Participant Experience in Art-Sport: Additive? Interactive? Transformative?

Abstract

imove, which became Yorkshire and Humberside’s regional programme for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, was inspired by ‘the art of movement’, and underpinned by the idea of transcending dualities of mind/body and art/sport. Art and sport were combined in various ways within the programme, and with different degrees and types of audience engagement and participation. This article draws on the evaluation data collected during the course of the programme to develop a typology of art-sport relationships: additive, interactive, and transformative. It defines and illustrates each instance with examples of particular projects and highlights the role of the participants/audience in determining the nature of the physical learning and new knowledge of the moving body that arises in each case. Finally, it considers the conditions under which hybrid forms of art-sport can innovate and flourish with reference to the concept of ‘third space’.