Dr Claire Donovan of Brunel University has recently been appointed as the second fellow on the DCMS/AHRC/ESRC programme on measuring cultural value. She is conducting Phase 2 of the project, following on from Dr Dave O'Brien (now of City University), whose Phase 1 report we blogged about last year.
The debate over measuring cultural value is well-trodden ground, and it remains to be seen if Dr Donovan, whose academic background is in the sociology of knowledge, will be able to add much original insight. One interesting step she has taken, though, is to launch an interactive blog on the DCMS's website, called Priceless?, to encourage people in the cultural sector to contribute their own thoughts. It will run for 12 weeks, with eight themed discussions. Some notable figures from the sector have already picked up the gauntlet, including Nick Ewbank and Gayle McPherson. Robert Hewison too has chipped in with these rather tart comments:
Welcome to the Valuing Culture debate, which began in 2003 when the then Secretary of State for Culture, Tessa Jowell, attended a conference organised by the National Theatre, the National Gallery, Demos and AEA Associates.
I wonder if you are hoping to reinvent the wheel ... It is excellent to have another contributor to the field, but it may difficult to get very far when Phase One of your project has already sold the pass by saying that the only way forward is by the Treasury Green Book.
This post on the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog gives a taste of Donovan's style.
I don't know how to measure cultural value but I do know how to take the value out of culture and that is to reduce decision making to instrumentalist analyses of the observable and measurable outputs from cultural 'products'.
Posted by: Lawsandaverages | 23 January 2012 at 10:43 AM