Dig beneath the hype surrounding the battle of the bids for the 2008 Capital of Culture and a more important long-term and less public discussion can be found. The Audit Commission is conducting the consultation for Best Value Performance Indicators (BVP) for local authorities’ arts provision. The performance indicators developed will shape local authorities’ arts strategy for the foreseeable future, but there is a danger that they will lead to a focus on outputs rather than the potential wider social outcomes of arts provision.
Local authority spending is crucial to arts provision in the UK. In 2001/2002 Local Authorities spent £217 million on the arts, just short of DCMS’ total grant-in-aid to the Arts Council of £297.3 million for 2002/2003. There is a clear need for Local Authorities to demonstrate that their investment in the arts secures value-for-money. Performance Indicators, according to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, enable ‘genuine and long-term improvements in the social, economic and environmental well-being of communities’ and ensure ‘that authorities play their part in delivering the community strategy, contributing to social inclusion, community engagement, sustainable development, and a better quality of life.’
The bidding process for Capital of Culture has demonstrated the increasing value placed on the arts and cultural provision by local authorities. Acceptance of its role as a tool for economic regeneration, like in Gateshead or Salford, is now joined by an increasing interest in the wider social benefits of arts provision. Art and culture is central to local communitiescommunities’ identity and represents investment in communities’ social capital. Recent research by the Centre for Cultural Policy Management found that 81 per cent of Newcastle/Gateshead residents believe that arts and cultural activities are of value to the local area, up from 56 per cent the previous year. Other Local Authorities have used an arts strategy to bring benefits to socially excluded communities. In Bolton, The Breightmet Arts Project enabled residents of one of the UK’s most deprived estates to re-establish a local community with increased opportunities for enjoyment and learning and improvement to local residents’ wellbeing. Lewisham borough council is working in partnership with the Albany and National Theatres on the Art of Regeneration project, bringing together performing artists and school children across the borough. Interim findings from the Institute of Education suggest that the project has brought real benefits for the children taking part, increasing their enjoyment of school and contributing improvements in writing and literacy skills.
The recent Strategy Unit paper Creating Public Value: An analytical framework for public service reform pointed to the need for a focus on genuine outcomes whilst acknowledging the difficulty of:
‘Determining value through the impact of objective measures of outcomes…. In most areas there are still considerable gaps in our understanding of how to create value through outcomes: either we have limited knowledge of what causes an outcome, or even if we do have a reasonable sense of the causes, we understand little about the effectiveness of different policy levers.’
The Audit Commission consultation acknowledges the role that arts and cultural activity can play in the long-term health, education and social capital of communities. However, the proposed indicators have a strong focus on outputs. The Audit Commission does acknowledge that measuring outputs should be seen as a first step towards developing outcome indicators, and given the paucity of the available national evidence in this area this should be welcome. But to recognise the true value of arts and cultural activity we must ensure that we move away from simplistic output based assessments to an appreciation of more complex, but ultimately more valuable outcomes.