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families and groups of friends. Brown counts benefits such as family cohesion and
stronger personal relationships, in this cluster of values.
One drawback of Brown’s elimination of the distinction between private and
public goods is that his framework loses some of its power as a justification for
public arts funding. The reason that many commentators, particularly those with
a background in economics, emphasise the public good characteristics of culture
is that there are well-defined and accepted reasons why governments should
support the provision of public goods with public funds.
The final cluster of benefits, located in the bottom left corner of the diagram is
designated as the imprint of an arts experience (2006, 19). This term is used to
capture the benefits that arise for the individual during and immediately after an
arts experience. This immediate imprint may yield a memory that lasts a lifetime,
or it may dissipate quickly. Brown’s idea of an imprint is roughly equivalent to
Holden’s narrow definition of ‘intrinsic value’. Both refer to the ‘raw’, unprocessed
experience. For Brown, the imprint is a benefit in itself, but it can also give rise to
any number of higher-order benefits. For Holden, intrinsic value is the value that
is attributed to the experience for its own sake; any benefit that is derived from the
experience (such as learning or a sense of well-being) is an instrumental value.
When Brown sets out to survey audiences about arts experiences in later work, he
uses the term ‘intrinsic impact’ instead of ‘imprint’ (Brown and Novak-Leonard
2007). It may be that the imprint cannot be assessed without disturbing the experience
itself, so that the intrinsic impact is the most immediate measurable benefit
of an arts experience. Like imprints, “intrinsic impacts occur during the experience”
however, these impacts ‘may increase or heighten with contemplation (eg,
discussing the performance afterwards)’ (Brown and Novak-Leonard 2007, 22).
The significance of isolating the initial effect that the cultural experience has on
audiences is not merely theoretical, it also has practical implications for measurement.
According to Brown and Novak-Leonard, ‘measures of intrinsic impacts
must be taken within several hours after the experience ends, while the memory is
still fresh’ (22). By assessing these intrinsic impacts of arts experiences the authors
seek to understand how audiences are transformed by the experience (2); however
they acknowledge that survey-based methodologies will never be able to capture
‘subconscious aspects of the aesthetic experience” (Brown and Novak-Leonard
2013, 4).
Brown identifies several factors that influence the types and levels of benefits that
are created by individual experiences. Benefits may vary across arts disciplines,
by the mode of participation (Brown identifies five such modes: inventive, in-
Framing the Conversation 50
UNDERSTANDING the value and impacts of cultural experiences