When art meets politics

Given the widespread agreement that culture matters, it is astonishing how difficult it is to say why. The discussion seems to veer between emphatic assertions that art has truly “transformative” effects and more specific claims that the UK has the largest cultural and creative sector in the world relative to GDP, accounting for more than 7 per cent of the economy. Neither position seems to convince the public in a satisfactory way. The Cultural Value Project—a two-year, £2m research initiative funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council—seeks to address this blind spot. The objective of the project, officially launched in March, is to develop new perspectives on this old question.

For nearly three decades, the value of cultural and artistic activities has been measured by government in instrumental terms: economic impact; urban regeneration; improved educational attainment; better health; reduced unemployment; curtailed reoffending rates; and so on. While these might well be plausible registers of the benefits of culture and art, they are hard to evidence. Putting culture into the straitjacket of predefined outcomes and targets has led to crude oversimplifications, and this has provoked a backlash from those keen to “salvage” the arts from the tyranny of instrumentalism. Yet, the default position of many of those criticising the traditional policy approach is equally unsatisfactory. Far too often, anti-instrumentalists have argued that cultural experience belongs solely to the realm of the ineffable. This, in some extreme cases, quasi-mystical insistence that no concepts used in other areas of life could be applied to art and culture closes down debate, solidifying the scepticism of those who do not buy the claim that a special case should be made for the arts and culture.  

The Cultural Value Project aims to go beyond these two poles of debate—the conceptually weak “je ne sais quoi” account of cultural value on the one hand, and the methodological crude instrumental impact model on the other. How can this be achieved?

Firstly, the debate has to be freed from the spectre of the next spending review. In the past, the desire to avoid government cuts has sometimes led cultural institutions to seize upon flimsy evidence, which amounted to little more than thoughtful advocacy presenting itself as robust evidence. Those who produced it, and above all those who received it, rarely believed it to be compelling: the former because it did not evaluate what they believed to be fundamental to the arts and culture; the latter because they could see the weaknesses of the methodologies employed.

In order to avoid this pitfall, the project’s scope spans both publicly-funded and commercially-viable cultural forms. Attributing equal emphasis to both will make it possible to deflect the need to demonstrate short-term returns on the tax-payers’ money; even more so if we include the great range of participatory arts organised by people for themselves. Together, these will open up room for deeper reflection on why culture matters.

So pursuing the project outside of the influence of political imperatives seems a necessary step. What else is needed? We need to look at the actual experience of culture and the arts—what it feels like, rather than the ancillary effects of such experience. This means, first and foremost that we have to break away from thinking about culture as having a clearly defined policy objective and focus on getting the phenomenology of cultural experience right.

Amazing things can follow from this starting point: suddenly it is possible to register that, while accepting the irreducibility of the actual cultural encounter, it is clear that culture is not experienced in a vacuum; it has wide repercussions, starting with health and individual wellbeing, through community cohesion and political activism, to economic growth. This is a chance to reconsider how the effects of culture are best appreciated and classified.

Who knows, maybe relieving the pressure to tick boxes, as well as the pressure to appreciate in silence and awe, may mean that we will find things that will shake our assumptions. What if, rather than being a panacea, experiences of culture are more like an ancient Greek pharmakon: “sacrament, remedy, poison, talisman, cosmetic, perfume or intoxicant” all rolled into one? Leaving this possibility open marks a readiness to enter into a more grown-up debate about cultural value.