Capturing Antipodean Cultural Value
by Samuel Jones
A value way beyond painting the numbers
August 3, 2005
Economics aside, the arts have huge importance in our cultural wellbeing, writes David Throsby.
Tessa Jowell, the British Secretary of State for Culture, made a speech last year in which she said: "Too often politicians have been forced to debate culture in terms only of its instrumental benefits to other agendas - education, the reduction of crime, improvements in wellbeing. In political and public discourse in this country we have avoided the more difficult approach of investigating, questioning and celebrating what culture actually does in and of itself."
Her remarks are an apt description of what has been happening in Australia over the past 10 years or so. Many artists, administrators and critics believe that governments have looked increasingly to the economic contribution of the arts and the cultural industries as a justification for assisting them.
More and more do arts organisations feel they have to demonstrate their financial rather than their artistic prowess as a means of obtaining funds to support their existence. Arts festivals big and small commission economic impact studies to trumpet their success in creating employment, raising local incomes and encouraging tourism; understanding their cultural impacts often seems to take second place.
Of course, there are good reasons for this state of affairs. The arts and the wider cultural industries do indeed comprise a significant economic sector and they have much to offer in contributing to a variety of economic and social goals. Moreover, we are just beginning to understand the significance of creativity as a key resource in the so-called new economy, so the likelihood is that the arts - as a primary source of creative ideas in the information age - will become even more important as an economic force. As such, government interest in these economic aspects of cultural policy is warranted and indeed important to our continued economic growth.
Yet something is missing. A purely instrumental view of the arts may be fine as far as it goes, but it isn't the only story. From an artistic point of view it isn't even the primary story. Ever since human beings began to make music, tell stories or paint pictures, art has had its own logic, its own rationale, its own self-evident justification. So a policy stance - whether at commonwealth, state or local level - that focuses more on economic and social outcomes than on artistic and cultural outcomes as a basis for the public interest is at best incomplete, at worst counter-productive.
How can we characterise the policy dilemma? As an economist I have always argued that the cultural value of the arts must be recognised alongside the economic benefits. Monetary values associated with the arts are reflected in the prices people pay for paintings or novels or theatre tickets. They're also evident in corporate sponsorship of the arts, and in the community's willingness to contribute funds to cultural activities and organisations. But the artistic and cultural value of art is more elusive and more wide-ranging, relating to the individual and collective experience of the intrinsic qualities of art that cannot be meaningfully reduced to financial terms. To take just one example, consider the way in which art helps us construct a sense of identity - it is impossible to take an instrumentalist approach to valuing the spiritual quality of indigenous rock art in Kakadu or the sound of a didgeridoo, or to place a monetary value on the Australian-ness reflected in Waltzing Matilda or a Tom Roberts painting.
In a recent report entitled Capturing Cultural Value, published by the British public policy organisation Demos, its head of culture, John Holden, takes up these arguments, writing that "the value of culture cannot be expressed only with statistics. Audience numbers give us a poor picture of how culture enriches us." He goes on to argue for a reshaping of the way in which public funding of culture is undertaken. He suggests the need for a language capable of reflecting, recognising and capturing the full range of values expressed through culture, drawing on ideas from anthropology, environmentalism and the debate about "public value" in the field of public sector management.
Across the Atlantic, another voice has been singing the same song. A report looking at the benefits of the arts was released last year by the influential RAND Corporation, a US organisation noted for its high-powered scientific research. After discussing a range of economic and social benefits attributable to the arts, the report turns to intrinsic benefits, calling them "the missing link" that has been marginalised in public discourse. The authors go on to suggest a new approach to funding the arts, one that takes a broader view of public benefit and that treats instrumental and intrinsic arguments on an equal footing.
Thus there are signs of a shift in the debate about the value of culture and hence in the essential rationales for government support for the arts. The shift certainly doesn't presage an abandonment of traditional approaches; in particular the economic arguments for arts support remain as solid as ever. But additional perspectives are being brought into account, loosely gathered together under the heading of cultural value, that assert the importance of the arts in their own right.
What does this debate mean for Australia? In policy terms it means we need to reassess our attitudes to the role of the arts and culture in contemporary Australian society, and to sharpen our understanding of how cultural policy - at all levels of government - can contribute to advancing that role.
This is an edited extract of an address Professor David Throsby is scheduled to give at a forum tomorrow entitled "How are we going? Directions for the Arts in the Creative Age". The forum is in association with the Byron Bay Writers Festival.
Graham Soult
Holden's quest to 'capture cultural value' has also had resonance here in the North East, where Northumbria University's Centre for Public Policy (CPP) is leading a project called 'Benchmarking and tracking the health and performance of the North East's cultural sector'. Supported by Culture North East (CNE) and the Regional Cultural Agencies Research Group (RCARG), the project is rooted in and running alongside the intended development of a Regional Cultural Observatory for the North East.
Though Holden's report was published partway through the project, it has helped to reinforce and articulate key issues around 'measuring' culture that were already beginning to emerge. Launched in November 2004, the project has been consistently informed by the fundamental recognition that: ??the availability of reliable data on current performance and trends and comparators within the cultural sector is fundamental to the development of cultural policy in the region and to the evaluation of the effectiveness of that policy? (CNE, An Overview of Regional Cultural Research: A Report for the Board of Culture North East, 2004:2).
From the outset, the project has identified a number of key intentions concerning the proposed 'basket' of cultural indicators:
- It will be theoretically and methodologically robust;
- It will seek to articulate holistic value of culture;
- It will be longitudinal, tracking change over time;
- It will develop consistent definitions to describe outputs and outcomes;
- Where possible, it will aim to enable comparisons at various scales (e.g. regional, national, European).
To date, the project has evolved through a series of stages, seeking to promote the organic development of a suitable indicator framework and set.
Stage 1
Stage 1 consisted of 'Mapping'. First, 'Mapping the agencies': building up an understanding of who's who in the North East cultural sector, focussing particularly on RCARG members, and developing an awareness of the current indicators used by these agencies. Second, 'Mapping the research': this updated a research audit that CNE had initially carried out in March 2004, acting as a precursor to a possible future Observatory function, and seeking to map the research that currently exists within and across the cultural domains, as well as what might be missing.
Stage 2
Stage 2 involved 'Mapping the literature'. This took the form of an extensive literature review, covering both academic and policy literatures (including culture in context of wider public policy debates), and both UK and international sources.
From the literature, it became evident that there are a number of key questions underpinning these current policy debates:
- What is the value or impact of culture?
- What do you measure?
- How do you measure it?
Stage 3
Building on the earlier mapping of agencies, research and literature, Stage 3 involved 'Mapping cultural impact'. Presented in the form of a matrix, it suggested 134 measures relating to what are commonly cited as the diverse impacts and values of culture. However, this stage of the indicator development process was purposely based not on how things had been done before, but on what we want to know now.
The mapping cultural impact exercise thus set the scene for indicators that straddle and espouse:
- Different cultural domains;
- Different types of input, output and outcome (instrumental and intrinsic; 'high-level' and 'low-level', avoiding the commonly used, but widely disliked, terminology of 'soft' and 'hard' measures);
- Different areas of cultural impact or value.
Thus, it sought to establish the right principles to underpin the benchmarking and tracking exercise, and provide a robust foundation for developing a set of indicators.
In considering the breadth of cultural impact, it is useful to reflect on the importance and relevance of Holden's report, in terms of both the cultural sector generally and the present research specifically.
Certainly, there is little doubt that Holden's work is widely known, and has made a useful contribution to the debate around the impact and value of culture. For example, it was widely cited at a recent cultural research conference at Warwick University, and is also referred to in Culture North East's research strategy.
Furthermore, a number of key synergies between Holden's work and the present project can be identified:
- Holden's idea of 'cultural value' recognises the holistic value of culture and creative activity, both intrinsically and instrumentally (though Holden dislikes that terminology);
- His articulation of 'higher order public goods' is very useful in seeking to identify unchanging principles that transcend shifting policy priorities and objectives;
- He advocates not disregarding what cannot be easily measured, and that more convincing ways of measuring cultural impact are needed ? this is also one of the key intentions of the present project.
At the same time, there are limitations in Holden's work ? not necessarily in how his framework is arrived at, but in its potential application within the cultural sector:
- Holden's focus is on institutions, while the CNE/CPP research is concerned with the cultural sector as a whole ? seeking to age with a multitude of agencies (at local, sub-regional and regional levels) as well as the private sector (e.g. creative industries, sport, etc.);
- Holden sometimes falls into Matarasso's trap of synonymising 'culture' with 'the arts', or ? at least ? reinforcing the perceived dominance of arts within the cultural sector. In contrast, the present benchmarking projects adopts the broader definition of 'culture' used by DCMS and the Regional Cultural Consortia, embracing the seven cultural domains of audio-visual, books and press, heritage, performance, sport, tourism and visual arts.
- Holden's 'new language' of culture, in drawing from a range of other values and languages, is rich and thoughtful, but there is a sense that it does not yet form a convincing whole.
Stage 4
Building on the various mapping exercises, there was an impetus to develop an indicator framework that would somehow differentiate between the 'physical health' and the 'performance' of the cultural sector, or broadly between inputs and outputs on the one hand and outcomes on the other.
Vital signs:
- Are concerned with physical health of the sector
- Espouse inputs, outputs and (some) outcomes
Quality of life:
- Is concerned with the performance of the cultural sector
- Espouses outcomes
This can be articulated as a cyclical relationship where quality of life is reliant on the vital signs of physical fitness being in good shape; but where physical fitness is dependent upon a good quality of life.
Within this 'vital signs' and 'quality of life' structure, eleven headlines have been defined; those for 'quality of life' are inspired by Holden's notion of unchanging and higher order public goods. The 134 measures identified during the 'mapping cultural impact' exercise have then been regrouped under these different headlines.
As this is work in progress, I don't want to post too much detail on a public message board ? but if anyone is interested in knowing more about the project, or giving feedback, just let me know! (graham.soult@northumbria.ac.uk)