University of Winchester, 25th January 2012

The 'transformative powers' The 'transformative powers' of the arts: The policy of the arts: The policy

perspectiveperspective

Dr Eleonora Belfiore

Associate ProfessorCentre for Cultural Policy Studies, University of

Warwick, UK

(e.belfiore@warwick.ac.uk)

What have the ‘transformative powers of the arts’ have to do with cultural policy?

The social impact of the arts and the problem of evaluation

New Labour and ‘defensive instrumentalism’

The cultural value challenge

What role for the Humanities in policy-sensitive research?

Content of my presentation:

The Challenge

Welfare state under pressure

Crisis of legitimacy of traditional cultural values (postmodern theory)

Shift towards evidence-based policy

Justifying public arts funding in the 21st century

Justifying public arts funding in the 21st century

The response

The arts’ sector “attachment” to social and economic agendas:

arts as an engine for economic development

arts as a tool to promote social inclusion

Instrumentalism for advocacy purposes…

Estelle Morris, then Minister for the Arts, 2003:

“I know that Arts and Culture make a contribution to health, to education, to crime reduction, to strong communities, to the economy and to the nation’s well-being, but I don’t always know how to evaluate it or describe it. We have to find a language and a way of describing its worth. It’s the only way we’ll secure the greater support we need”.

‘Great expectations’- the range of social impact claimed for the arts

Arts and crime prevention Arts to promote civic participation Arts to promote social inclusion and counteract the

symptoms of poverty and disadvantage Arts and tolerance in diverse communities, social

cohesion Arts and improved educational attainment (e.g. Creative

Partnerships) Arts and health (arts ‘in’ health initiatives, especially

mental health) Arts and empowerment, source of personal confidence Arts and employment (skills, confidence)

Have strategies of ‘policy attachment’ worked?

Yes, because… Role of arts and culture in urban regeneration now acknowledged

Arts now have a greater role in public debate

Arts budget increased in the early 2000s

Arts now have access to large sums through non-artistic budgets

A rationale for public ‘investment’ (at least for a while...)

Have strategies of ‘policy attachment’ worked?

No because... Lack of evidence

An excessive instrumentalisation of the arts and culture?

The problem of providing a solid rationale for funding has not been solved

A false and sterile dichotomy between ‘intrinsic’ and ‘instrumental’ value of the arts

Reformulating the arts impact assessment debate

A theoretically informed approach and a rejection of a position of advocacy.

A critical historical perspective: review of claims made over time for the transformative powers of the arts.

An exploration of what we know about the aesthetic experience and the mechanisms that govern responses to the arts as a view to grasp what ‘impact’ may mean

A Humanities contribution

The negative tradition: Corruption and distraction

The positive tradition: Catharsis (e.g. arts therapy) Personal well-being Education and self-development (bildung) Moral improvement and civilization Political instrument Social stratification and identity construction

The autonomy tradition: Autonomy of the arts and rejection of

instrumentality (art for art’s sake)

A taxonomy of individual and social impacts of the arts

Is instrumentalism really a recent phenomenon?

First coherent theorisation of an instrumental cultural policy in Plato’s Republic (IV century BC)

Most theories of art in the Western intellectual history are ‘pragmatic’: art has a function, and the extent to which it is successful in fulfilling it contributes to determine its value

Social impact and cultural policy: Problematic aspects

The idea of the arts having an impact has been with us for a very long time. The problem is with evaluation!

Measurement of social impact is complex, difficult, and there is no agreed or shared protocol for evaluation

Why?

Whilst progress has been made, we still actually know very little about what happens to people when they engage in cultural activities (whether as audiences or participants) – We don’t know enough about people’s aesthetic responses to generalise about the effects of the arts

The instrumental element in the rhetoric of public arts funding has become more central and explicit than ever before;

Public ‘investment’ in the arts is advocated on the basis of what are expected to be concrete and measurable economic and social impacts;

Such beneficial impacts must be assessed and measured before the arts’ demands on the public purse can be considered fully legitimate…

Its defensive character

What is ‘new’ about contemporary instrumentalism?

The problems with the emphasis on impact and its measurement

Socio-economic impact = value

Development of a ‘toolkit mentality’

Questions of value, quality, excellence absent from policy debates(or muddled up with notions of desirable impacts)

What can’t be measured doesn’t get considered

A certain dishonesty in the way the ‘case for the arts’ has been made and in the way data and statistics have been presented: Evidence-based policy-making or policy-based evidence-making?

Lack of honesty in the official cultural policy rhetoric?

Chris Smith, ex Secretary of State for Culture, 2003:

“… I acknowledge unashamedly that when I was Secretary of State, going into what always seemed like a battle with the Treasury, I would try and touch the buttons that would work”.

“So, use the measurements and figures and labels that you can, when you need to, in order to convince the rest of the governmental system of the value and importance of what you’re seeking to do. But recognise at the same time that this is not the whole story, that it is not enough as an understanding of cultural value”.

So, what about values?

Evidence-based policy in the arts sector expected to provide justification for arts funding per se

Devoting public resources to the arts and culture is not a matter of evidence… it is a matter of politics and values…

The missing element in cultural policy discourse

Is evidence of impact really the main driver of policy?

No, otherwise arts funding ought to have been cut due to the ‘evidence problem’

Instrumentalist arguments operate at the rhetorical level as a legitimating tool

Evidence is and always will be value-based and value-laden

Greenhalgh and Russell (2006) propose to reconceptualise policymaking as a social drama centred on argumentation:

“a real, enacted story in which all concerned, whether they want to or not, become actors” (p. 37).

Evidence is “rhetorically constructed on the social stage so as to achieve particular ends for particular people”, and its production, selection and employment in public debates should be considered as “moves in a rhetorical argumentation game and not as the harvesting of objective facts to be fed into a logical decision-making sequence” (p. 34).

From instrumentalism to cultural value

Tessa Jowell ‘Government and the value of culture’ (2004)

“Too often politicians have been forced to debate culture in terms only of its instrumental benefits to other agendas – education, the reduction of crime, improvements in wellbeing – explaining – or in some instances almost apologising for – our investment in culture only in terms of something else”.

“How, in going beyond targets, can we best capture the value of culture?”

How do we avoid ‘defensive instrumentalism’?

‘Defensive instrumentalism’ (or instrumentalism the New Labour’s way)

Older forms of instrumentalism aimed at paving the way for a constructive articulation of cultural value and the social and political function of the arts

In New Labour’s version, instrumentalism has retained in its protective dimension, but the defensive moment leads to nothing beyond itself

The ‘cultural value’ debate (and the unhelpful intrinsic/instrumental dichotomy)

The long reach of Defensive instrumentalism

A 1980s revival: Economic impact is back in fashion:

Cultural Capital: A Manifesto for the Future/You can bank on culture Campaign - March 2010

The Save the Arts campaign/ David Shrigley’s video (http://savethearts-uk.blogspot.com/)

Wolfang Tillmans’ answer when asked “What’s the best argument you can put forward for not cutting the arts?:It makes sense on an economic level. Britain doesn’t have much to export but the creative industries are a huge export industry. I don’t want to sound too economical but that is the only language this government seems to understand.

New Labour’s cultural policies: The legacy

Paradox of crisis of confidence alongside increased funding levels

A sector that is more comfortable with talking about ‘value for money’ than money for values

A rhetorically weak position and the unresolved issue of making a ‘rational’ argument for the sector

A vulnerable status in a time of recession and cuts

A new stage in the commodification process? (Gray 2000)

When market logic is transformed into “a universal common sense” (Bourdieu & Wacquant 2001), is there any space in public policy for values beyond economic value?

Making cultural value explicit Bringing the debate into the public sphere (and

engage the public in debate) and accept controversy

Reformulating the narrow debate on impact as a broader discussion of the functions of the arts and culture in contemporary society

Reconnecting such a discussion to a long-standing intellectual tradition in Western culture

cultural value is latent in current cultural policy – how can we make it explicit?

There is power in history!

Cultural value debate perfect arena for the Humanities