Culture in for and as Sustainable Development

ASSESSING
CULTURE IN
SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
Informing and
shaping policy
50
Assessments are an important part of both
policies and politics. There are several methodologies
for carrying out assessments and
communicating their results, but indicators
are perhaps the most commonly used. Indicators
select threads, headlines or leverage
points from complex and non-linear phenomena,
and reduce them to more easily comprehensible
evidence in order to provide information
about the impacts of events and
trajectories, the effects of different courses
of action, and the quality and direction of
change. Usually indicators are quantitative,
statistical and numerical, which for some
topics can be a simplification too far, and
it becomes necessary – a far more difficult
task – to devise and use qualitative indicators
by means, for example, of general
descriptions, anecdotes and observations,
narratives, images and perhaps even performance.
While indicators reflect policy
options, they can also shape them,
since very often policies, or at least
activities are defined by what
outputs can be measured. This often
leaves behind the less quantifiable
areas of cultural sustainability and
which are a great many.
(Raquel Freitas)