Eyeballs, soundbites and plings: understanding participation and engagement in the Cultural Olympiad

This paper looks at measures for cultural participation and engagement, in relation to UK cultural policy and cultural programming for the London 2012 Olympics. It considers the meanings and interpretation of these terms specifically in relation to the evaluation framework for the WE PLAY programme in the North West of England, an initiative funded by Legacy Trust UK and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.The paper reviews methodologies for understanding arts participation and engagement used within evaluation and evidence-based policy making. It argues that in spite of the dissonance between arts and sports within Olympics programmes (Inglis 2008) and claims of its deleterious impact on arts funding, particular within the regions, London 2012 has engendered creative programming which strategically deploys the Cultural Olympiad to satisfy local cultural policy objectives and which demands a sophisticated understanding of participation in order to articulate its role within these agendas.