Future Trends: Social value creation and measurement

Can arts and culture change someone’s life? Can a City of Culture change the lives of every person within a region? Social Value represents the value that people experience as a result of changes in their lives. Applied to the cultural sector, social value helps unpick how the arts might impact the lives of individuals and groups. This paper reviews the current understanding of creating and measuring social value in the cultural sector. To relate theory to practice, a case study of the Social Value Assessment for Coventry UK City of Culture 2021 is used to support and interrogate framing assumptions, and to articulate recommendations for future research and practice.

Introduction

The term ‘social value’ has increasingly been used within the cultural sector to categorise a way in which the arts impact individuals and groups.

This paper provides a cross-disciplinary overview of this trend and illustrates how social value can be generated and measured in cultural contexts.

To do so, we pose a series of questions that form the basis for each section of this paper.

They are:
1) What is social value creation and measurement?
2) Why has social value become important in the cultural sector?
3) How has social value creation and measurement been applied to culture?
4) What are future trends and recommendations for policy and research?

A case study of the Social Value Assessment for Coventry UK CoC 2021 is used to support and interrogate the framing assumptions, and to articulate recommendations for future research and practice.

Read the full paper: Social Value Creation and Measurement (PDF)

Dr Andrew Anzel is a Research Fellow at the Warwick Business School. His research focuses on social value measurement, cultural policy, and organizational identity. Before his research career he was an arts producer in New York City.

Dr Patrycja Kaszynska is Senior Research Fellow at University of the Arts London. She is interested in the valuation practices shaping the articulations and measurement of cultural value.

Dr Haley Beer is the Lead of the Social Impact Evaluation of Coventry City of Culture 2021. She has consulted on impact measurement for organisations such as the Crown Estate, OECD, UNDP, and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The Future Trends series, published as part of the Warwick UK Cities of Culture Project and commissioned by the
AHRC, discusses ways of thinking about the value of culture: the importance of research in understanding the place of
culture in everyday lives, its impact on local people, society, economy and wellbeing and prosperity at large; and how
this research-informed approach connects with the needs of policy making.