Arts and culture after lockdown: moving toward a hybrid model of provision

On the 28th of April, the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place published the COVID-19 CARE policy brief by Professor Josie Billington, Dr Katia Balabanova, Dr Joanne Worsley, and Dr Megan Watkins. Through the perspectives of service providers of arts and culture, the policy brief highlights how restricted access to arts and culture due to COVID-19 has impacted mental health and wellbeing in the Liverpool City Region (LCR).

As we enter this transitional period of gradual restriction-easing, it is becoming evident from our research that the aftermath of limited access to arts and culture will be felt for months to come. In Mental Health Awareness Week, it feels even more important to draw attention to the impact on the LCR population of reduced access to arts and culture during the pandemic. We have conducted online questionnaires with follow-up interviews with people who ordinarily benefit from arts and culture within the LCR. Specifically, the collected data explores:

• difficulties with online provision and restricted access to in-person arts and cultural events;
• the benefits of having access to online provisions throughout the various stages of the COVID-19 pandemic;
• the importance of moving toward a hybrid model of online and in-person provision.

The impact of restricted access to arts and culture has been particularly pronounced during the most recent lockdown. Our participants report a general reduction in online gathering, as the initial enthusiasm for virtual meetings waned when the first lockdown was lifted, and was not resumed in the same way when the second was imposed.

This reduced involvement has occurred at a particularly difficult time, with the winter lockdown appearing to have had more detrimental impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of participants, as short hours of daylight and poor weather have combined with uncertainty about the length of the lockdown. Part of this decreased engagement with online arts and culture relates to a reduction in access to free online services, which had previously proved to be important in promoting both personal and community involvement with arts and culture. Restricted access to arts and culture online has remained a particular issue for those individuals with limited technological literacy or access to resources such as technology and sustainable internet connections.

While accessible online provision is important to support sustained mental health and wellbeing, people in the LCR involved in our study have reported a sense of loss in respect of the wider experiences surrounding arts and culture. In particular, in-person experiences were seen as an important catalyst for providing a sense of community through shared collective experiences. While participants have found some sense of community at times through online provision, the important sense of sharing a physical space with others is a benefit that virtual engagement has been unable to replicate. These physical spaces enable an experience of intensely shared emotion, such as the feeling of excitement in being part of a crowd, that is harder to reproduce when sitting in front of the screen at home.

It remains important, however, that services are available to people online in accessible formats throughout this transition period between lockdown and a sense of return to pre-pandemic life. Participants in our surveys have reported that online provision has crucially improved access to arts and culture for disabled people in the LCR, with in-person services before the pandemic often being inaccessible for participants or people within their social networks. In this way, online access has provided an important route to shared arts and cultural experiences within social networks for people who may otherwise have been excluded due to accessibility issues around long-term health conditions.Virtual provision has benefited many of our participants from the LCR who are now able to engage with content and creators – music, theatre, speakers - from across the world.

Additionally, while our participants report that many people in the LCR are keen to return to in-person events, not everyone feels ready to re-engage with arts and culture in this way. The new realities of attending any in-person events in a post-COVID-19 world inevitably involve serious risk assessment, particularly for those with health conditions or vulnerable members of family. Even as the vaccination programme rolls out, there remains a sense of caution and anxiety around re-engaging in mass events, particularly for events held within indoor spaces. Given the apparent value of arts and culture in supporting mental health, it is important that access to cultural activities remains accessible online throughout this transition period, providing many people with a lifeline throughout these uncertain times.

These important considerations will continue to be relevant across the LCR and beyond as we start to think about the longer-term trajectory out of our online-based pandemic lives. As is the case for many other industries, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed arts and culture organisations to explore new, creative means of integrating online and in-person provisions. Participants in the LCR have reported early experiences of events that utilise online technologies in new, immersive ways, as well as live events that incorporate technology – in-person audiences interacting with cultural activities via mobile phones for example - to safely enhance socially distanced events.

In moving forward, there is demand for maintaining both online provision, that enables accessibility and opens up new, innovative experiences, and in-person events that boost community connectedness. In the coming months, the development and implementation of this alternative, hybrid provision will be an important move forward for many, and enable both the community and creative industries sector to rebuild capacity and safe re-investment in the region’s arts and cultural riches.

 

Melissa Chapple, Research Associate

Tonya Anisimovich, Research Associate