New Approaches to Cultural Measurement: On Cultural Value, Cultural Participation and Cultural Diversity

Audrey Yue & Rimi Khan.

In Making Culture Count The Politics of Cultural Measurement edited by Lachlan MacDowall, Marnie Badham, Emma Blomkamp, Kim Dunphy, pp.264–28.

2015

Series: New Directions in Cultural Policy Research

Palgrave Macmillan London

URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-46458-3_17

The rising trend in cultural measurement has been driven by the political ideologies of the New Public Management (NPM) and its neoliberal contract between the public sector and the citizen. Arts outputs have been used to assess non-arts outcomes such as economic and social impacts, leading to policy developments that, more often than not, emphasise the instrumental benefits of participation. In particular, policy interest in cultural participation and cultural diversity has emerged from its perceived contributions to increasing migrant social inclusion and community wellbeing, as well as stimulating tourism and the creative industries. This chapter seeks to problematise the instrumentalism of policy by introducing a new approach to examine the value of migrants’ cultural engagement.

This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP110100039).