The project builds on and expands previous studies on cultural volunteering conducted by the Centre for Research on Civil Society and Voluntary Sector. Information and results from these studies are available from the project pages published in several reports: Cultural Institutions and Volunteering I, Cultural Institutions and Volunteering II, and Cultural Institutions and Volunteering III.
Subproject 1: The Democratic Infrastructure of the Cultural Field – The Place and Role of Friends Associations
Friends associations have a long tradition in Norwegian cultural life and continue to play a significant role for many cultural institutions today. However, their exact role and place within the cultural democratic infrastructure are partly unclear and seemingly vary across different cultural fields. This is the initial impression one may have when speaking with representatives from various cultural institutions. Some institutions emphasise friends associations as social arenas with substantial cultural expertise that benefits the institution, others highlight them as "participatory arenas" and links to the local community that enable the inclusion of diverse groups, while other institutions view friends associations more as "financial supporters" that contribute funding to operations and projects.
Through a qualitative case study, the aim is to provide knowledge about the similarities and differences between cultural fields concerning the place and role of friends associations in the cultural democratic infrastructure. The research project will adopt a comparative perspective by comparing two cultural fields in terms of the research questions: the museum sector and the visual arts field. These are two cultural fields with quite different approaches to and understandings of cultural volunteering (Segaard 2023 and 2024). Whether this also applies to their views on friends associations is unclear, but comparing two extremes is expected to help highlight the diversity of viewpoints, attitudes, and practices - which is the overarching goal of the project.
Subproject 2: Volunteering in Cultural Institutions – Change or Stability
This subproject follows up on the quantitative surveys of volunteering and collaboration with volunteer actors within public and publicly funded cultural institutions conducted in 2018 and 2021, with a particular focus on change and stability and the characteristics of institutions that increasingly use volunteers.
Themes to be explored include: the extent of volunteer efforts, who the volunteers are, the tasks they perform, how volunteers are recruited and retained, characteristics of collaboration between institutions and volunteers, areas and forms of collaboration, attitudes towards volunteer efforts, and reasons for not using volunteer efforts.
The project will, like the surveys in 2018 and 2021, target the entire population of public and publicly funded cultural institutions within six cultural fields: libraries, archives, museums, music, performing arts, and visual arts.
