Oliver Bennett has published a new book - Cultures of Optimism: The Institutional Promotion of Hope (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

In this sequel to his book on Cultural Pessimism, Oliver Bennett explores how individuals and societies sustain hope. The book focuses on the institutional propagation of optimism in diverse domains: democratic politics; work; the family; religion; and psychotherapy. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including social and evolutionary psychology, intellectual history and organisational behaviour, Bennett addresses a number of questions: what are the functions of optimism in modern societies? How and why do institutions promote it? What values and attitudes are involved? The institutional actions explored, conceptualised as cultural policy in its broadest sense, point to the promotion of hope and optimism as a near-universal cultural imperative.

For reviews and further details see here

On 16^th September Warwick Creative Exchange invited artists, cultural producers, and Coventry City Council officers to join academics from Warwick and Coventry on a series of walks through Coventry designed to ‘reimagine’ the city and the place of arts and culture within it. The ten walks took participants through Coventry’s varied cityscape of leafy suburbs, ancient buildings, brutal modernism and municipal parks, finally crossing the ringroad into the City Centre where we gathered at EGO performance space to reflect on our journeys. Along the way the walkers visited museums, theatres and local landmarks as well as stopping to talk to local people about the city.

The project was supported by Warwick’s Humanities Research Fund and the Institute of Advanced Study, with the aim of engaging Warwick researchers in the development of a new vision for the city’s arts and culture. The event was facilitated by Warwick Creative Exchange, Coventry Artspace and Warwick Arts Centre. To find out more, please visit the Centre’s blog or the Warwick Creative Exchange website.

AHRC Project Workshop

Cultural value and social justice: Towards a collaborative agenda, 15th July 2014

This workshop is an integral part of the AHRC funded project The politics of cultural value: Towards an emancipatory framework, which aims to develop a social justice approach to current debates around cultural value, cultural politics, and cultural policy, especially in relation to arts funding and development strategies. The project is led by Dr Eleonora Belfiore, of the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at Warwick University in partnership with David Lambert and Leanne Taylor of the independent cultural consultancy cultural solutions UK.

The workshop will be an opportunity for the team to share interim findings and incorporate insights, reflections and critiques emerging from the day in the final project report. We also hope that the day of intense debate will result in the formation of new relationships, co-operations and conversation to develop a shared, collaborative and interdisciplinary research and practice agenda that straddles the academia/cultural sector/policy divides.

More info here.