Project-Based Work and Sustainable Development—A Comparative Case Study of Cultural Animation Projects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations: cute topic, but still a lot of work to be finished. 

To distinguish different categories "sustainable development" (SD), "cultural dimension of sustainability" and "cultural sustainability" (should not be connected to Jon Hawkes, and his book "Culture as a Fourth Pillar of SD" where he is discussing various functions of culture for sustainable development, but mostly the transversal role of culture as enabler and motivator... the notion "cultural sustainability" appears only once at page 25 of his book - in a quotation, and without discussion). To avoid all these conceptual ambiguities, it would be easier to stick to the notion "sustainable development" (SD). On the other hand, the well known and widely used definition of SD quoted as THE definition of "Our Common Future" report- taken out of its context, is still problematic (see Hristova 2015). 

The article would gain if the authors explain better the reasons for choosing these two cases for their study. The argument that one of the organizations is NGO, while the other is public (and the connected with this fact different financial sources) is not enough. It remains unclear why exactly these organizations have been selected and with such big time lag; and why in these two small towns - because they are typical "Middletowns" or unique in some aspects? Or it happened by chance? What were the authors' criteria for "cultural animation project" - on the basis of its title (i.e. because it contained cultural animation in the title), or there were some other reasons for the authors to decide that these two cases are in their essence examples of cultural animation. 

Since there is big time difference in the two case-studies, it is also interesting to know if the authors tried to provide some fresh information about the situation of Animation1 community? Did they manage to continue the direction set up by the project and to be an attractive and friendly place - as few years ago? If yes, this would mean that they really took the right direction to sustainable development of their place. 

In times of cultural governance and participatory turn, there is something disturbing in the research interpretation of cultural animation project in which "the recipients of the projects" are considered "external environment", while "the employees involved in the animations of the organisation" are the internal one (556-57). As a matter of fact, if the animation project is successful, the animated community should become a community of proactive participants, co-producers and entrepreneurs of their own life, anything else, but not passive recipients.   

 The discussion of project vs. animation was not convincingly developed, and contains a lot of implicit contradictions.

I would recumbend to the authors to take their time to collect additional information from the two cases and their towns, also from the people (the "recipients of the projects") to see what happened with them nowadays.

it is also mandatory to upgrade and refresh the Literature review with some more recent analysis:

COST Action IS1007. (2015). Culture in, for and as sustainable development. (J. Dessein, K. Soini, G. Fairclough, & L. Horlings, Eds.). University of Jyväskylä. https://www.culturalsustainability.eu/conclusions.pdf

Hristova, Dragisevic-Sesic and Duxbury (2015) Culture and Sustainable Development in European Cities: Imagining Europolis, Routledge. 

Sacha Kagan et al. (2018) Culture in Sustainable Urban Development. City, Culture and Society, 13 (2018), 32-45.

Sari Asikainen, Claudia Brites et al. (eds.) (2017) Culture in Sustainability: Towards a Transdisciplinary Approach [Sophi] University of Yuvaskyla.

Special issue of International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2017, 23:2, Cultural Policies for Sustainable Development.

Finally, thorough editing by native speaking editor is needed - not only proof reading and correction of typos, but polishing the rough and sometimes - imprecise language. As the paper has been written by several researchers, it is necessary to make all part linguistically coherent.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for your feedback and all comments. Your remarks were very helpful and encouraged us to implement changes in order to make our statement clearer and hopefully  useful for other scholars. We have addressed your comments as follows:

• We clarified the terminology we use in the text, namely: sustainable development and cultural animation.
• In the ‘materials and methods’ section of the article we explained the reasons for choosing the two case studies.
• We added additional information about the current situation in the Animation 1 case.
• We developed ‘discussion’ and ‘conclusions’ sections.
• When it comes to your suggestion to ‘collect additional information from the two cases and their towns, also from the people (the "recipients of the projects") to see what happened with them nowadays’, after having internal discussion we decided that, considering the research problem and research question it is not necessary. However we extended the description of the cases by adding additional information and quotations from our research so hopefully they are presented in a better way. Also definitely we will consider coming back to those communities in future within further research projects.
• Following your suggestion we refreshed the literature review in the ‘introduction’ and ‘theoretical background’ sections.
• We have carried out a detailed language revision of the text.

We trust that we addressed your suggestions and improved the paper accordingly.

Sincerely yours

Authors

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

the topic of your research is indeed very interesting and worth analysing. However, I am afraid that the article in its current form leaves too many loose ends to be published. The definition you offer of cultural animation is incredibly wide, and despite of being clear, it is not articulated within the rest of the article. You do not define culture, but between the lines you mention a spiritual (??? do you mean symbolic?) and a material dimension of culture, and furthermore present the public sphere as an example of material culture (!) as if public spaces weren't full of symbolic elements. The separation is already complicated, but I'd dare say the example is wrong.

You justify the two cases you have analysed from a methodological (contrast) viewpoint, but I am missing clear arguments for understanding how and why you seek to answer your research questions with these two cases. I am also lacking information regarding how these two projects articulate sustainability and cultural animation. Please give clearer pieces of information and arguments.

And finally: when you say you do this research in relation to Poland... you analyse two cases that indeed took place in Poland. But the text does not contribute substantially to inform about cultural animation in Poland. I am not saying that it should, I am just saying that some paragraphs are misleading in relation to the ambition of the analysis.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you very much for your comments and the very useful suggestions you made about our paper. We have addressed them as follows:

• We do agree that the term ‘cultural animation’ was not explained in sufficient way thus we added additional reflection on this in “theoretical background” section of the article.
• In the ‘materials and methods’ section of the article we explained the reasons for choosing the two case studies. We also improved the description of the two cases we focused on.
• Thank you for the comment about Polish context of the cases. Indeed the text does not contribute substantially to inform about cultural animation in Poland. For this reason we decided to resign from mentioning this context. We also clarified this by modifying the title of the article.
• We have carried out a detailed language revision of the text.

We trust that we addressed your suggestions and improved the paper accordingly.

Sincerely yours

Authors

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for the possibility to review to paper and thereby get a glimpse of cultural sustainability. The topic is really current and important.

Still, in my opinion the article has a quite limited view on cultural sustainability, approaching a few aspects. I would recommend you to broaden the literature review (introduction) and also make the positioning of the paper clearer already at the introduction and explain what you will present in the next chapters.

Also the research design is quite fuzzy. At the section whit introduction, please be cheerful when you are explain something, because research should contain official sources of information (ad specific bibliography).

I would prefer to be clearer on case selection, why you are presented only these cases. 

Then, at the results parts - here readers may not understand the value proposition of this approach.

Please also make the positioning of the paper clearer already at the final remarks.

The paper is full of Basic English grammar mistakes and very careless working.

Please be cheerful on the references, below you will find some of the references or aspects that are not presented correctly:

Row 73-  the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’’[13:43].

Row 82-  the area of their interest [15, 16, 17, 18].

Row 111 development as crucial for local sustainability [19, 20, 14].

Row 131 challenge for many theoreticians and practitioners [27, 28, 7].

Row 194 understood as a synonym of “Information,” “Knowledge,” “Network” Society [37:5].

Row 386 institution needs to adjust as well. [W1-A1] – please explain what means that!

Row- 452 environment protection[D1-A2].-idem

Row 514 those for seniors, those aimed at boosting civil activity, or artistic ones. [F1-A2]. -idem

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

Thank you very much for your comments and the very useful suggestions you made about our paper. We have addressed them as follows:

• Following your suggestion we refreshed the literature review in the ‘introduction’ and ‘theoretical background’ sections. Hopefully it helped us to explain our views on sustainable development and cultural animation in a better way.
• We improved the ‘materials and methods’ section in order to make the research design clearer.
• In the ‘materials and methods’ section of the article we explained the reasons for choosing the two case studies. We also improved the description of the two cases we focused on.
• We developed ‘discussion’ and ‘conclusions’ sections.
• We corrected some minor mistakes mentioned by the Reviewer, as well as a detailed language revision of the text.

We trust that we addressed your suggestions and improved the paper accordingly.

Sincerely yours

Authors

Reviewer 4 Report

You are opening the new area of research and I think that writing about this theme is really necessary, these days. I mean, culture is in general level neglected and many states are fare from seeing cultural importance for development, especially for sustainability. So I could only praised you for effort to publish such contribution in the journal.

Also, I have some remarks which you could use to improve the text.

I basically don’t know what the difference between cultural activities is per se and cultural activities connected to sustainability? How were organizations of Christmas Eve meeting or Easter meeting connected to sustainability? I think that you should emphasise in the conclusion how cultural activities are related to ecosystem. What are the possibilities for the future?

I would say that main lack of your contribution is in presenting the results of case studies (methodology of presenting the results). Please, include more references when explaining the methodology! I would suggest that you take more sequences of interviews and fit into the results. Otherwise I have a sense that you are just presenting your impressions or observations.

You have conduct this research in two time points; is there anything you could say what have you learnt from previous research, what are the deficiencies or such a methodological procedure.

Research questions (91-93) should be fit in to the text, because you mention it in methodology.

Chapter DISCUSSION you should reduce (538-545) and related it much more to sustainability. I would suggest to merge this chapter with conclusions.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 4,

Thank you very much for your comments and the very useful suggestions you made about our paper. We have addressed them as follows:

• We developed ‘discussion’ and ‘conclusions’ sections. Also we refreshed the literature review in the ‘introduction’ and ‘theoretical background’ sections. Hopefully it helped us to explain our views on sustainable development and cultural animation in a better way.
• We improved the ‘materials and methods’ section in order to make the research design clearer.
• In the ‘materials and methods’ section of the article we explained the reasons for choosing the two case studies. We also improved the description of the two cases we focused on.
• We developed ‘discussion’ and ‘conclusions’ sections and related it more to sustainability.

We trust that we addressed your suggestions and improved the paper accordingly.

Sincerely yours

Authors

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

You have improved considerably your article. The topic of cultural animation deserves one more effort. My comments to you are included in the text of your article. With yellow are marked problematic/ unclear  phrases/ sentences. In some places I tried to offer editing in sticky notes (what is not my task), but generally you need a professional linguistic advice. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for your feedback and all comments. Your remarks were very helpful and we really appreciate your effort to help us to improve our work. However as you may notice, following the remarks made by Reviewer 2 we implemented the following changes to the text:

• In the ‘introduction’ we added the definitions of sustainable development, culture and cultural animation. Also in the ‘theoretical background’ section we developed the fragment on cultural animation.
• In the ‘materials and methods’ section of the article we added additional explanation on how the data gathering process was organized. Also we improved the description on how data from different sources are combined and brought into relation.
• We developed further ‘discussion’ and ‘conclusions’ sections.

Sincerely yours

Authors

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

From my point of view there have been changes in the article but not substantial enough to justify a publication. Although some additional information to cultural animation has been added, neither the notion of culture is clear, nor the concept of cultural animation.

Introduction

Already the beginning of the first sentence “Culture and the space co-created thereby…” leaves the reader with many questions. Why does culture co-create space? Co-create with what? What means culture here? It is a very basic demand from an article that concepts are introduced and defined properly, especially when used against the grain.

The same holds true for cultural animation which seems to build on a concept of cultural activities that widens and centers according to the momentary needs of the text, not according to a clear-cut definition. While with the example of Liverpool the authors seem to suggest a culture in the sense of consumable cultural activities, later on other more folkloristic activities and practices seem more important. Again in other moments we seem to talk about culture as the simple process of producing something with creativity. These shifts are by no means clear but confuse the reader. A solution would be to build on a clear definition of one or two authors and then take it from there.

The authors have quite a few structuring problems, the text is sometimes a bit sloppy. On page 2 there is an on the other hand without any reference to a on the one hand before.

Theoretical Background

We find some further definitions in the theoretical background but they also lack sufficient coherence. Is culture the symbolic universe that enables certain values to be established within a community? If so, how do they relate to definitions provided before?

Data gathering/Methodology

It is still difficult to see how the data gathering process was organized. “Different stakeholders” is no clear definition. Documents of the entities and projects do not provide much information of impact.

Data Analysis

I miss further explanation on how data from different sources are combined and brought into relation.

Results

Without clear definitions projects and the way they fit in cultural animation is spongy. I did not understand why the community project of the first example is cultural animation. How does the NGO use cultural practices to animate and create collectives?

Unfortunately the conclusions are weak and not very useful.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you very much for your comments and the very useful suggestions you made about our paper. We have addressed them as follows:

• In the ‘introduction’ we added the definitions of sustainable development, culture and cultural animation. Also in the ‘theoretical background’ section we developed the fragment on cultural animation.
• In the ‘materials and methods’ section of the article we added additional explanation on how the data gathering process was organized. Also we improved the description on how data from different sources are combined and brought into relation.
• We developed further ‘discussion’ and ‘conclusions’ sections.

We trust that we addressed your suggestions and improved the paper accordingly.

Sincerely yours

Authors

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Congratulations on the changes made, which include all the requirements.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

Thank you very much for your feedback and all comments. Your remarks were very helpful and we really appreciate your effort to help us to improve our work. However as you may notice, following the remarks made by Reviewer 2 we implemented the following changes to the text:

• In the ‘introduction’ we added the definitions of sustainable development, culture and cultural animation. Also in the ‘theoretical background’ section we developed the fragment on cultural animation.
• In the ‘materials and methods’ section of the article we added additional explanation on how the data gathering process was organized. Also we improved the description on how data from different sources are combined and brought into relation.
• We developed further ‘discussion’ and ‘conclusions’ sections.

Sincerely yours

Authors