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audience impact (2006, 18-19), Walmsley finds little evidence of transformational
experiences in his informants’ reports although he explicitly asks whether they
had ever felt transformed by a theatre performance (82, 85).
Walmsley’s main objective for this project is to find a way to ‘articulate impact
in a more holistic way’ and he feels that his interviews achieve this by ‘expressing
impact through personal stories and reflections which make no distinction
between value and benefits’ (85). Beyond that, however, Walmsley calls attention
to qualitative research’s potential to shed light on both the ‘immediate and cumulative
impact of theatre’ (85). While this capacity is inherent in all of the studies
that allow respondents to retrospectively identify impactful events, Walmsley
explicitly addresses how the impact of a single event can continue to build
over a lifetime (what Brown calls the ‘Impact Echo’, Brown and Ratzkin 2011,
7). Walmsley finds that ‘over half of the respondents admitted to keeping programmes,
tickets or even theatre diaries as mementos of their theatre experiences’
to extend the value of the experience (83). One interviewee noted that ‘plays
stay in your memory bank for years’ and another states that ‘the impact of theatre
on her life was cumulative, rather than immediately life-changing’ (83). The
dimension of time is thus highlighted as an aspect of individual impact.
Assessing longitudinal impacts
Walmsley is not alone in his interest in the temporal dimensions of impact and
value. In the context of children’s theatre, for instance, Matthew Reason discusses
how the arts can give rise to on-going, life-long experiences (2013). He argues
that post-show drawing activities accompanied by discussions of the work not
only allow researchers to assess the quality of the experience that a production
provides for young audience members, but actively enhance the experience
by extending the children’s engagement (104). Reason notes that the audience’s
response ‘is not only a momentary engagement but also an ongoing experience
that takes place after, as well as during, the event’ (101).
Measuring Individual Impact: Qualitative Research 84
UNDERSTANDING the value and impacts of cultural experiences