Measuring the Quality and Impact of Arts and Culture

Arts and culture (i.e., theatre, film, music, visual art, literature, cultural heritage, etc. and related institutions and participants) have traditionally not been measured and evaluated in the same way as other sectors. The reason is perhaps that arts and culture cannot be ‘weighed and measured’: it is difficult to assess quality, and it has been difficult to see how, and according to what criteria, the quality, value and impact of arts and culture can be measured. There has therefore been a reluctance to conduct such measurements, and ‘evaluations’ in the field have mostly been limited to analysing the content and aesthetics of individual works of art from a humanities perspective.