Cultural Trends

Vol. 14(1), No. 53, March 2005, pp. 113 128

COMMENTARIES

John Holdens Capturing Cultural

Value: How culture has become a
tool of government policy

There is growing opinion within the cultural sectors on both sides of the Atlantic that
new and convincing methods must be found to reaffirm its importance.
In the US this was the subject of a recent Rand report, Gifts of the Muse, Reframing
the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts (McCarthy, Ondaatje, Zakaras, & Brooks,
2005), which evaluated arguments in favour of the instrumental approach to the
benefits of the arts in arguing for support of the arts. It proposed a new approach
based on a more comprehensive view of how the arts create private and public
value which underscore the importance of the arts intrinsic benefits. Its publication
was followed by a week-long discussion on the Internet run by the daily e-newsletter,
Arts Journal. com, Is there a Better Case for the Arts.1
John Holdens Capturing Cultural Value: How Culture has Become a Tool of Govern-
ment Policy (2004), published by the think-tank, DEMOS, takes the debate forward in
the UK. It too proposes ways of valuing culture other than the instrumental, drawing
on disciplines as diverse as brand valuation by accountants and the language of sus-
tainability used by environmentalists. This Introduction and the seven commentaries
that follow explore various issues raised by Holdens pamphlet.
In England, the issues of identifying and creating cultural value have been at the
centre of a debate about justifying subsidy to the cultural sector. New Labours rhetoric
has typically focused on the instrumental educational, economic and social benefits of
cultural activities and the Department for Culture, Media and Sports five-year plan,
Living Life to the Full (DCMS, 2005) complies with that tradition.
However, despite its emphasis on the real difference that the department can make,
it has generally failed to provide robust evidence of what difference its funding has
been making up to now, and has ignored what is sometimes described as the intrinsic
qualities of the arts and culture.
Estelle Morris had taken stock of this within a few months after becoming Minister
for the Arts:
I know that Arts and Culture make a contribution to health, to education, to crime
reduction, to strong communities, to the economy and to the nations well-being,
but I dont always know how to evaluate or describe it. (Morris, 2003)
ISSN 0954-8963 (print)/ISSN 1469-3690 (online) # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/09548960500164533
114 S. Selwood et al.
As she implied, there is a fundamental difference between believing in the transforma-
tory powers of culture, and producing the kind of evidence required by the Treasurys
Green Book,2 or which might satisfy the criteria by which DCMS itself theoretically
judges the robustness of data (DCMS, 2003b). Indeed, DCMS itself has commented
on the lack of robustness in the evidence on cultural activities generally in relation to
wider social and economic polices (DCMS, 2003b, p. 37) and on the relative absence of
hard evidence as to the regenerative impact of the arts in particular (Policy Action
Team 10, 1999).

Demonstrating the impact of activities to combat social exclusion is not easy, and
that it may be some time before the benefits are fully evident. (DCMS, 2000, p. 27)

Even beyond DCMSs immediate funding stream, there are gaps in local authorities
cultural services evidence-base. As Coulter (2001, p. 1) found, the good stories to
tell about the performance of cultural services tend to be based on anecdote rather
than hard evidence through monitoring and evaluation.
If DCMS knows that it is not providing sufficiently robust evidence to meet its
needs, what has been going on? Is it that the department is not nearly as serious
about data collection as it would have had us believe? Or, is it that it is just not as com-
mitted to an instrumentalist agenda as it gave out? The think-tank, IPPR implies that it
is simply not very effective, and that the case for the arts needs to be better made
through a more robust evidence base (Cowling, 2004, pp. 129 142). However,
reading between the lines of ministerial speeches and other writings suggests that
DCMSs attitude emerges as far more ambivalent than one might have suspected.
Since leaving office, the former Secretary of State, Chris Smith, has acknowledged
unashamedly that he deployed instrumentalist arguments specifically to get more
funds into the sector (Smith, 2003). Some of his critics regard it as perverse to have
set up expectations about the effectiveness with which cultural provision would
deliver on a social and economic agenda, since these might be much better addressed
by other areas of activity (Ellis, 2003, p. 7). Other writers suggest that the instrumen-
talist agenda is no better that a form of political displacement activity:

If we want to improve our children, our schools, our inner cities, and the lives of the
marginal, the elderly, the impoverished, then we should do so directly, rather than
argue for an injection of more arts. (Jensen, 2002, p. 2)

There is also something profoundly irrational about the assumptions as to what

happens to us when we are exposed to high culture. As the American sociologist,
Joli Jensen, puts it:

We assume, ludicrously, that the effect is embedded in the cultural form itself,
released when it is consumed. If this were true, then it would be relatively easy
to give each of us doses of good culture, making us into model citizens. Few
carry faith in cultural effect that far. Yet the popular accounts of the Mozart effect
implied just thata dose of a sonata would improve brain wiring and math
ability. (Jensen, 2002, p. 4)
 Cultural Trends 115

The current Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport recognizes that politicians
are caricatured as interested in mass access above all else.
Giles Waterfield parodies it beautifully in The Hound in the Left Hand Corner with a
dashing museums Director spending every hour filling in forms for the Department
of Culture, which was to renamed ACCESS! How we got here is well charted; how we
get away is not so easy. (Jowell, 2004, p. 10)

But there appears to be ample evidence of Secretaries of State and the Department for
Culture, Media and Sport having laid the ground for having it both ways.
Chris Smith, for instance, admits that his approach to the Treasury had its short-
comings. It ignored what he refers to as the fundamental life-force of the cultural
activity that gives rise to educational or economic value in the first place, and he
knew that any measurement of numbers, quantity or added value by figures was
necessarily going to be inadequate (Smith, 2003).
Whatever its explicit objectives, DCMS professes to have always supported intrinsic
value.
Although not listed as key projects for the purposes of this document, we and our
NDPBs undertake a range of core functions . . .
This work has value in its own right and we shall continue to nurture and sustain it
in recognition of its importance as our core business which underpins all our work
and is at the very heart of what we do. (DCMS, 2003a, pp. 7 & 21)

Various statements issued by the present Secretary of State support this. For instance,
at the 2002 Labour Party conference, Tessa Jowell described how, in addition to being
a way of achieving our promises, our policies and our values, investment in the arts is
an end in itself .3 In June 2003, after the Cabinet Office had begun to consider the
concept of public value (Kelly & Muers, 2003), she was publicly speculating about
how her departments policies might revert to supporting core cultural values.4 In
2004, in a personal essay, Government and the Value of Culture, she described
DCMS as doing more than just delivering on the utilitarian agenda and the measures
on instrumentality.
Too often politicians have been forced to debate culture in terms only of its instru-
mental benefits to other agendaseducation, the reduction in crime, improvements
in wellbeingexplainingor in some instances almost apologizing forour invest-
ment in culture only in terms of something else. In political and public discourse in
this country we have avoided the more difficult approach of investigating, question-
ing and celebrating what culture actually does in and of itself. (Jowell, 2004, p. 8)

Jowell defines the kind of culture that she is talking about as making demands of its
performers as well as its audiences and, by doing so, attempts to distinguish it from
entertainment.
However much she professes to break with political convention, the Secretary of
State never entirely lets go of the instrumentalist agenda. So having appeared to
have aligned herself with arts for art sake arguments and to have found favour
with the likes of playwright, David Edgar,5 her ambition remains steadfastly about
116 S. Selwood et al.
facilitating personal value (Jowell, 2004, p. 5), the key to real transformation in
society (Jowell, 2004, p. 9), and wanting to reduce the poverty of aspiration. So,
she still perceives culture as transformatory. Moreover, accounting for the extent to
which it transforms individuals, and society as a whole, remains an issue. As she
puts it: How, in going beyond targets, can we best capture the value of culture?
(Jowell, 2004, p. 18). In short, how might DCMS square the circle?
The notion of cultural value was initially raised at a conference called Valuing
Culture organized by a consortium of consultants (AeA), a think-tank6 (DEMOS),
and a couple of national cultural organizations (National Gallery and the National
Theatre). They wanted to prompt a debate about the degree to which cultural organ-
izations should be obliged to use instrumental arguments to justify public funding.
Indeed, Jowells essay on Government and the Value of Culture, refers back to a
paper that she gave at that very conference.
John Holden of DEMOS, one of the organizers of Valuing Culture, has since pub-
lished a pamphlet called Capturing Cultural Value: How culture has become a tool of
government policy (Holden, 2004). Closely related to research reports written for the
Heritage Lottery Fund and VAGA (Hewison & Holden, 2004a, 2004b) it seeks to
answer Jowells question: How, in going beyond targets, can we best capture the
value of culture? Holdens response starts by questioning the assumptions that
underlie our current institutional structures and funding methodologies. He proposes
radically rethinking what the public funding of culture could mean.
DEMOSs argument is based on the notion that documents like A New Cultural Fra-
mework (DCMS, 1998), in which DCMS set out its reform of the cultural infrastruc-
ture based on existing institutional structures and funding methodologies, have
merely served to encourage a culture in which individuals and organizations have
learnt to become more fluent in the jargon of public policy. What they have ended
up doing is to tailoring their outputs to meet the latest round policy priority. But,
according to Holden, this misses the point.
Artists and institutions do not see themselves as creating outcomes. Cultural experi-
ence is the sum of the interaction between an individual and an artefact or an experi-
ence, and that interaction is unpredictable and must be open.7

In Capturing Cultural Value he starts from a completely different perspective. He begins

with the assumptions underlying the public funding of culture, in other words, with the
range of values expressed through culture, which may or may not complement each
other. Like Morris (2003), he calls for a language which is capable of reflecting, recog-
nizing and capturing those values. Recognizing the difficulties of talking about the
intrinsic value of culture, or art for arts sake, which in todays world sound patronizing,
exclusive and undemocratic, he calls for a language which would recognize the affective
(and quantifiable) elements of cultural experience and accommodate:
. assessments of the broad public value (or loss of value) resulting from the decisions
made by cultural organizations;
. unchanging public goods such as equity and fairness in order to create a context in
which goals like social inclusion and diversity could be understood;
 Cultural Trends 117

. the promotion of a strong culture confident of its own worth, rather than one that
is tied to the production of ancillary benefits;
. challenges to policy makers, cultural organizations and practitioners to adopt a new
concordat with the public to maximize public good; and
. the integration of culture with the rest of public policy.
Reshaping the cultural infrastructure from the bottom-up rather than the top-down
suggests extreme change, but one which might point the way to DCMS resolving
the dilemma it currently faces about the relationship between cultural value, instru-
mentalism and accountability.
The following commentaries explore these and other issues raised by Capturing
Cultural Value.
Sara Selwood
City University
[email protected]

Notes
[1] I am grateful to Adrian Ellis, AeA, for bringing both to my attention. Arts Journal. coms discus-
sion can be found at http://www.artsjournal.com/muse/(retrieved April 13, 2005).
[2] This provides guidance to public sector bodies on how proposals should be appraised before
significant funds are committed and how past and present activities should be evaluated
http://greenbook.treasury.gov.uk (retrieved December 17, 2003).
[3] Tessa Jowell, Speech to Labour Party conference cited on the Demos website, http://www.
demos.co.uk (retrieved June 13, 2003), and by Cowling (2004, p. 1).
[4] Unpublished keynote speech to for Valuing culture (DEMOS, 2003).
[5] See, for example, Edgar (2004); Fenton (2004); Lister (2004).
[6] Defined here as an organization that carries out research and makes policy recommendations
concerning current social and public issues, and may be non-profit making. Not all think
tanks are necessarily independent and many are also associated with performing a public
relations role by serving political parties and generating results that serve the advocacy goals
of their sponsors. See, for example, http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title Think_
tanks (retrieved 19 October 2004).
[7] http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/culturalvalue/(retrieved February 12, 2005).

References
Coulter, F. (2001). Realising the potential of cultural services. Making a difference to the quality of life
(for the Centre for Leisure Research, University of Edinburgh) London: Local Government
Association. Retrieved December 6, 2002, from www.lga.gov.uk/Briefing.asp?1section 28&
id SXC5C9-A77FF5A3
Cowling, J. (Ed.). (2004). For arts sake: Society and the arts in the 21st century. London: Institute for
Public Policy Research
DCMS. (1998). A new cultural framework. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
DCMS. (2000) Centres for social change: Museums, galleries and archives for all. Policy guidance on
social inclusion for DCMS funded and local authority museums, galleries and archived in
England. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
DCMS. (2003a). Strategic Plan 2003 2006. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
118 S. Selwood et al.
DCMS. (2003b). A research strategy for DCMS, 2003 2005/06 (Technical Paper No 3) (Mimeo).
London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
DCMS. (2005). The Department for Culture, Media and Sport five-year plan: Living life to the full.
Retrieved April 14, 2005, from http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/publications/archive_2005/
dcms_5yr_plan.htm?properties archive%5F2005%2C%2Fglobal%2Fpublications%2Fdefault
%2C&month
Edgar, D. (2004, May 22). Wheres the challenge? The Guardian. Retrieved June 28, 2004, from
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1226332,00.html
Ellis, A. (2003). Valuing culture; a background note. Unpublished paper for Valuing Culture, DEMOS
(2003). Retrieved December 30, 2003, from http://www.demos.co.uk/VACUAEllis_pdf_
media_public.aspx
Fenton, J. (2004, May 29). Down with this access pottiness. The Guardian. Retrieved June 28, 2004,
from http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1226335,00.html
Hewison, R., & Holden, J. on behalf of DEMOS. (2004a). The right to art. Making aspirations reality.
Retrieved August 9, 2004, from http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/righttoartreport/
Hewison, R., & Holden, J. on behalf of DEMOS. (2004b). Challenge and change; HLF and cultural
value. London: Heritage Lottery Fund.
Holden, J. (2004). Capturing cultural value: How culture has become a tool of government policy.
London: DEMOS.
Jensen, J. (2002). Is art good for us? Beliefs about high culture in American life. Oxford: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers.
Jowell, T. (2004). Government and the value of culture. London: Department for Culture, Media and
Sport.
Kelly. G., & Muers, S. on behalf of the Strategy Unit, Cabinet Office. (2002). Creating public value.
An analytical framework for public service reform. Retrieved October 29, 2003, from http://
www.number-10.gov.uk/su/pv/public value.pdf
Lister, D. (2004, May 30). This Week in Arts: the arts on writing a really good manifesto. The
Independent. Retrieved June 28, 2004, from http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_
columnists/david_lister/story.jsp?story 519204
McCarthy, K. F., Ondaatje, E. H., Zakaras, L., & Brooks, A. (2005) Gifts of the muse. Reframing the
debate about the benefits of the arts. Retrieved April 13, 2005, from http://www.rand.org/
publications/MG/MG218/index.html
Morris, E. (2003). Speech to Cheltenham Festival of Literature (October 16). Retrieved August 10, 2004,
from http://www.culture.gov.uk/cgi-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id 50&page_id 3804416&query
cheltenhamfestival&hiword cheltenham festival FESTIVALS
Policy Action Team 10. (1999). Arts & sport. A report to the social exclusion unit. London: Department
for Culture, Media and Sport.
Smith, C. (2003). Valuing culture. In J. Holden (Ed.), Valuing cultureEvent Speeches. Retrieved
August 10, 2004, from http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/valuingculturespeeches/

Commentary 1
In Capturing Cultural Value John Holden identifies the shortcomings of the ways in
which we commonly evaluate work in the public cultural sector. In doing so he
makes significant points about the assumptions that are made about the value of cul-
tural activity, and who decides what is valuable.
The problems that John identifies were also evidenced during a sustained action
research project that I conducted (Hall, 2005). For example, it was apparent that an
 Cultural Trends 119

emphasis on predefined outcomes and criteria could squeeze out the valuable part of
a creative process, undermining the potential for meaningful engagement.
Criticisms of quantitative approaches to evaluating cultural activities are often con-
cerned with perceived flaws in methodologies. However, as Capturing Cultural Value
highlights, it is not just the methodologies of such measurement that are inadequate,
but the approach itself.
Evaluation that culminates in the production of numerical data adheres to processes
that are commonly understood to have a closer relation to objectivity than we might
ascribe to more qualitative approaches. This is problematic because of the inter-sub-
jective nature of cultural activity, for:

The visual world is not just to be correctly perceived and replicated: it is the source of
many disputes we have with one another about the nature and character of the world
around us. (Stanley, 1996. p. 96)

The implied limits of existing models of evaluation led me to focus on the develop-
ment of more pertinent means of evaluation. I developed a process-generated
approach to evaluation. Young people involved in the research continually redefined
the parameters of the evaluative criteria for their work to acknowledge their shifting
aims. Their aims shifted, not in any arbitrary way, but in ways that reflected a devel-
opment and refinement of ideas. This reflective and dialogic approach to evaluation
establishes (and reflects) a clear sense of value for the experiences, priorities and devel-
opment of all involved.
Evaluation is an integral part of the creative process, by which practitioners conti-
nually reflect on, and develop, their work. By documenting this process, and its con-
sequences, a project can be considered as a case study. As John Holden argues,
through reflecting on, and analysing, case studies, the wider relevance of an encoun-
ter/exchange/scenario is extrapolated, and its value is revealed. This way of working
also nurtures ongoing consideration, which supports the development of work in rel-
evant directions, rather than along predetermined routes. It thereby contributes to the
development of distinct practices, rather than an adherence to formulaic approaches.
Capturing Cultural Value indicates the need for organizations and funders to revisit
the assumptions on which current evaluation processes are based. Two questions,
whose culture? and whose values? are pivotal to this reassessment of current struc-
tures and practice.
The debates, and consequent changes in practice and structure, which Capturing
Cultural Value promises to stimulate, will benefit the development of multifarious
forms of cultural engagement, that have greater pertinence for those engaged, than
those that are developed in response to currently dominant frameworks and criteria.

Roz Hall
The Public, West Bromwich, UK
[email protected]
120 S. Selwood et al.
References
Hall, R. (2005)The value of visual exploration: Understanding cultural activities with young people.
West Bromwich: The Public.
Stanley, N. (1996). Photography and the politics of engagement. The Journal of Art and Design
Education, 15(1), 95 100.

Commentary 2
John Holdens new paradigm of cultural value merits serious discussion. Holden
demonstrates effectively how the notion of cultural value can be enriched from dis-
courses as varied as environmentalism, anthropology, the language of intangibles
used by economists and investors, and the wider debate about public value that is
emerging in government circles. For example, cultural policy makers and funders
have something to learn from environmentaliststhe concept of ecology can usefully
be applied to culture and cultures.
In considering cultural value, definitions of culture and their applications need to be
explored and related to each other. There are three broad definitions of culture:
. the Matthew Arnold definition: contact with the best that is thought and known in
the world;
. the government definition: in the UK this roughly equates with those areas of
public life that are the responsibility of the Department for Culture, Media and
Sport;
. the anthropological definition: the whole way of life of a community.
It is modish to dismiss the Arnoldian definition, and Holden is quick to do so. In his
over-assertive and unsatisfactory discussion of qualitative assessment, he throws out
the baby of what he calls intrinsic values (itself too limited a term to capture the
unique qualities of the arts) with the bathwater of patrician and patronizing attitudes.
Postmodern questioning has its value but it has also fed the craven relativism, reduc-
tionism and populism that have become so pronounced in the last two decades.
The cultural sector needs expert judgments and a continuing full-blooded debate
about standards and intrinsic values. It is not enough, indeed it is untrue, to say,
as Holden does, that all judgments have become relative, suspect and tainted. Just
as in any other profession, there are many practitioners, critics and decision makers
in the cultural sectors whose development and exercise of judgement has earned
and deserves respect. High quality professionals exercise judgement and are able to
provide convincing explanations of those judgements. They cannot all be written
off in the glib phrase subjective opinions.
Another aspect of this stimulating pamphlet needs to be called into question.
Holden announces that the language of cultural value will have to overturn the
concept of centrally driven, top-down delivery and replace it with systemic, grass
roots value creation. Hold on a moment! What is systemic, grass roots value creation?
Whatever the precise meaning of that extraordinary phrase, it is only to a limited
extent that culture in Britain is generated through centrally driven top-down delivery.
 Cultural Trends 121

The UK is a state that is more politically than culturally centralized. In such circum-
stances, it seems improbable that the centrally driven is going to allow itself to be
overturned in the foreseeable future and, in any case, more interesting and more
culturally fruitful are those areas where top down cultural policies engage with
the realities of grass roots creation. As Holden himself points out fecundity occurs
in places where differences meet.
Robert Hutchison
Oxford Inspires, Oxford
[email protected]

Commentary 3
Many of my colleagues in local government are working really hard to find mechan-
isms to measure the impact of what we do, because without that evidence we really do
run the risk of having funding reduced or withdrawn completely. The public library
service, which is uniquely a statutory cultural service in local government, faces a
real threat: if it does not come up with the hard evidence to justify its existence,
then (some would argue) it no longer deserves the levels of public funding that it
now receives. It is not inconceivable that the current legislation dating from 1964
would be swept away as part of the modernisation of local government.
I have argued for many years now that some things in life can be measured sensibly
but some things in life cannot. The value of culture needs to be debated further
upstream from where the argument has been taking place in recent years. Capturing
Cultural Value is a most timely contribution because it seeks to shift the discussion
to a higher level. If our argument is that cultural services in local government contrib-
ute to an improved quality of life then the only important issue is whether or not local
people recognize an improvement as the result of what we do. This is not to say that we
merely conduct polls. We need to develop a more sophisticated process that captures
the shift in value that local people attribute to having a local cultural infrastructure
and programme of events and activities available. They are the ones who ultimately
must place a value on what we do.
It will be a difficult task to find a way of helping them to do this. We need something
that is light years beyond the fleeting clipboard survey in the street, or on the doorstep.
Whatever their shortcomings, focus groups can at least encourage a more considered
discussion to take place, which in turn helps to engage people in critical thinking
about the subject. But if we are going to continue to push the envelope of cultural
development then we need to recognise that some of these assessments of value will
change over time as more people see the value in work that is initially more challen-
ging. Once again the current system works against us because the budgetary and per-
formance managers tend to look for convincing evidence before committing funds,
and then want to see evidence of results in the short term. Much of what we do has
a long-term cumulative effect which is notoriously difficult to measure. In Gateshead
Council we have embarked on the pursuit of longitudinal evidence. More importantly,
in Gateshead we have politicians and senior officers who believe in the value of culture
122 S. Selwood et al.
without having to have hard evidence all the time. That is where we need to go with
this argument, upstream to the place where decision makers choose to make their
value judgements about the benefits of any public spending. It is the subtle difference
between political economy and economics. At some stage we all need to make a choice
about the value we place on culture.
Bill Macnaught
County Durham
[email protected]

Commentary 4
I think the enemy of creativity is societys obsession with accessibility and education in
museums and galleries; theres a kind of desperate notion that somehow youve got to
meet people halfway. (Mark Wallinger, The Observer, September 22, 2002)

Capturing Cultural Value aims to resolve the tensions between the arts for arts sake
lobby and the instrumentalist tendency in both Thatcherite and New Labour govern-
ments. The solution proposed is for a strong culture, confident of its value qua
culture, which recognizes all its multivalent dimensions, cultural, symbolic, spiritual,
economic and educational, which accepts measurement of key aspects of its perform-
ance and which is accepted by the wider society as creating cultural value which in
some important ways cannot be measured. The paper does not question the assump-
tion that the current funding regime is really target-based and takes at face value the
complaints that it inhibits creativity and risk taking. As a result, while it helps with the
undoubted difficulty of articulating subtle cultural values and the engaging with
the populist philistinism of New Labour, the proposed paradigm does not take into
account the power struggle which is going on underneath the apparent mutual
incomprehension.
The targets required by bodies like the DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and
Sport), SAC (Scottish Arts Council), ACE (Arts Council England) and HLF (Heritage
Lottery Fund) relate to fairness and equity in publicly funded services provided to citi-
zens. Most of the major cultural organizations receive revenue calculated not in
relation to these but to their historic funding levels. These levels are maintained as
long as some effort is made to comply with the new requirements. Far from being
unchanging, universal social goods, fairness and equity are often regarded as irrele-
vant to the central purposes of such institutionspolitical correctness (gone mad).
Compliance is achieved through the creation of education or outreach departments,
behind which core activities continue unchanged. Even when these education services
are quite large, they form only a marginal proportion of the organizations funding
(the DCMS target percentage for national museums spending on education is 5 per
cent) and do not really resolve the crisis of legitimacy with which cultural institutions
are faced.
While audience-related targets may be inappropriate for individual artists seeking
public funding, it is hard to see how some form of measurement is inappropriate
 Cultural Trends 123

for cultural institutions, who have had some 25 years to suggest how they think their
work should be evaluated. They have not done so because their objection is less to
inappropriate measurement, and more to assessment and accountability per se. The
HLF, for example, demands an Audience Development Plan based on research and
consultation, supported by evidence that the organizations overall policies are consist-
ent with its claims. Yes, it requires that citizens from minority ethnic groups or with
disabilities or with a poor education be taken into account. The implication that major
cultural organizations might object to such basic planning when applying for public
funds (perhaps running into tens of millions of pounds) reflects on their definition
of competence as much as on their commitment to accountability. Artists may need
complete autonomy, but the kind of creativity required to run publicly funded insti-
tutions is about negotiating an area of initiative within a framework of accountability.
Holden sets out the terms of the framework very clearly, but doesnt engage with the
forces preventing its emergence.
In Capturing Cultural Values hypothetical example (an education space used by
community groups rather than the schools targeted by the funders, who do not
value the community use) the lack of basic planning is clear. An Audience Develop-
ment Plan would have revealed the problems faced by schools and the latent
demand in the community, and worked out ways to provide for both audiences.
Museums (mostly local authorityperhaps that is why Holden suggests they are given
to funding mediocrity) which have embraced the HLF requirements, have found that
it changes them from defensive to learning organizations and systematizes thinking
about audiences. Above all the processes involved in creating a real (as opposed to a
merely compliant) Audience Development Plan are fundamental to combining
creative and scholarly leadership with sensitivity to audience needs and interests.
Resistance to targets and access often extends beyond staff to board members,
regular users and Friends organizations, who, while they may indeed enjoy the cultural
experience for its own sake, also relish the feeling of exclusiveness. The outrage they
feel about facilities required to orient and welcome novice visitors (aka dumbing
down) may be due to a fear that people may think the implied lack of knowledge
or appreciation applies to them, or that the museum may communicate that just
about anyone can visit without passing what Kenneth Hudson has referred to as the
secret exam.
Social inclusion is not about simplifying difficult things. It is about providing points
of entry for people whose education or background has not equipped them to
approach difficult works that they might in fact be interested in. It is not about deter-
mining a response, but about sharing an enriching experience. To suggest that acces-
sibility is the [sic] enemy of creativity expresses a profound failure of empathy with
people who may feel that culture is not for the likes of us for a myriad of reasons
poverty, poor education, discrimination on a variety of grounds. Until educational
opportunities are genuinely equal, cultural institutions, in the interests of fairness
and equity, need to provide second-chance points of entry, even if it they are restricted
to people who are as intelligent as Wallinger. Ulysses is indeed a nourishing work, but
this is only partly due to its technical virtuosity. What makes it great literature is the
124 S. Selwood et al.
combination of linguistic brilliance with an incredible range of human empathy and
insight. Holden avoids the issue of aesthetics, but it is central, not so much in relation
to works of art, but in the way institutions apply it to people, a process through which
groups which are not already cultured are deemed not good enough to partake of
Culture. It may be moving to read about Leopold Bloom, but would one want to
be accosted by him in an art gallery?
Holden dismisses issues of class as old intellectual tramlines. Whatever instruments
one uses to analyse the increasing divisions and inequalities in Britain today, the
theory of cultural value will realize its potential to transcend the current polarization
only when it acknowledges the association between high culture and power, between
prestige arts (and the experts who manage them) and dominant groups in society.
Targets and measurement can be refined, but what can be done about the profound
sense amongst these groups of entitlemententitlement to having their cultural
recreations funded without being troubled by the values of a wider society based on
democracy, accountability, equity and fairness?
Mark ONeill
Glasgow Museums
[email protected]

Commentary 5
Government-supported culture always has been a tool of government policy. Since
government exists to enact policy this is hardly surprising. All would be well if the gov-
ernment appointees pulling and pushing on different handles could agree what they
wanted to achieve and if they took the differing cultural values of different sections
of the public fairly into account when deciding what sort of subsidized cultural
product to turn out.
Other forms of culture exist in a parallel, unofficial cultural universe unsupported
by government and only tentatively explored by government agents. Government does
not have a cultural monopoly. The cultural sector is a fiction. There would be more
than two terms in a properly constructed funding equation. As well as funders and the
funded we would want to include unfunded artists and unfunded audiences, very large
numbers of whom simply disappear when they are multiplied by zero subsidy. Never-
theless, those people are real enough, as is their spending on commercially-produced
art and their willingness to spend time being or watching or listening to arts amateurs.
Most artists are free to pursue their own missions and visions without having to
worry about targets set by funding bodies because the funding bodies do not fund
them. They are entitled to ask what difference funding is supposed to make, to ask
what they would have to do to qualify for a share and to make representation
through normal democratic channels if they feel hard done by. By way of answering
them, government or the government delegates handing out subsidies would need
to define their policy objectives, make their priorities clear (ordering and where
necessary weighting priorities, not just listing them), and ought to assess the achieve-
ments of established clients with reference to the same criteria or just admit that
 Cultural Trends 125

different rules applied to old friends. Lower standards of decision-making integrity

and public accountability are not acceptable; they are not what politicians have prom-
ised via innovations like the Freedom of Information Act. They are certainly not what
the arts world ought to be trying to get away with. Special pleading undermines the
funders political legitimacy when they resort to it, and that is very dangerous.
I share Holdens distrust of intrinsic value arguments, for roughly his reasons. But
what he thinks is the key to reconciling these and other tensions associated with cul-
tural value (tensions surrounding the recognition or attribution of cultural value) I see
as the cause of the problem. Without targetsclear and communicable understand-
ings about the sorts and levels of public service expected in return for public
subsidydecision makers exercising unchecked professional judgement are free to
fund whatever they like.
The Arts Council is and will remain fiercely independent in making individual
decisions chairman Sir Christopher Frayling reminded us recently (Frayling, 2005).
His neo-Keynesian vision for the future of English arts funding is radically unlike
John Holdens, and it faces government with an awkward choice. If different public-
sector agencies are intent on Creating Public Value rather than weakening or destroy-
ing it through un-joined-up-ness (pushing policy agendas based on value premises
which openly conflict) they will have to learn to work together. As yet, says Sir Chris-
topher, the Arts Council has no sensible mechanism with which . . . to work across
governmentwith Education, with Health, with the Home Office or (worth
adding) with the BBC. This is a shocking admission in the Arts Councils 60th birthday
year. But is fiercely independent decision making really the way to get on with
partners?
Holden offers a number of stimulating suggestions. How practicable will be hard to
tell until his suggestions have been worked up in greater detail. That is unlikely to
happen unless government insists. There are signs of pressure mounting: Holden
adds to it. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has developed an alarming
tendency to replicate Arts Council structures (Frayling, 2005) and, along with the
structures, new levels of in-house rather than arms length expertise. A final, really
radical recommendation seems to follow from Holdens others but he stops short.
If we want a debate about government cultural policy . . . should we not be having
it with government? For the clearest possible communication between indivi-
dual artists or organizations and government does it really help to have a buffer in
between?

Reference
Frayling, Sir C. (2005) The only trustworthy book . . . Art and public value. Text of a speech given at
the Royal Society of Arts, February 16. Retrieved April 11, 2005, from www.artscouncil.org.uk

Andrew Pinnock
University of Southampton
[email protected]
126 S. Selwood et al.
Commentary 6
Poesie is an Art of Imitation, said Sir Philip Sydney, writing in 1575 80. It is A speak-
ing Picture, with this end: to teach and delight.
If we add our contemporary concerns for access and diversity, the phrase to teach and
delight still provides an elegant summary of the value of culture. The word delight
encompasses both entertainment and the experience of beauty. The word teach, inter-
preted in a non-didactic, postmodern sense, describes what we gain from experiencing a
work of art in terms of increased knowledge of humanity and the world in which we live.
John Holdens paper makes a useful contribution to the current discussion of cul-
tural value, particularly in the way that it emphasizes the value of cultural activities for
their essential rather than incidental benefits and brings in insights from anthropol-
ogy, ecology and accounting, reminding us that we are not the only ones to face the
challenge of valuing the intangible.
Johns examples of how to capture cultural value from a funders point of view
brings a useful set of cultural, social, economic and public management indicators
to bear on the value of cultural activity. It also provides a helpful reference point in
the development of concepts and metrics for establishing cultural value.
One must ask, however, whether government has already arrived at, and is poised to
move beyond, the point at which the paper arrives. In its dealings with government
Treasury, Inland Revenue and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
over the past two years, the UK Film Council has gained a clear impression that the
core rationale for the funding of UK film is the promotion of a lively UK film culture,
in which films that receive taxpayer support reach and are positively received by the UK
public. Incidental benefits such as the tourism attracted by UK film are interesting, but
not the prime motivation. Economic arguments (focused on tax receipts and industry
sustainability) also have a place, but only where it can be clearly established that the
activity is additional to the UK economy, as in the case of tax incentives that lever
Hollywood investment into the UK film industry. It is possible that the film industry
is somewhat distinct, in this respect, in that it has a relatively large interaction with the
commercial marketplace compared with some other cultural sectors. The specificity of
each cultural sector is, therefore, an important consideration in the construction of a
framework for assessing cultural value.
The main challenge, we would suggest, is to discover the appropriate metrics to
apply to the various forms of cultural value that John identifies as potentially of inter-
est to funders.
Such metrics, if the evidence supports us, may assist the DCMS sectors win an
increased share of government spending, or at least sustained increases in spending
in real terms. In addition, they may provide a better way to assess the existing distri-
bution of DCMS resources, something that remains in the realm of the mysterious.
Decisions on the size and distribution of the cultural cake rest on intuitive political
judgments rather than on the fruits of systematic research.
Given the trends in government income and expenditure, the fiscal environment is
becoming tighter and more competitive. The challenge to devise better ways of
 Cultural Trends 127

demonstrating cultural value is not only intellectually interesting but is essential and
urgent from a practical point of view.
David Steele
Strategic Development and Monitoring Units, UK Film Council
[email protected]

Reference
Steele, D. (2004). Developing the evidence base for UK film strategy: The research process at the UK
Film Council. Cultural Trends, 52, 5 21.

Commentary 7
As Capturing Cultural Value suggests, there is a change needed. I believe that it is
already taking place; it is simply not being seen for what it is.
The problem, as John reiterates, is to find a new language for the process of justi-
fying subvention support for cultural activity. The notion of finding a new language,
which was raised at the June 2003 Valuing Culture conference (Holden, 2003) and has
since been emphasized by Estelle Morris (2003), has become a cliche. But that does not
make it any the less valid.
John focuses on the fact that the judgements are determined by evidence-based,
target-directed decision making. It will always be so. What can change, and I think
is already changing, is the nature of the evidence and the targets.
The new evidence comes from the cultural community itself and from its suppor-
ters, who are not necessarily its funders. It also partly reflects the fairly recent ascen-
dancy of charitable foundations whose priorities are not financial. There are legion
examples, and I pick some here more or less at random.
VocalEyes provides audio descriptions of plays. The blind theatregoer gets a headset
through which he or she gets a live description of whats happening on the stage, plus a
cast list and the other necessary programme material. Theatre companies like it
because it increases awareness of their work. VocalEyes also give their users add-
ons, such as a theatre tour and a conversation with actors half an hour before the per-
formance to get them orientated. All this gives these people for whom the theatre
seemed to be a lost delight more than the performance, a sense of ownership. You
gave me the key to something I did not know I wanted one beneficiary said.
VocalEyes is partly funded by Arts Council England who have been impressed
enough by the prising out of a new audience, however small, to maintain funding.
The problem for the organization is that its grant is purely for maintaining an
office and a tiny staff, whereas the real cost is in providing the theatre seats for not
only a blind person but a necessary companion. Few theatres can afford to give
these for free (although they do when they can). So the funder has an appreciation
of the achievement, but apparently no understanding of the problem.
Of all art forms, architecture has the most direct relevance to living without having
to be given a non-intrinsic purpose compared to, say, public art. John and Frances
128 S. Selwood et al.
Sorrells joinedupdesignforschools brings schoolchildren into direct contact with
architects and designers in a creative process that brings art into the fundamental
node of their community, the school. Its first purpose is to tackle sick school syn-
drome by putting leading architects and designers into partnership with client
teams of children from several hundred schools, so that a secondary purpose
becomes more important: children aged from seven to 18 get first-hand experience
of the design process as well as ownership of their working environment.
Even though this project fulfils several public funding aimspublic involvement,
ownership, education, improved living/working/educational environmentand
although there is occasionally some money from public sources (inexplicably,
nothing from Creative Partnerships), because this initiative is wholly devised by the
Sorrells the scheme is not yet formally recognized.
The first grants distributed by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology
and the Arts) were for largely entrepreneurial projects. But it has since developed to
embrace artistic and technical endeavour on the bases of inspiration and invention,
and on the recommendation of artists, designers and technicians working in science,
technology and the arts. It works by using panels of practitioners to report on their
own recommendations in detail, a system introduced by Russell Willis Taylor in rescuing
Palumbos Arts Foundation. It means the funder uses the creative community to find
areas of development worth supporting. An example is the recognition of modern
circus, thanks to the support of NESTA when ACE had turned its back on it.
Targets are less easy to define, because the new targets that Capturing Cultural Value
points us toward are often vestigial, even negative. Art does not have to be for some-
thing to be valuable. It should not be seen as valuable for its socially reforming capa-
bilities in the areas of crime, education and health. The target is that the presentation
of art is more attractive to public perception. This does not mean that the arts have to
be deliberately pleasing, simply that its exhibition is as advantageous to the publics
connection with the art as possible. It needs to be more future focused rather than ret-
rospective, and it needs to take into account professional expertise. These are all points
that John makes. But they are also legitimate targets, and should be recognized as such.

Simon Tait
London
[email protected]

References
Holden, J. (Ed.). (2003). Valuing cultureevent speeches. Papers from the conference Valuing culture
organized by Demos in partnership with the National Gallery, the National Theatre and AeA
Consulting, June 17. Retrieved August 10, 2004, from http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/
valuingculturespeeches/
Morris, E. (2003). Speech to Cheltenham Festival of Literature, October 16. Retrieved August 10,
2004, from http://www.culture.gov.uk/cgi-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id50&page_id3804416
&querycheltenhamfestival&hiwordcheltenhamfestivalFESTIVALS