From public good to public value: arts and culture in a time of crisis

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the crisis sweeping over the Australian cultural sector as a result of COVID-19 presents an existential threat to current (“normal science”) methods of evaluation, and to instrumental, predominantly economic, understandings of value. Outlining ways the concept of value is changing, we respond to Mariana Mazzucato’s call to go “from public goods to public value” in considering the role of government policy in key sectors of society. We note the broader approach to value called for by a range of mainstream economists and provide three recent examples of challenges to existing evaluation methods in the Australian cultural sector. In conclusion, we touch on the essential features of a re-constructed category of public value and the implications for value research. During COVID-19, the public role of arts and culture has become self-evident. The challenge is to match this realization with a new understanding of their public value.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural value
• crisis
• public value
• art and culture
• cultural policy
• COVID-19

Notes on contributors

Julian Meyrick is Professor of Creative Arts at Griffith University, Artistic Counsel for the State Theatre Company of South Australia, and director of 40 award-winning theatre shows. He has published histories of the Nimrod Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company, the Paris Theatre, the Hunter Valley Theatre Company and Anthill Theatre, and numerous articles on Australian arts and cultural policy, including over 80 pieces for The Conversation. He is Chief Investigator for the project Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture, funded by two Australian Research Council Linkage grants, looking at value beyond econometrics. His book Australian Theatre after the New Wave: Policy, Subsidy and the Alternative Artist was published by Brill in 2017.

Tully Barnett is Senior Lecturer in Creative Arts at Flinders University in South Australia. She is a CI on the project Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture and co-author of the book What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture (2018) with Julian Meyrick and Robert Phiddian. She was awarded an ARC DECRA to research digitization as a cultural practice and reading in the digital age. She is a board member of the Australasian Association of Digital Humanities (aaDH) and the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres (ACHRC).

Notes

1 In choosing Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions as a reference point, we foreground the methodological aspects of the current crisis. Broader conceptions of crisis are provided by Karl Marx’s crisis theory of economics, Antonio Gramsci’s organic crisis (“a protracted process of unravelling in the prevailing social order”), Michel Foucault’s epistemic rupture and Alain Badiou’s universal singularity. But Kuhn focuses on the social behaviour implicit in competing constructions of knowledge and is useful in framing “normal science” evaluation methods in arts and culture, and indicating the existential challenge they now face.

2 We can add to this a concern with pathways of evidence in given administrative environments, and the role of the reception of evidence in communications of value in asymmetric relations of power (Meyrick et al., 2018).

3 The UK research pathway is instructive but ultimately does not escape utilitarian predicates. In 2006, Arts Council England began a project on identifying “public value” of arts and culture. Clive Gray commented that “In effect the ACE has placed itself in a position where it cannot possibly hope to win. The weaknesses of the underlying assumptions behind the ‘public value’ and public service literatures effectively deny the relevance of political rationalities of action in favour of technocratic versions of the same thing” (2008, p. 213). For Gray, part of the problem was that public value was never defined. In his examination of the project’s outcomes, he found that “The literature implies that it is at least one of: an approach to management; an end-product of the management process; a set of processes that organizations could/should/ought to pursue. The general idea appears to be that the delivery of public services should be focused on the improvement of both general processes within government so that the delivery of goods and services is improved (i.e. the public will benefit and achieve improved ‘value’ from improvements in how public sector organizations operate), and at developing a better linkage between public sector organizations and the general public so that there is a better match of expectations between the two” (2008, p. 210). The focus in the UK then shifted to “cultural value” first through John Holden (picking up on the work of David Throsby), then through researchers such as Oliver Bennett and like Eleonora Belfiore, before finding expression in the 2016 AHRC report and, later, in the Leeds-based Centre for Cultural Value. Gray’s concern about public value needs serious consideration. However, the concept has a life beyond this trajectory, and has taken on new importance during COVID-19.

4 The exceptions here are experiential models of evaluation, but these struggles to transcend the “personal point of view” unless they have broader concepts to refer to and by which they can be validated as representatively evidential. See Kaszynska, 2015.

5 For a sample of broader discussion on this issue see: “Racism in media provides a blockage for Indigenous prosperity in a digital economy” https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2018/10/09/racism-media-provides-blockage-indigenous-prosperity-digital-economy; “Remaking Our Newsrooms” https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2020/07/18/remaking-our-newsrooms/159499440010130; and “Australia’s media has been white for too long” https://theconversation.com/australias-media-has-been-too-white-for-too-long-this-is-how-to-bring-more-diversity-to-newsrooms-141602.

6 For a sample of broader discussion on this issue see: “Statues are not history” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2017/aug/25/statues-are-not-history-here-are-six-in-australia-that-need-rethinking; “Monumental errors” https://theconversation.com/monumental-errors-how-australia-can-fix-its-racist-colonial-statues-82980; and “Four ways to help settle Australia’s colonial statue debate” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-16/four-ways-to-help-settle-australias-colonial-statue-debate/12356234.

7 A great deal of further information is available on the PHM “relocation”. A major resource is the voluminous Powerhouse Museum Alliance website https://powerhousemuseumalliance.com/ that includes coverage of both Parliamentary Inquires. For a comprehensive overview of the controversy see Australia ICOMOS 2019 Sydney Talk Series No. 6 “Policy, Power and the Cultural and Heritage Values of the Powerhouse Museum” by Jennifer Saunders https://powerhousemuseumalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/pma-australia-icomos-js.pdf (last accessed 24/9/2020). For on-going coverage see Judith White’s blog: https://www.cultureheist.com.au/2019/07/18/arts-vandalised-in-nsw/.

8 For these submissions and others see Parliament of New South Wales website: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/committees/inquiries/Pages/inquiry-details.aspx?pk=2403#tab-hearingsandtranscripts

9 Winkworth comments, “The 2018 announcement promised a science and technology museum with planetarium. When the Stage 2 design brief was released in late 2019 [however] … all the ‘presentation spaces’ were designed for use for performances and commercial hire, as well as exhibitions” (private correspondence with the authors 23/9/2020). For further discussion by Winkworth of this issue see https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/68636/0137b%20Ms%20Kylie%20Winkworth.pdf (Submission No. 137b to the second Inquiry). For more on the flood risk of the Parramatta Precinct proposal see the evidence of Steven Molino and Dr John Macintosh to a recent hearing (p.54 onwards) https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/transcripts/2406/Transcript%20-%20Museums%20and%20cultural%20projects%20-%2021%20August%202020%20-%20UNCORRECTED.pdf, and a news clip from the day they gave evidence. https://www.facebook.com/7NEWSsydney/videos/proposed-powerhouse-museum-could-be-life-threatening-during-major-floods/646648389288278/.

10 For discussion of the failure of the business case process in the Powerhouse move see https://powerhousemuseumalliance.com/find-out-more/business-cases-access-to-documents/

especially Henry Ergas https://powerhousemuseumalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/unusual-suspect-the-aust-20-june.pdf.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number LP170100933].