It was announced in June that the University of Leeds is to be the home of the UK’s first Centre for Cultural Value. The centre will focus on the role of arts and culture in areas such as conflict resolution, education, health and wellbeing, and community regeneration, bringing together researchers with expertise in these areas with artists, arts and cultural organisations, audiences, participants and local communities. It has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Arts Council England
Ben Walmsley, director, Centre for Cultural Value
“In the context of culture, the word ‘measure’ always raises alarm bells for me. It’s usually either used a little carelessly to mean ‘evaluate’ or deployed deliberately to forward a financial or economic argument for cultural investment.
In both cases, it reduces the complexity of cultural experiences: there is far more to evaluation than measuring or counting; and econometric measures can only ever offer a poor proxy for the aesthetic or sociological values of culture. I prefer the word ‘capture’ because it allows for a diversity of cultural evaluation methods and embraces the complexity of the task at hand.”
Sharon Heal, director, Museums Association
“We need to move past the old debates about intrinsic and instrumental value and think about how our communities value museums, heritage and culture. And, yes, I think it is possible to measure this.
I’d like to see some rigorous long-term population-wide research that demonstrates the positive impact that people who work in museums know our spaces and collections can have on health and wellbeing, learning, creating better places for us to live and work, combating loneliness and providing space to think about some of the big challenges that our society faces.”
John Davies, economic research fellow, Nesta
“Implicit quantitative measurements of the value of cultural activities are made all the time where public or external funding is sought, but are not necessarily informed by evidence. When people enjoy visiting a free museum they are getting a value from it, but there is no direct measure of this.
It is possible to produce financial estimates of what this value is through surveys. That is not to say these measurements capture all the value produced by culture, but it is possible to improve understanding of the value that cultural activity is creating and have a more informed discussion.”
