Understanding the value of arts & culture The AHRC Cultural Value Project Geoffrey Crossick & Patrycja Kaszynska 2 Understanding the value of arts & culture The AHRC Cultural Value Project Geoffrey Crossick & Patrycja Kaszynska THE AHRC CULTURAL VALUE PROJECT CONTENTS Foreword 3 4. The engaged citizen: civic agency 58 & civic engagement Executive summary 6 Preconditions for political engagement 59 Civic space and civic engagement: three case studies 61 Part 1 Introduction Creative challenge: cultural industries, digging 63 and climate change 1. Rethinking the terms of the cultural 12 Culture, conflict and post-conflict: 66 value debate a double-edged sword? The Cultural Value Project 12 Culture and art: a brief intellectual history 14 5. Communities, Regeneration and Space 71 Cultural policy and the many lives of cultural value 16 Place, identity and public art 71 Beyond dichotomies: the view from 19 Urban regeneration 74 Cultural Value Project awards Creative places, creative quarters 77 Prioritising experience and methodological diversity 21 Community arts 81 Coda: arts, culture and rural communities 83 2. Cross-cutting themes 25 Modes of cultural engagement 25 6. Economy: impact, innovation and ecology 86 Arts and culture in an unequal society 29 The economic benefits of what? 87 Digital transformations 34 Ways of counting 89 Wellbeing and capabilities 37 Agglomeration and attractiveness 91 The innovation economy 92 Part 2 Components of Cultural Value Ecologies of culture 95 3. The reflective individual 42 7. Health, ageing and wellbeing 100 Cultural engagement and the self 43 Therapeutic, clinical and environmental 101 Case study: arts, culture and the criminal 47 interventions justice system Community-based arts and health 104 Cultural engagement and the other 49 Longer-term health benefits and subjective 106 Case study: professional and informal carers 51 wellbeing Culture and international influence 54 Ageing and dementia 108 Two cultures? 110 8. Arts in education: a note 113 2 Part 3 Methodologies 9. Methodologies: evidence, data 120 and varieties of evaluation The life of methods and the politics of evidence 120 Types of evidence, approaches to evaluation 124 and kinds of framework Social science approaches and the digital turn 132 Approaches from economics 135 Ethnography and network analysis 139 Arts-based methods and hermeneutics 142 Approaches from science and medicine 145 Methods and approaches: some conclusions 148 Part 4 Conclusion 10. Conclusions and looking forward 152 Annexes References to works cited 162 Awards made by the Cultural Value Project 194 Cultural Value Project Advisory Group 198 Symposia, workshops & events 199 3 UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF ARTS & CULTURE FOREWORD This report presents From the Prime Minister and the Chancellor down, there is widespread political recognition that the UK is a place where the findings of culture meets commerce. There is an acknowledgement that the Cultural Value money spent on the creative industries is vital in supporting the cultural life of the nation (as well as creating real growth Project, one of the and jobs), and that the creative industries help to define us, most in-depth affecting how the rest of the world views us, and encouraging attempts yet made people in other countries to engage with us. At the same time, it is entirely appropriate that policymakers to understand the should be concerned that public money is spent effectively in value of the arts and support of the arts and culture: that it can be shown to make a real difference. Yet despite the big strides made by cultural culture – the difference that they make organisations in the last decade or so, in making their case for to individuals and to society. The three- investment, there has remained a sense that we are lacking year project, supported by the Arts and robust methodologies for demonstrating the value of the arts and culture, and for showing exactly how public funding of Humanities Research Council, has been them contributes to wider social and economic goals. looking into the question of why the arts That is where the Cultural Value Project comes in. Now and culture matter, and how we capture more than ever, we need rigorous ways of understanding and measuring that elusive thing we call ‘cultural value’. In the effects that they have. an ‘age of austerity,’ making convincing arguments for public investment becomes all the more challenging. At the same time, the cultural and creative industries are growing fast in the UK, outpacing much of the rest of the economy. This means that we are looking at a coming decade of growing demand for research that generates historical, linguistic, intercultural and religious insight – the kind of insight that feeds a thriving UK cultural sector. This affects us closely in the AHRC. The things that we support as a Research Council are expanding, and we need to be clear about how we can contribute to that expansion, by funding outstanding arts and humanities research, to the benefit of everyone in the UK. This is not the same as a blanket advocacy for public funding of the arts and culture, or of arts and humanities research. It’s about trying to be clearer about what we mean by cultural value, so that our support for the creative 4 and cultural industries can be better targeted and more effective. And it’s about the AHRC being an engaged presence in an area that is of great importance to us all. The Cultural Value Project has taken a big step toward a more thorough understanding of cultural value. What’s new about its approach? First, it has cast its net far wider than has been the case before. Because of the scope and ambition of the project, it has looked into new areas that have hitherto been neglected, and considered a far wider range of forms of cultural practice than has previously been possible. And the Cultural Value Project has been able to break down the divide between the intrinsic and the instrumental camps, to transcend the debate about things to be valued ‘for their own sake,’ or else understood only in terms of the narrow economic or other material benefits that they provide. The project has sought to put the experience of individuals back at the heart of ideas about cultural value, arguing that it is only once we have started with individual experience that we can then work outwards, and understand the kinds of benefit that culture may have for society, for communities, for democracy, for public health and wellbeing, for urban life and regional growth. By working outwards from the individual in this way, we quickly realise that we need a wider and more subtle repertoire of methodologies if we are to talk about the concept of cultural value, and evaluate it meaningfully. I believe that there is much in this report that policymakers and cultural organisations will find valuable, and there is much for us in the AHRC to consider, too. I would like to thank the report’s authors, Professor Geoffrey Crossick and Dr Patrycja Kaszynska who also led the Cultural Value Project, for their excellent work in putting it together. Andrew Thompson Chief Executive, AHRC 5 UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF ARTS & CULTURE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Why do the arts and culture matter? The Project had two main objectives. The first was to identify the various components that make up cultural value. And What difference do they make and the second was to consider and develop the methodologies how do we know what difference and the evidence that might be used to evaluate these components of cultural value. they make? This report presents the This report sets out the often striking findings of the Project’s outcomes of the AHRC’s Cultural Value work. Some 70 original pieces of work collectively make up Project which looked at how we think the Cultural Value Project – a mixture of new research, critical reviews of the literature and specialist workshops. This work about the value of the arts and culture has probed, challenged and advanced our thinking about how to individuals and to society. better to understand and capture the elusive phenomenon that is called ‘cultural value’. The authors of the report have also drawn on a wide range of literature from the UK and internationally. The result is among the most extensive, wide- ranging and challenging of attempts to grasp the difference to individuals, society and the economy that engagement with arts and culture makes. Our key aim was to cut through the current logjam with its repeated polarisation of the issues: the intrinsic v the instrumental, the elite v the popular, the amateur v the professional, private v public spaces of consumption, qualitative v quantitative evidence, and the publicly-funded v the commercially-oriented. Definitional and boundary difficulties of these kinds have bedevilled debate about what Below: The New Vic Ages and Stages Company in rehearsal for 'Out constitutes the value of culture and in what ways it may be of the Box' at the New Vic Theatre, May 2014. Credit: Claire Walker. evaluated and captured. The Report moves beyond these 6 binaries to open up a fresh approach to thinking about the as reflectiveness, empathy and imagination that have as their value of culture. starting point individual experience. And, secondly, it ignores the fact that some of the most important contributions of Debate about cultural value has further been distorted by the arts and culture to other areas are embedded in that individual wish to protect public funding and to influence policy. The experience: perhaps not economic impact but rather the AHRC undertook this project not to advocate its own cause capacity to be economically innovative and creative; perhaps nor to lobby on behalf of cultural institutions, but to fulfil its not urban regeneration driven by large new cultural buildings fundamental role as a Research Council: through research to but rather the way small-scale arts assets and activities might further understanding in its domain.