Under construction: Towards a framework for cultural value

Abstract

This article explores, in the context of prevailing discourses around the value of the arts and culture, the reasons why the UK's Arts & Humanities Research Council launched a research project on cultural value and sets out the character of that project. It is concerned with arts and cultural engagement across the commercial, subsidised, amateur, and participatory sectors; embraces the full range of arts and cultural forms; and seeks to reach beyond dichotomies such as intrinsic and instrumental, high and low art, quantitative and qualitative evaluation, and public and private experiences. The article explains the project's thinking around the components of cultural value and the methodologies for evidencing them, and highlights some of the key research being funded.

Keywords:

• cultural value
• cultural experience
• evaluation
• methodologies
• research

Notes

1. Details of all the funded projects can be found at: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funded-Research/Funded-themes-and-programmes/Cultural-Value-Project/Current-and-Past-Research-Activities/Pages/default.aspx

2. The National Endowment for the Arts in the USA makes research grants in response to open applications through its Art Works initiative.

3. Calvin Taylor, “Cultural value: A perspective from cultural economy”. Details of this and all awards made under the first and second funding calls are on the project website. See note 1.

4. Helen Leahy, “Learning from the past: Cultural value, then and now, in principle and in practice”.

5. Charlotte Gilmore, “The enactment of cultural values and taste-making within contemporary classical music”; Philip Davis, “Assessing the intrinsic value, and health and well-being benefits, for individual and community, of The Reader Organisation's Volunteer Reader Scheme”.

6. Patricia Thomson, “The experience and value of live art: What can making and editing film tell us?”; Lynn Froggett, “Public art and local civic engagement”.

7. Sally Munt, “Cultural values from the subaltern perspective: A phenomenology of refugees’ experience of British cultural values”; Eleonora Belfiore, “The politics of cultural value: Towards an emancipatory framework”.