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The literature clearly identifies the benefits to organisations of assessing
programme impacts, and the potential benefits to participants of such critical reflection
as may arise by virtue of completing a survey or interview. For this reason
alone, further investment in research on individual impact is warranted. But an
exclusive focus on immediate impacts will not serve the long-term interests of the
sector. While individual experiences are the building blocks of the value system,
the literature agrees that cumulative impacts – the effects of a lifetime of involvement
in arts and culture – are the fuel for larger societal outcomes. The dearth of
research on cumulative impacts of cultural experiences on individuals (and their
families), therefore, is particularly disconcerting.
In closing, we circle back to the three senses in which the ‘value’ of arts and
culture is explored in the theoretical literature:
1. The value of cultural experiences to individuals (concurrent impacts, experienced
impacts, extended impacts, and cumulative impacts)
2. The value represented in cultural organisations, individually and collectively;
3. The value to society of a thriving cultural sector.
A holistic understanding of these three tiers may serve as a framework for future
research. There is a good deal of literature at all three levels, yet little consensus as
to optimal measurement approaches, and little understanding of how these three
components of value interweave.
Funders seeking to support organisations in the provision of impactful programmes
should focus on the conditions necessary for those organisations to do
their work at a high level of creativity and competence. While the measurement of
individual impacts is highly contingent on factors over which the organisation has
little control (much less the funder), the measurement of an organisation’s creative
capacity is likely to be more straightforward, and may benefit from other bodies of
literature not covered in the present review, such as the literature on organisational
leadership, innovation and capitalisation. Designing and testing frameworks
for an organisation’s creative capacity will also serve to educate the field about
how to strengthen one of its most essential – but least understood – functions: the
creative process.
National arts agencies are necessarily concerned with the cultural and creative
welfare of the entire citizenry. With this heavy yoke of accountability, building a
stronger understanding of societal outcomes must also be a high priority. Further
investments in longitudinal tracking studies and retrospective assessments of
impact are necessary to complete the puzzle of value and strengthen our understanding
of how impact on the microcosmic level accrues into social impacts at
Executive Summary 25
UNDERSTANDING the value and impacts of cultural experiences