Are you thinking about approaches to evaluation and impact and how best to capture cultural value? How has cultural evaluation evolved and why have some approaches become more dominant? Beatriz Garcia shares five recommended reads to help deepen your understanding of approaches to evaluation.

In March 2019 The Audience Agency delivered a series of evaluation workshops for libraries, commissioned by the DCMS Libraries Taskforce and supported by Arts Council England.  Four workshops were delivered across England; in the North West, North East, South West, and London / South East regions.  This Resource Pack brings together the evaluation workshop slide ... Read more

Today, the very existence of our organisations has audiences at its heart. Whether through choice or originally through circumstance, audiences have become part of our business model but more importantly they have to be part of our philosophy. How do we develop audiences now and how we might do it in the future? How can we ... Read more

Increasingly, cultural organisations and commercial sponsors are evaluating the impact of their partnerships – the return on investment. This factsheet explains the indicators – the outputs, outcomes and impacts that can be measured and evaluated during the life of a sponsorship partnership. It includes four case studies in different sectors of the arts.

Arts & Business has developed a framework to measure the benefits of arts-business partnerships. Two case studies demonstrate how the framework measures inputs, outputs and community and business impacts.

The arts have a much richer role to play within a modern, competitive and sustainable business environment. This guide sets out how arts organisations can create new relationships with businesses and achieve a more varied set of outcomes.

This paper by Dr Dennie Palmer Wolf and Dr Steven Holochwost from US cultural consultancy WolfBrown draws on new understandings of creativity, as well as a number of WolfBrown projects, to suggest that a focus on building creative capital is a powerful way to think about planning for, executing, and measuring the impact of the ... Read more

How can arts organisations measure if they have an influence on the quality of life that they might want? In this keynote speech we are shown a participative process in six stages that makes any impact visible and recognises the intangible value of arts activity and its contribution to the quality of life.

With plenty of anecdotal evidence of the benefits of the arts, this is a detailed account of a study exploring how it is possible to measure how people might be changed by an arts experience. Alan Brown discusses the design of the study, data collection, the results (intellectual stimulation, spiritual value) and the implications for ... Read more

Organisations are more readily working in partnership to create various initiatives and approaches to improve health and well-being.  Whilst cultural organisations are committed to this there is a need to evidence the impact and efficacy of work with health sector organisations. This publication is split into three sections. The first includes a model of well-being ... Read more

Is strong leadership from the cultural sector the key to changing attitudes and behaviours in relation to the environment? This paper articulates the challenge faced by those working in cultural organisations to raise awareness of the issues surrounding climate change, and to generate programmes of work that can make a real difference to the ways ... Read more

This comprehensive report looks at the burgeoning Innovation Technologies (IvT) sector and how such systems as eScience, modelling, stimulation and visualisation technologies along with virtual and rapid prototyping are helping shape the face of innovation across all business models along with the impact of this on public institutions in relation to leadership and business strategies ... Read more

This publication demonstrates the value of open studios; for artists, but also for local arts, economic and social development strategies. It introduced key findings and insights from research, offered a range of successful case studies and provided a listing of events from around England. The aim is to help event organisers and their supporters to better ... Read more

Assessing the Intrinsic Impacts of a Live Performance is an effort to define and measure how audiences are  transformed by a live performance. The study’s research design consisted of a pair of questionnaires – one administered in-venue just prior to curtain, and the other sent home with the respondent and mailed back. The first questionnaire collected information about the ... Read more

This practical guide takes a look at why arts and cultural organisations might want to measure economic benefit and gives a decision tree to follow to decide on the best method to adopt. Each of the four methods suggested is then discussed in detail, together with case studies of organisations that have used it. It ... Read more

This report looks at the impact of the folk festival and provides some key findings about festival goers, funding, programming, partnerships and ticketing.

This report highlights the evidence for the importance of museums, libraries and archives. It does so by understanding their role delivering public value. This document identifies how museums, libraries and archives have adapted to the changing demands of the public whom they serve, and have asserted themselves as providers of knowledge and inspiration. The report: Demonstrates how popular ... Read more

This document brings together a vast body of research and experience to demonstrate how research can develop museums’ and galleries’ ambitions, vision, models and methodologies to enable a much more meaningful measure of impact and value.

The study develops locally relevant indicators and measures to prove the value of culture, with particular reference to central and local government agendas including: Quality of Life and Shared Priorities (commissioned by Shropshire County Council). These locally relevant indicators relate to the impact and outcomes of Cultural Services’ actions across healthy lifestyles, community safety and ... Read more

This study evaluated a major learning programme, and assessed how the exhibition and wider programme delivered engagement, innovative formal and informal (including digital) learning opportunities, personal development, diversity of audience, intergenerational interaction, and new perspectives. Societal impacts and legacies were identified, with clear recommendations including: evaluation and partnership delivery models; involving young people; harnessing the ... Read more