Assessing the Value of the Arts

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Oliver ◽  
Ben Walmsley
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Spatial Dimension ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Public Value ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Arts

This chapter presents a general introduction to the contemporary concern of public value in relation to the arts, and particularly how this relates to the concept of social impact — an issue that has dominated the public funding agenda for the arts in the UK and beyond since the 1990s. What follows is an analysis of how the public value of the arts has been framed and assessed in recent times, and how this reflects adaptations to changes in the political climate. This analysis will be illustrated through a brief historical and conceptual overview of attempts to capture public value, followed by a review and critical evaluation of some models and frameworks that have attempted to capture the benefits of the arts. The challenges of assessing and measuring value will then be further discussed through case study on the National Theatre of Scotland’s production, Black Watch, to demonstrate the reductive nature of traditional models and point towards the need for developing more nuanced and reflexive approaches to assessing value, informed (and preferably led) by the practice of the art in question. We can call this a ‘situational’ approach to research. The chapter therefore argues for approaches informed by these principles. Drawing parallels with themes from Performance Studies, it suggests that greater account needs to be given to context and the conditions of the context, including its social formation and relations, which requires reflexivity and ethnographic analysis. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the dialectical conditions of value (as both instrumental and intrinsic), particularly emphasising the spatial dimension of practice, which emphasises that the arts are not just situated in a temporal context of ideological shifts, but are active players in the making of value as a practice of cultural production. This spatial dimension is brought into being as a practice of social relations through articulations of inter-subjective values, thereby broadening the dialogue on the subject of public value and considering the productive value of the arts as a wider practice of living.

scholarly journals Mapping research on the social impact of the arts: what characterises the field?

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 124
Author(s):  
Sofia Lindström Sol ◽  
Cia Gustrén ◽  
Gustaf Nelhans ◽  
Johan Eklund ◽  
Jenny Johannisson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Research Front ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Word Analysis ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Arts And Health ◽  
The Social

This article explores the broad and undefined research field of “the social impact of the arts”. The effects of art and culture are often used as justification for public funding, but the research on these interventions and their effects is unclear. Using a co-word analysis of over 10,000 articles published between 1990 and 2020, we examined the characteristics of the field as we have operationalised it through our searches. Since 2015, the research field of “the social impact of art” has expanded and consists of different epistemologies and methodologies, summarised in largely overlapping subfields belonging to the social sciences/humanities, arts education, and arts and health/therapy. In formal or informal learning settings, studies of theatre/drama as an intervention to enhance skills, well-being, or knowledge among children are most common. A study of the research front, operationalised as the bibliographic coupling of the most cited articles in the data set, confirmed the co-word analysis and revealed new themes that together form the ground for insight into research on the social impact of the arts. As such, this article can inform discussions on the social value of the arts and culture.

Normative justification for public arts funding: what can we learn from linking arts consumption and arts policy in Israel?

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tal Feder
Keyword(s):  
Public Funding ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Arts Organizations ◽  
Arts Funding ◽  
Arts Policy ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Normative Justification ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article studies the socioeconomics of government public expenditure for the arts and the normative foundations of state intervention in the arts. I pose two interrelated research questions: (a) what is the relationship between the public funding of the arts and their consumption? and (b) what mode of justification and what perception of the place of art in society is reflected in this relationship? Based on the philosophical work of Alan Badiou, I develop a novel conceptual framework to delineate three types of normative justifications for the public funding of arts organizations: romantic, didactic and classical. Using data from the public funding of 92 orchestras, theaters and dance troupes in Israel between 1999 and 2011, I estimate a cross-lagged panel data model to study how arts funding both affects and is affected by the levels of consumption of the organizations’ productions. The results of the study show a complex pattern of different relationships between funding and consumption that accord with the three types of normative justifications for public arts funding.

Source Theatre Company and the Mandate of the NEA: a Case Study

1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (42) ◽  
pp. 128-134
Author(s):  
Mary C. Resing
Keyword(s):  
Public Funding ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
The Public ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Theatre Company ◽  
The University

The controversy in the United States surrounding the funding of ‘offensive‐ and ‘pornographic‐ works by the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) has centered on whether or not the organization should espouse a morally conservative outlook in regard to the public funding of artistic works. However, the NEA arguably already pursues conservative policies rooted in its vision of the form, function, and outlook of the arts it exists to serve. The appointment of the actress Jane Alexander as chair of the NEA may have indicated that the organization would become more liberal in its moral stance, but the question remains: can government-supported art be anything but conservative? The following is a case study of one theatre's relationship to the NEA in the context of the Washington, DC, theatre community. The author, Mary C. Resing, is a former business manager of New Playwrights' Theatre in Washington, DC, and a former grant writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently working on her dissertation on the actress-manager Vera Kommissarzhevskaia.

scholarly journals The Internal Frontier: How Art at Once Problematizes Borders and Draws us Closer to Them

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Kasia Ozga
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Consciousness ◽  
X Rays ◽  
Visual Interpretation ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
The Impact

This study combines first-person storytelling, visual interpretation, and linguistic investigation to analyze how a mixed-media artwork that Kasia Ozga produced in 2011, The Internal Frontier, represents immigrant journeys on an autobiographic, social, and discursive level. In the context of an increasingly polarized political climate, Ozga examines borders as individual experiences and geopolitical phenomena to explain how art conditions conflictual aspects of the self to coexist, promoting social consciousness and community engagement.Those in power use borders to naturalize and separate what is familiar from what is strange. As an artist, Ozga explores how our personalities are partitioned, enforced, and made from external boundaries that define our movements, and by the internal borders that we impose on ourselves. Here, reproductions of different “frontiers” around the world are literally cut from the fabric of human chest x-rays collected from immigrant long-term visa applicants, highlighting physical removal and absence. To produce these modified artifacts, shown in light-boxes in various exhibitions in France and the United States, Ozga researched the border-as-process of inclusion and exclusion linked to regulative authority in social relations, nation-building, political sovereignty, as well as personal identity formation.In the artworks, migration is transformed from an isolated act to a shared human experience. The images, at once precise and indeterminate, maintain the dual symbolism of the border as barrier and as springboard, simultaneously inhibiting and enabling interactions between individuals and select geographic locations. Just as migrants lead us to re-evaluate our physical and mental borders, critical cultural production can contest the impact and staying power of borders by underscoring how establishing and overriding boundaries enable us to claim and reclaim who we are.

scholarly journals Finansowanie Kościołów i związków wyznaniowych ze środków publicznych

Politeja ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 14 (1(46)) ◽  
pp. 167-189
Author(s):  
Artur Skorek
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Associations ◽  
Argumentative Strategies ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Church

Public funding of churches and religious associations in Poland: Analysis of political debates on the liquidation of the Church Property Commission and the Church Fund The paper contains a case study of the political debate concerning public funding for the religious institutions. It deals with the parliamentary discussions in the years 2004‑2015 on the abolishing of two public bodies: Church Property Commission (Komisja Majątkowa) and Church Fund (Fundusz Kościelny). The paper has two main objectives. First of them is providing the description of the debate (most important themes in the discourse, argumentative strategies, rhetorical instruments used by the interlocutors). The characteristics of the discourse let us draw a picture of the social relations and the place of religion in the public sphere. Therefore, the second objective of the paper is to describe the dominant narratives in the public debate on the role of religion in society and the state.

The Funding Agenda Social relations and the politics of cultural production

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Oliver
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Creative Arts ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Arts Funding ◽  
The Arts ◽  
A Company

Are the arts, so to speak, on the ‘muck heap’ of public spending? From the point of view of an arts activist, or any advocate of public spending on the arts, particularly in times of austerity, it can certainly appear that arts funding is lobbed out of the window at the first opportunity. At best, it appears that many in the arts sector are expected to feed off the scraps of funding from the residue of public spending. There is a certain ‘sink or swim’ attitude that prevails, where the environment of the liquid (or not so liquid) marketplace is deemed the ultimate arbiter of value. However, and despite the protestations of some who may espouse a more Darwinian economic model, making art (whatever the quality) and making money(or should that be making a profit?) are not always going to be in the same trajectory. Sure, at one extreme, some commercial contexts of the creative arts and entertainment industry make some people very rich (and can often employ very many people), but that does not mean that productions will turna profit or that companies will not goout of business, even if they make millionaires and stars out of individuals. The point being, a market-driven privatisation of individual talent, skills and product can have negative effects for the wider ecology of a company or sector. For the everyday arts company or practitioner, the economics is much smaller in scale than that of the celebrity industry; nevertheless, sustainability is as key a concern. Sustainability is the watchword, then, which is why systematic business models are keenly sought out within the sector (see www.missionmodelsmoney.org.uk). The point of this chapter, though, is not to provide such a model but to point out that such models are themselves subject to more systemic economic and political conditions, and crucially, social relations. Traditionally, public funds have been a key issue, not just in broadening the scope and range of access and participation (including the training of artists), but also of sector sustainability, under the broad rubric of public good. And therein lies the conundrum: what does‘public good’ actually come to mean?

Does Granting the Jordanian Government Exceptional Authorities in its Contracts Achieve the Economic Growth and Public Interest?

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 279
Author(s):  
Farouq Saber AL-SHIBLI
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Administrative Contract ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Projects ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government

Inadequate public funding and budgetary constraints are among the major problems that limit many governments’ abilities to finance infrastructure projects and offer services to the public. Recently many countries are seeking the involvement of their private sector through an agreement known as (administrative contract) to provide the public projects fund. The concept of administrative contracts is based on granting the government exceptional authorities that makes it the more powerful party in the contract and therefore capable of forcing contractors to carry out the public projects efficiently. Nevertheless, the private sector companies are not always willing to engage in a contract with the government, as there is a belief that the administration may misuse its exceptional privileges. The main objective of this paper is to examine methods available to guarantee the implementation of administrative contracts in a manner that achieves the best delivery of public services to the people from one hand, and to help the private sector to establish contracts with the government and provide them some guarantees for their investments from another hand. Accordingly, this article is based on the analytical legal research methodology to make a critical evaluation of the main obstacles facing administrative contracts in Jordan, and provide recommendations that may help avoiding the current prevailing issues.

“Monstrous Vandalism”: Capitalism and Philistinism in the Works of Samuel Laing (1780–1868)

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Porter
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
European Continent ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Economic Necessity ◽  
The Times ◽  
Market Capitalism ◽  
Simple Economic

Is free market capitalism intrinsically inimical to culture and learning? The question probably would not have occurred to many people twenty years ago. That it can be seriously put today is a sign of the times. Two things have happened to Britain over the past decade. One is the political revival of the idea of the “market,” under the aegis of probably the most zealous capitalist ideologues ever to take power in what had generally been a fairly pragmatic political culture before then. The second is a scries of damaging cuts, or what are claimed to be damaging cuts, in the public funding of higher education and the arts. Some of the victims of the latter have perceived behind them a positive antipathy on the part of the zealots to what they are doing and what they hold dear. If this is so, then where does it derive from? The personal idiosyncrasies of the zealots? Simple economic necessity? A genuine belief in alternative and perhaps better ways of supporting learning and culture? Or is free market capitalism fundamentally philistine?The question has come up before. In the nineteenth century people also remarked on the cultural barrenness of their time. There can be no doubt that it was pretty barren in certain areas. Compared with the European continent, and with her own past, Britain was something of a cultural desert during most of the century, and particularly between the 1840s and the 1880s, which are usually regarded as the high plateau of her free market capitalism.

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