorist Robert Putnam specifically suggests that cultural events can bring together diverse social groups. To investigate these claims in practice, this study collected empirical data at three festivals: a pop festival, an opera festival and a folk festival. The empirical data, comprising observations, screening questionnaires and in-depth interviews, were analysed using critical discourse analysis to bring out styles and discourses relating to social interactions. It was found that the reinforcement of existing relationships, termed bonding social capital by Putnam, was an important part of the festival experience. The formation of bridging social capital: that is, new and enduring social connections with previously unconnected attendees was not, however, found to be a feature of festivals, despite a sense of general friendliness and trust identified by some. Furthermore, drawing on Bourdieus conceptualisation of social capital, festival attendees were found to be remarkably similar in their demographic make-up, also throwing doubt on policy-related suggestions that festivals could be sites of inter-connections between people from diverse backgrounds. This study therefore suggests that music festivals are not valuable sites for social and cultural policy aims of combating social exclusion, bridging barriers between groups and fostering wider community cohesion.

Fostering an ecology of openness: the role of social media in public engagement at the Open University, UK

This chapter illustrates the ways in which The Open University (OU), one of the leading distance learning universities in the world, uses a range of social media to engage members of the public in learning. The OU has been an early adopter of innovative technologies which enabled public engagement right from its inception, forty years ago, contributing to fulfilling its ethos of social justice. It is this aim to remove barriers and provide learning materials to a wide audience, including those who may be excluded from other learning institutions, which has been a major strategic driver of recent changes. Today the OU harnesses a range of social media to continue to develop this strategic policy. The OUs ecology of openness includes a presence on externally developed social media such as YouTube, iTunesU, Facebook and Twitter, which are used as platforms to transfer knowledge and expertise to interested members of the public and encourage academic debate. Alongside these, the OU has also developed its own cutting edge social media platforms, which also allow public engagement. Key OU platforms include OpenLearn, a website that gives free access to a vast range of OU course materials; and Cloudworks, a site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas, experiences and issues. This chapter explores the achievements of the OU in using social media to engage with public audiences, as well as highlights the challenges and issues encountered.

Festival connections: people, place and social capital

Festivals are premised on social interaction. The word ‘festival’ derives from the Latin ‘festum’, meaning feast (Isar 1976), and collective, participatory celebration is central to its meaning. To date, while some researchers have investigated the nature of social inter-relationships evident in festival settings, the literature on the social dimensions of festival activity is under-developed. While Deery and Jago (2010) suggest that social impact literature in particular has come of age, it can be argued that in general, the literature on social connections in festival settings is quite disparate and uneven in terms of disciplinary underpinnings, theoretical references, research questions and methodological approaches. Acknowledgement of these difficulties has prompted some researchers to search for alternative theoretical frameworks to underpin a comprehensive enquiry into social connections in festival settings. Social capital is starting to emerge as a theory which shows real potential. Drawing on the findings of two exploratory studies, one in Ireland and one in England, this paper considers the diverse sets of social relationships at the heart of festival activity, whilst taking account of the role that place plays in these interactions.

The lived experience of London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games volunteers: a serious leisure perspective

Along with other sporting mega-events, the Olympic Games, in all its versions, makes extensive use of volunteers. The 70,000 London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic volunteers, for example, played a vital role in the delivery of the event. Stebbins’ theoretical perspective of serious leisure includes consideration of volunteering and there are calls for its further empirical evaluation. This study, therefore, uses a qualitative study of the lived experience of London 2012 volunteers to test the relevance of the serious leisure framework to Olympic volunteering. The data are drawn from the reflective diaries of 20 participants who volunteered in a variety of roles during London 2012. It is concluded that all of the qualities of serious leisure are identifiable to various extents within the experiences of the London 2012 volunteers. This finding will help Olympic and other sporting mega-event managers to understand and improve the experiences of their volunteers. Recommendations are also made, in the light of the findings, for the further refinement of the serious leisure perspective. Particular attention is paid to highlighting how the findings might contribute to recent debates around whether sporting mega-event volunteering is best explained by the serious leisure quality of career volunteering, or by the serious leisure associated concept of project-based leisure, or alternatively by the competing term of episodic volunteering.

Communicating an arts foundation’s values: sights, sounds and social media

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test and refine the long-established signal transmission model of the communication process by examining the ways in which a newly formed nonprofit arts foundation communicated its professed values to its stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a mixed method case study approach. Interviews with key informants and observations of the foundation’s webpages enabled the identification of the professed values of the arts foundation. Next, a questionnaire survey established whether these values had been successfully decoded by stakeholders and identified the channels via which the values-related signals had been received. Findings The transmission model was found to be relevant as a model. However, to improve its fit within a nonprofit arts context, a modification to the model is suggested which highlights the importance of multi-sensory channels, the importance of context and the increasingly important role of the stakeholder. Research limitations/implications This study is a small-scale case study, although its mixed methods help to ensure validity. Practical implications The findings will help nonprofit arts organisations to decide how to best communicate their values to their stakeholders. Social implications The improved communications model will contribute to the enabling of organisations to uphold and transmit their values and thus improve society’s overall quality of life. Originality/value Literature which provides in-depth examination of the communication of values within a nonprofit arts context via a range of channels, including traditional, online and multi-sensory, is sparse. The opportunity to study a newly formed nonprofit arts organisation is also rare. The results of this study provide valuable evidence that even in today’s social media-rich world, people, sounds, sights and material objects in physical space still have a vital role to play in the communication of values.

Exploring social and cultural diversity within ‘black British jazz’ audiences

This paper presents the findings of a recent study which explores the social, economic and cultural characteristics of audiences for performances by black British jazz musicians. It draws on Bourdieu’s theoretical concept of cultural capital, which links social class and educational qualification level to cultural consumption, as well as on Hall’s exploration of ‘new ethnicities’, demonstrating how the two theories are interrelated. The study uses a mixed method approach of observation, questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews, analysed using critical discourse analysis. The demographic data demonstrate the tendency, in line with cultural capital theory, for audiences for black British jazz musicians to be highly educated and from higher socio-economic classes. Particularly notable is that black audience members tended to be from the middle classes, suggesting that attention to the increasingly important social and demographic phenomenon of the black middle class is warranted. Qualitative data demonstrate the positioning of participants regarding the ways in which cultural capital interrelates with the dimension of ethnicity. The importance of cultural heritage to the black participants in particular suggests that Hall’s ‘new ethnicities’ is a particularly useful theory to aid understanding of the complexities of the interrelationship between race and musical taste.