Synthetic summary of the debates at the central event

The Central Event was a 2-day, in presence gathering (12th and 13th January, 2023) in the Professor Stuart Hall Building at Goldsmiths’, University of London. Titled “Tensions in societal values of culture: can value conflicts be managed or mitigated?”, included a workshop and an ‘open debates’ event. During the event, the findings of the UNCHARTED project have been presented to a broad audience, allowing the collection of additional feedbacks and reflections on the conceptual findings produced by the Consortium during Work Package 3. WP3 addresses the central challenge of understanding the tensions relating to how different actors in the cultural field (i.e. citizens, professionals, public administrators) construct, measure, compare and rank the values they attribute to culture. Specifically, the objectives of WP3 are: - To analyse the grammar of valuation and evaluation in cultural practices of consumption; - To analyse the practices of evaluation in cultural production and heritage management; - To understand how do public administration evaluation methodologies influence cultural production and heritage management; - To investigate the representations of cultural value in cultural information systems. Through an extended dialogue between the whole consortium, members of the project advisory board, invited stakeholders and professionals from cultural institutions, the symposium and the workshop developed an examination of the tensions showcased by WP3 research outputs and a comparison of the different ways these tensions can be solved or managed. A symposium open to the public took place during the 1st day of the event; the symposium included a poster exhibition illustrating empirical findings from primary case studies undertaken by the Consortium partners during WP3, a retrospective account of previous work packages and a highly interactive discussion on the tensions in social values of culture. Other sessions of the symposium included an overview of Work package 4 and the launch of Work package 5. A workshop was held during the 2nd day of the event. The workshop featured a consortium-wise discussion on the work done on WP3 cases inspired by feedbacks from advisory board members, the discussion of the work done in WP5 and a co-working session for WP4, followed by a general discussion.