Weile Zou

How touring national cultural initiatives, such as the Turner Prize, shape local arts ecologies when held in towns and cities outside London

Since its establishment in 1984, the Turner Prize, as a British visual art prize, has consistently provided a platform for national attention, debate and participation. In order to extend its impact beyond Tate Britain, the Turner Prize exhibition has been staged every other year at venues across the UK since 2011. As part of the wider UK City of Culture programme, the touring exhibition now gives the title city first refusal to host the show in its designated year. Host cities, such as Bradford (2025), have received higher visitor numbers than when the exhibition is shown at Tate Britain, and interest in hosting the prize remains consistently high.

This research focuses on how touring national cultural initiatives, such as the Turner Prize, shape local arts ecologies when held in towns and cities outside London. Taking a regional perspective, it examines how these programmes enable national institutions and local organisations to build working partnerships, and how such collaborations influence cultural activity beyond metropolitan centres. Particular attention is given to the collaborations that operate between local museums, galleries, local authorities, community groups, and artists on the one hand, and national institutions and cultural initiatives on the other.

The study traces how these networks are formed and evolve through collaboration, how local landscapes are reconfigured in the process, and how local residents experience and articulate these collaborations. It also seeks to develop new conceptual tools to analyse the relational networks and social effects that emerge around such events.

Using interviews, fieldwork and policy analysis, the project aims to provide a detailed account of the organisational conditions, network structures and working practices that shape regional arts ecologies. The findings are intended to contribute to the work of Tate’s National Partnerships team and feed into wider research on touring cultural initiatives.

Supervisors

• Professor Nina Wakeford
• Dr Michael Guggenheim
• Heather Sturdy (Tate)