Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Reasearch position paper 2capacity to evaluate cultural policies and cultural organisations (Kaple et al.,1996). Policy makers, foundations, and managers of cultural organisationsincreasingly are using evaluation to improve policies, select policy instruments,strengthen programmes, and enable organisational learning (Love, 1991).The evaluation paradigm is shifting away from top-down analysis (Mazmanianand Sabatier, 1981) toward the four-step learning-and-action model developed byRichard Rose (1993):i. searching experience;ii. abstracting a cause-and-effect model from what is observed;iii. designing a course of action based on what has been learned from experienceand modelling;iv. developing a prospective estimation of the consequences of action.National Arts Stabilization (NAS) provides an example of evaluation capacitybuilding in community cultural organisations. Founded in 1983, NAS is a voluntaryarts management group headquartered in the United States that co-operates withcommunities to strengthen the governance, management and financial skills of culturalorganisations. Zinno (1998) describes a recent initiative by NAS to design andtest an evaluation methodology and disseminate its finding to arts organisations andthe cultural policy community. The evaluation process will employ both selfassessmentand external validation of the participating arts organisations (whichincludes programmes throughout the United States, Canada, and England) and themeasures will be compared within each local programme and among the projectpartners. One goal of the project is to identify a few key indicators to assess theimpact of arts organisations on the local community.Concluding remarksAlthough there have been serious limitations in ability of governments and governmentagencies and of voluntary and non-governmental organisations and foundationsto adequately define and evaluate the impact of cultural diversity policyinstruments, during the last few years there have been several conceptual, methodological,and administrative advances that show significant promise for the futureof research in this policy area.ReferencesBainbridge, Joyce M., Sylvia Pantaleo and Monica Ellis, 1999, Multicultural picturebooks: perspectives from Canada, Social Studies, Vol. 90, No. 4,pp. 183-189.Balfe Judith H. and Monnie Peters, 2000, Public involvement in the arts, in J.M.Cherbo and M.J. Wyszomirski (eds.), The Public Life of the Arts in America, NewBrunswick: Rutgers University Press.103