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‘Concurrent impacts’ refers to the many ways in which individuals may respond
to cultural programmes without being consciously aware of it. For instance, individuals
may hold their breath, their heart rate may increase, they may lose track of
time, or experience chills. Some of the physiological responses can be measured at
the very moment at which they occur. Psychological engagement is more difficult
to measure in the moment, as any conscious reflection on the individual’s state
may interfere with the experience (ie, interrupt their sense of flow or absorption).
‘Experienced impacts’ are consciously perceived. They may start accruing before
the event (as reflected in heightened levels of anticipation), and also manifest
during the event, and afterwards. These are the impacts that are captured in postevent
surveys, interviews and focus groups. Far from distracting from the experience,
the measurement process can actually generate additional impacts by
inviting attendees to reflect on what they have just experienced. Indeed, cultural
organisations have developed an extensive body of practice to magnify experienced
impacts through educational and enrichment activities before and after the
cultural programmes.
‘Extended impacts’ encompasses all impacts that result from a specific cultural
experience over the remainder of the participant’s lifetime. Some experiences
may be quickly forgotten, in which there is little or no extended impact, except,
perhaps, subconsciously. Others, however, stay in our memories for the rest of our
lives, and those memories may be activated by subsequent experiences (Everett
and Barrett 2011). That is, later events may lead us to revisit past experiences and
perhaps appreciate some aspect of them anew. Past experiences also provide contextual
knowledge that may help us gain additional pleasure from future events.
Individual impacts are not fixed or permanent in our conceptualisation. In
general, we assume that a strong initial impact will be followed by a gradual
decline, with the possibility of occasional spikes of extended impact if the work
continues to resonate or enhances subsequent cultural experiences. The rate at
which the experienced impact deteriorates is likely to be unique to each cultural
event and each individual who experiences it, giving rise to a variety of ‘impact
patterns’ of the sort shown in Figure 6.
Executive Summary 16
UNDERSTANDING the value and impacts of cultural experiences