The unique place of culture

I’ve just had a very stimulating awayday with Pippa Jones, one of our principal associates and the Director of Create Gloucestershire (www.creategloucestershire.co.uk).  Most of what we talked about was the research we are developing with John Knell and the RSA on ‘Making Culture Work’ (looking for the first time at the whole system of what makes cultural projects really effective in different places).  I’ll come back to that in a later blog.

But we also talked about developing Cultural Return On Investment methodology.  To do that we need to establish what is distinct about a cultural return and what this adds to the (equally important) social, environmental and economic returns. 

It’s not just about cultural outcomes, but about cultural inputs and activities too.  Those of you who think about this won’t be surprised to learn that in our quick and dirty assessment, we came up with two fundamental roles for culture.  One is about creating beauty and feeding the soul.  But that, we noticed, is not solely the preserve of arts and heritage projects (and by the way we include education and science in culture.  Discuss). Beauty lies in the natural world too, and those with religious faith of course feed their soul that way.  The second element we thought was nearest to unique was the business of finding and capturing meaning in things, and using that to create better futures.  LARC have done some interesting work on this, and we’ll develop it much more as a centrepiece for the Making Culture Work research over the next year.

But finally it lead us to a discussion about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ culture.  Harriet Walker wrote a really interesting piece in the Independent on 2 June about porn.  She explored how crimes like the murder of Jamie Bulger could in her opinion, be partly explained (not excused) by social reasons – deprivation, neglect and so on.  But that several more recent crimes, like the rape of a 9 year old by a young boy, were more specifically influenced by culture, in this case the use of internet porn.

This leads me to my final argument, that there is a need for public subsidy to generate and sustain ‘good’ culture in a myriad of different sizes, types and ways.  Because if we leave it up to the market, it fills the gap with violence and porn. 

Transition and a language of change

Some people, and I’m one of them, are very lucky to find their personal and professional lives merge.  I guess there’s a work-life-balance risk associated, but on the whole give me work that I’d do unpaid any day.

Yesterday I was invited to a seminar on researching the Transition movement which was  a mix of researchers and activists – I’m both.  I gave a short presentation which you might call a provocation along these lines.  It was surprisingly provocative! 

The Transition movement has both a research AND a communication challenge.  We need to show impact, but we need to do it in a language that others care about.  My proposition is that we use the language of wellbeing.  Then what we need to do is really clearly make the link between environmental sustainability and well-being as expressed so readably in Tim Jackson’s “Prosperity without Growth” for the Sustainable Development Commission.  Here then, is a key role for arts and museums. (By the way, Tim Jackson is an economist AND a playwright).

There are three languages we can use.  The environmental language has failed to capture the collective imagination.  To me that’s no surprise.  Even though I care profoundly about climate chaos, I’m not interested in climate science or CO2.  Apologies, but there it is. 

The second language of economic impact was used with spectacular profile by the Stern Review of 2006.  It’s undoubtedly a language that speaks to many (surely a cost of 5% - 20% of GDP should focus the mind?) but not only is it reductionist in content, but it too seems to have failed to motivate.

Finally then we have the language of social impact, in the form of a personal and collective sense of well-being.  To date well-being has been valued using monetary equivalents based on what people do or what they say they would do to achieve well-being (revealed or stated preferences). 

Now however, there is a new opportunity to value well-being according to how happy people say they are.  The opportunity presented by the ONS new life satisfaction data has been explored in detail in Daniel Fujiwara’s work on well-being valuation which adds to the Green Book discussion about social cost benefit.  By way of a simple example:

If a 20% reduction in local crime rates increases the life satisfaction of an individual by 1 index point, and an increase in household income of £5K also increases their life satisfaction by 1 point, we can conclude the value of 20% crime reduction is worth £5K to them.

Once the economists, psychologists and neuroscientists (or neuroeconomists – yes really) have done their research on making this robust, I’m sure we could make the case for arts and museums more strongly.  They are places that can get across messages – anyone who saw the When The World Tips production last year will vouch for that – but can also make people happy.  The Happy Museum is an obvious example which at its halfway point now needs to make really clearly that link between well-being and less consumption.

Locally In Kendal we have a little project through which we’re doing our bit.  Biked Up Pedal Powered works with local young people to choreograph a bike-stunt dance for our local street arts festival, Mintfest, with the music powered by audience members cycling bike-generators, which we’re building this summer.  To make sure we speak the three languages described above, we’re working to a cash, social and environmental budget.  So far, we’ve lots of credits on the social and environmental side, with in-kind hours and pedalled miles given.  We will see how this simple technique affects our activities and those of our partners in the arts and funding world.  Hurrah for multi-lingualism!

SROI – the analysis that dare not speak its name

The last few weeks have seen me at some very interesting sessions with Government departments – both the DCMS on measuring cultural value and the DfE for the evaluation of the Myplace programme. 

The greatest pleasure was finding out that Treasury has a Green Book Team.  That’s a team I’d like to be in, and I’m sure my children would too.  Especially bearing in mind the power they wield. 

But my serious point is that there seems to be an emerging consistency about measuring social impact, and that it largely revolves around the techniques used in social return on investment analysis.  The Treasury folks at the DCMS meeting were very keen to point out that they are not only interested in a financial return, but that the case made for a non-financial return needs to be as rigorous and clear.  Fair enough. Both the participants in that workshop, and the Sheffield Hallam team evaluating Myplace talked about proxy values, attribution and cost benefit analysis as ways to meet that challenge.

In fact, the Green Book Team (there’s a Magenta Book too…) was closely involved in development of the SROI guide back in 2009 so it has their stamp of approval.  In July last year they updated their own guidance to consider ‘social cost benefit analysis’ using approaches like ‘willingness to pay’ which you would use in SROI.  There’s a bit about it here http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/data_greenbook_news.htm which talks about a discussion paper on “three techniques for the valuation of non-market impacts in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. Revealed preference and stated preference are two ‘market based approaches’ which have been referenced in the Green Book for some time. This paper introduces a third approach, involving the measurement of subjective well-being, which has been gaining currency in recent years.”  Have a look at my blog from January for a bit on that. 

So amidst grim austerity, there a real change for good may come about.  What really excites me is how this might link to an evidence base for social finance and payment by results.  In particular I think that if the big philanthropic givers who contribute to the youth zones we’re working with can be reimbursed for what they give then they can re-invest again and again.  And that really would make a difference to people’s lives. 

On Friday I was at the second meeting of the SROI UK Council and there was much debate about the merits of focusing on social value more widely.  It seems to me that this is a very valuable way to promote the techniques of SROI – the proxy values, attribution, cost-benefit and so on – to a wider audience who may have reservations about SROI. 

In the next few months we’re delivering training to various voluntary sector organisations through Children England.  In this training we need to put SROI analyses firmly in their right place, which is part of an overall plan > do > review approach to management – a means to an end, not an end in itself. 

A cultural return on investment

Two things prompted me to think about this.  Firstly, two years of working intensively with SROI – and many previous years evaluating cultural projects, has made me fairly certain that creative and cultural projects always offer something over and above what other projects do.  Over and above the different elements of social, economic and environmental return highlighted in SROI.  For a while, I thought it might be that we need to capture a fourth line, personal return. 

Then I facilitated a discussion by museums to inform the Arts Council’s new responsibility to look after them too.  Gordon Watson, from Lakeland Arts Trust, commented that what museums do is make social, environmental, economic and cultural benefit.  Which in a sense is my answer.  The job now is to distinguish what that bit of cultural benefit is, that is distinct from social benefit.  At the Happy Museum symposium yesterday I asked the participants what they thought – a brilliant bunch from six museums across the country.  These are my suggested three USPs if you like, coming out of that discussion.  They are about things that we do that are either or both ‘creative’ and ‘cultural’ – make of that what you will!

Being part of creative or cultural experiences helps you practise looking at things differently –  for you personally, that makes life exciting!  (Steve Gardam from LTM described walking down a street in London with some new knowledge about a historic figure who lived there, and how that changed things for him).  For society it enables lateral solutions which tend to be better.  For both individuals and society, the practising helps us to be more resilient.  (I credit Steve with this one)

The cultural world is our collective dreaming.  It’s the place where society sifts, sorts, shares and processes ‘stuff’ in a freeform, not goal focused way.  Dreaming has an important psychological role in individuals – the same is true for society.  (I credit Kim Pickin from the Story Museum with this one)

And at a highly instrumental level, creative and cultural experiences work for people because they allow people to bespoke them to meet their own needs - football doesn’t do that.  And at a more intrinsic level they exercise the soul, playing the role that school does for the brain, and sports does for the body.  (I credit Katherine Ford of the Cinema Museum with that one)

How this translates into a tangible way to plan, do and review creative and cultural delivery, I’m not sure.  But I think its an important step in my thinking at least. 

Well-being – the most important social return and our challenge for 2012

As a business we have two main areas of work; helping clients to see the wood for the trees – analytical, diagnostic work – and supporting a focus on the positive.   The latter first became a feature for us when we worked with Bernie Brown on young people’s services at Knowsley MBC outside Liverpool.  She was keen to instigate Family Group Conferencing at the time for extended families to find their own solutions to their young people’s ills.  She brought Mike Doolan over from New Zealand, the head of social care who had been inspired by working with Maori families to refocus on ‘kinship care’.  The result there was the Government were quite quickly able to close down children’s homes because – surprise surprise – extended families are so much better able to look after their children than the state (and in these cases their parents).

That was about four years ago, and now there is a movement in this country which we notice shares some of the features of this approach, sometimes called ‘co-production’.  We’ve seen it particularly through the work of the new economics foundation (nef) whom we follow closely, but also in the form of Asset Based Community Building which John Ashton, the head of public health in Cumbria showed us.  In our work with Children and Young People focusing on the positive is about looking at positive psychology.  Whilst it sounds like obvious good sense, it’s quite a challenge when services for young people are all about stopping them doing things – less pregnancy, fewer drugs, less anti-social behaviour. 

But the challenge for us now is linking up these two areas of our business I mentioned – the diagnostic work – which mostly takes the form of Social Return On Investment (SROI) analyses – and focusing on well-being and the positive – which we believe is not only the best way to help people to find their own successful path through life but is also the most important social return.

SROI practitioners tend to see well-being as a means to an end – a personal resource which helps with success in work or social environments.  And there are challenges with measuring it.  Jayne Stallard Moore, our Ed Psych associate, says happiness is like an illegal substance – once you get used to it, you need more!  It’s also an area where there is a high risk of politicians or public services trying to impose a socially acceptable norm.   

And yet Government has tasked the ONS with measuring well-being to offer an alternative to GDP, and Gus O’Donnell, outgoing Cabinet Secretary, has described how the results of the research will go on to influence policy in all areas (have a listen at http://tinyurl.com/76zeo5e ). Nef (again) have published a couple of great documents too, their Sustainable well-being: guide to policy and practice and Measuring our Progress.

So the challenge as I see it is how to link these two worlds.  It comes back to something that we see all the time in our consultancy practice – it’s all very well being able to see the wood for the trees, but how do you then nurture your wood?  The research, the good practice, even the policy is out there – but how do you put it into practice widely, fairly and consistently? 

It’s in this particular forest that we will spend 2012 – seeing how we can make sure that well-being is understood effectively as a social impact, and that the people we work with know how to support their clients or customers to make it happen.  No doubt there will be a bit of ‘nudging’ in there too, as behavioural economics influences our work.    I’m now involved in a couple of areas where I hope we can influence this at a policy level as well as through our own work: as a member of the newly formed SROI UK Council, and on the steering group for the Department for Education’s evaluation of the huge Myplace fund.  We’ll let you know how it goes!