CAE 2015 Reflection Paper on Culture And
Annalisa Cicerchia But the Gods, taking pity on human beings - a race born to labor - gave them regularly recurring divine festivals, as a means of refreshment from their fatigue; they gave them the Muses, and Apollo and Dionysus as the leaders of the Muses, to the end that, after refreshing themselves in the company of the Gods, they might return to an upright posture. - Plato 1. THE SECOND YEAR: AN OUTLOOK The first year of the present project has been devoted to identifying the main themes, approaches and methods in the intersection between culture and wellbeing and building a dynamic map. In the second year, we have tried to explore some of those themes, approaches and methods together with a number of cultural organisations, within and without CAE, with the aim of: a. bringing the debate closer to their daily activity and b. enlarging and strengthening the working group. 1 Along the first line, participants in the CAE network expressed (also thanks to a two days lab in Newcastle at the end of 2014 and two technical seminars in Brussels in 2015) a clear need of new, viable and reliable instruments to assess and communicate the social impacts of culture. In both occasions, participants have been very clear about the fact that cultural organisations need those instruments: first for themselves, second for their public/beneficiaries and third for their sponsors, funders, institutional supports, etc. They tended to express dissatisfaction with the conventional quantitative measures borrowed from economic performance toolkits, solely based upon quantitative and indicator-oriented approaches, which were considered unsuitable for conveying the core values involved in cultural practices.
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