In recent years a number of commentators have argued that the 'soft power' of a nation's culture is as important as its military strength in assessing that country's place in the world. Measuring such soft power is far from easy, though. One body which has tried to do so is the Berlin-based Institute for Cultural Diplomacy. Its Cultural Diplomacy Outlook Report 2011 is a wide-ranging study looking at many aspects of what it calls cultural diplomacy, in the public, private and third sectors. One of the most interesting parts is its Index:
The cultural diplomacy index charts the increasing prevalence of soft power and public diplomacy as a means of international dialogue. The index evaluates various government activities to determine whether their respective cultural diplomacy programmes are substantial, constructive and effective.
The index produced by the ICD ranked forty countries by these means, and found that Germany and the Netherlands came joint first, with Norway in third. The UK was fifth, the US was seventh, and India was the leading emerging economy, in tenth place.
The Design Commission, a standing commission composed of parliamentarians from all parties and leading representatives from business, industry and the public sector, has just produced its first report, Restarting Britain: Design Education and Growth. The report, which was sponsored by the Design Council, Creative & Cultural Skills and CHEAD, looks at ways in which design education can be improved.
The report makes four recommendations:
Government needs a national design strategy that it takes ownership of in a well-informed and pro-active way.
Whilst government should oppose any move to remove design from the national curriculum, we also need to think again about how design operates in schools
Further education routes into the sector need to be expanded and developed
Higher education centres of excellence ... need protecting and funding.
At the end of last year, Ofcom published its International Communications Report for 2011. This report offers a huge array of facts and figures on communications usage across 17 countries. It finds that the UK is one of the heaviest users of many new technologies. Some 79% of UK consumers had bought goods online in 2010 - the highest percentage in Europe - while smartphone ownership (which doubled between 2009 and 2010) was also the highest in Europe. Ownership of digital video recorders, meanwhile, was second only to the United States. Such trends were driven, Ofcom implies, by the relative cheapness of such services in the UK, compared with the major European countries and the US.
However, this growth in new media usage is not necessarily coming at the expense of older ones - the amount of time Britons spent watching TV also rose in 2010.
The review into the future of Britain's high streets, conducted by Mary Portas, has been published by BIS, the business department. The Portas Review acknowledges the challenges facing high-street retail, from the growth in online retailing to the rise of the supermarkets and the expansion of out-of-town retail parks, and set outs 28 recommendations to try and tackle some of these problems. These include:
Empower successful Business Improvement Districts to take on more responsibilities and powers and become “Super-BIDs”
Make it easier for people to become market traders by removing unnecessary regulations so that anyone can trade on the high street unless there is a valid reason why not
Support imaginative community use of empty properties through Community Right to Buy, Meanwhile Use and a new “Community Right to Try”
Make explicit a presumption in favour of town centre development in the wording of the National Planning Policy Framework
The Portas Review has generally been well-received (see here for examples) but from our point of view it is disappointing to note that culture's potential role in reviving high streets gets only limited coverage. Portas says in her introduction that "I want to put the heart back into the centre of our high streets, re-imagined as destinations for socialising, culture, health, wellbeing, creativity and learning." but, apart from brief mentions of the Meanwhile Project, Coventry Artspace and Brixton Village, she doesn't really return to culture and creativity in the remainder of her report (though she does thank Urban Pollinators in particular for their contribution - we have blogged about their work before). While Portas cannot, of course, cover everything in her report, this is something of a missed opportunity.
BOP Consulting is moving office today. We are leaving Margaret Street in Fitzrovia after five years, and heading east to St John Street in Farringdon. As a result, BOP staff will be working from home today, so if you need to get hold of us, please try our mobiles. Our email server will also be disconnected for a few hours as it is moved.
Please bear with us - normal service should be resumed tomorrow.
The Centre for Cities has written an interesting report pointing out that some of the smaller cities and larger towns of the South East and East of England punch well above their weight in economic terms. The report, Investing in Growth Cities, looks at the 15 members of Regional Cities East (the sponsors of the research), which range from Peterborough in the north to Southampton in the west, and include Oxford, Brighton and Milton Keynes. It finds they accounted for 27% of net jobs growth in England from 1998-2008 (the Centre for Cities does not say what their share of England's population is, but we reckon it's under 10%). The report goes on to suggest ways the cities might build on this good performance.
Last week the DCMS published its latest set of creative industries economic estimates. This is a startling document on several levels. We can't remember the last time we saw a government report as shoddily produced as this one. The text is littered with grammatical mistakes, typos, formatting issues, and odd choices of wording: the creative industries themselves are several times referred to as 'the Creative Industry', for instance. There is no sign that the document has been proofread which, given how often these figures are quoted in our sector, is alarming.*
[*These comments refer to the text of the version the DCMS published on 8 December. It seems this was a pre-publication draft which was posted on the website by mistake. On 22 December, a revised version was posted with corrected presentation and formatting. All the data estimates are unchanged from the earlier version.]
The numbers, too, are startling. The DCMS has made some changes to its methodology, which have major consequences. Firstly, after years of treating all the computer software sector as creative, it has now decided (after consultation) to drop most of it, keeping codes related to computer gaming. It has also, seemingly on the advice of the Office for National Statistics, decided to drop the 'scaling' it was applying to the Gross Value Added (GVA) of the sector. This amounted to a 'top-up' of 30% to account for deficiencies in the survey data, which is now thought unnecessary. Some other smaller changes have been made to the methodology too, including switching to the Annual Population Survey instead of the Labour Force Survey.
The results indicate that:
Total creative employment (i.e. both inside and outside the creative industries) was 1.5m in 2010, up fractionally on the previous year (on this new basis of calculation). Just under 900,000 of these jobs are in the creative industries. The larger figure amounts to 5.1% of all jobs.
GVA in 2009 was £36.3bn, or 2.9% of the UK's total. Half of it came from advertising and publishing.
Exports were 10.6% of GDP (in 2009), driven by publishing and TV & Radio.
There were 107,000 creative enterprises in the UK, 5.1% of the total.
The numbers also appear to confirm something that BOP has written about before: the dominance of the greater South East of England in the UK's creative economy. According to these figures, the East of England alone has more creative enterprises than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together.
The DCMS points out, fairly enough, that the new basis of calculating the estimates means direct comparisons shouldn't be made between these figures and their previous ones. Nonetheless, it has to be said that these new figures are far lower: the DCMS's estimate for creative employment in last year's report was 2.3m, GVA was 5.6% of the UK total and creative enterprises numbered 182,000. Such big changes are unlikely to do much for the sector's credibility.
This is BOP's final selection of our cultural highlights of 2011 - architecture and discoveries of the year. The descriptions come from the BOP staff member who nominated them. We'd love to hear your choices too.
Architecture
A number of striking new cultural buildings opened this year including the Riverside Museum in Glasgow and the Marlowe theatre in Canterbury. Will such schemes be a thing of the past in the age of austerity?
New building of the year: The Hepworth Wakefield (architect: David Chipperfield).
A triumph of light and space that wonderfully showcases the collection and blends beautifully with the weir; at last, a reason to visit Wakefield!
Regeneration project of the year: Central St Martins, King’s Cross (architect: Stanton Williams)
The new Central Saint Martins campus at Kings Cross is stunning and it anchors the huge Kings Cross Central regeneration scheme: deft building design combined with clever place-making.
Refurbishment of the year: National Museum of Scotland (museum design: Ralph Appelbaum Associates)
It was nice before, but it’s a fabulous space since the re-opening!
Discoveries
This category includes those things, places or people that the rest of the world may have known about, but which we only stumbled across in 2011.
Frank’s Café and Campari Bar
The Frank’s Bar / Bold Tendencies double act at the top of their Peckham multi-storey car park deserves a prize. It’s a superb venue for a summer drink, a band, and to look at some interesting (but mostly awful) sculptures.
Steffen Dam: A Danish artist whose elegant riffs (in glass) on plant and marine life really caught the eye at the Craft Council’s COLLECT fair in the early summer.
Les Belles Images by Simone de Beauvoir: First published in France in 1966, this is a mesmerising portrait of how consumerism shapes the way we construct our identity and present ourselves to the external world.
Georgia (former Soviet republic of): OK, I sort of knew where Georgia was before, but on a visit this year I was really struck by the vibrancy of its capital, its hospitable people, its food, and the beauty and variety of the landscapes once you leave Tbilisi.
Vik Muniz: A Brazilian artist based in New York, Muniz is a vivid example of how the arts can change lives. One of his projects, portrayed in the documentary Wasteland, involved him working with garbage pickers in Rio de Janeiro: the art they created together has been shown in galleries around the globe.
Finally, a rediscovery. This list, and others like it, focus on the new, but the pleasures of re-visiting classics can be considerable. As we age, we bring different perspectives and experiences to our encounters with great work.
Rediscovery of the year: Bleak House by Charles Dickens
I’ve started re-reading novels, and it’s a revelation. The story and its characters are the same but the nuance and the meaning are different. Bleak House is still a rattling good detective story and satire on the law and lawyers, but now what I love are the reflections on how to live well and, in particular, on the nature of love and the curse of money.
At BOP we are choosing our cultural highlights of 2011 - these are our choices of TV, art and songs. The descriptions come from the BOP staff member who nominated them.
Television
2011 was the year British TV got its mojo back. BBC drama output has been the strongest in years with distinctive new work from British and Irish writers (Abi Morgan’s The Hour, Hugo Blick’s Shadow Line, and Ronan Bennett’s Hidden); Channel 4 triumphed with the sitcom Fresh Meat and its compelling drama about the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict, The Promise; More4 weighed in with Mark Cousins’ magisterial The Story of Film, and BBC4 continued to excel by adding top notch European drama (The Killing, Spiral) to its already formidable roster of science and music programming and documentaries on disparate subjects you never knew you wanted a documentary on (Ice? Indian Rolls-Royces? The British chemical industry?!). Not that we’ve chosen any of these as our winner, mind you.
TV programme of the year: Made in Chelsea (E4)
It may have been slow and awkward, but Made in Chelsea was the surprise BOP hit of the autumn. Will Caggy ever get back together with Spencer? What really happened with Hugo and Millie? We can’t wait for the next series.
Runner-up: The Apprentice (BBC1)
Despite refreshing the format, the programme is, in truth, starting to show its age a bit in what was its seventh series – still great fun, though.
Art
In a good year for art, a number of excellent exhibitions didn’t quite make the cut – George Shaw’s show of his melancholy suburban landscapes at the Baltic, for instance. We picked three that stood out for us:
Art exhibition of the year: Gerhard Richter: Panorama at Tate Modern.
We are in the presence of greatness: a painter of staggering range, technique and power.
Runners-up:
Tracey Emin, Love is What You Want, at the Hayward Gallery.
Emin showed her range and depth of work in this show. She is a class act and the one of the few YBAs who actually had some lasting ideas.
de Kooning: A Retrospective at MOMA, New York.
What an artist! Not content with inventing abstract expressionism, Willem de Kooning constantly redefined the art-form over six decades and was instrumental in making New York the world’s art capital.
Public art project of the year:Martin Creed’s The Scotsman Steps, Edinburgh.
104 steps of different coloured marble; on a sunny day, they’re a low-key but effective and beautiful addition to everyday life.
Music
It was women who continued to make the running in music in 2011, led by the world-conquering Adele. We particularly liked the new albums by Gillian Welch, Anna Calvi and Zola Jesus.
Song of the year: Video Games by Lana Del Rey.
A moody ballad, a great video, and a dash of controversy over her alleged inauthenticity – a winning combination.
Best album track not released as a single: Moving Further Away by The Horrors (from the album Skying).
Psychedelia, motorik krautrock and trance meet to monumental effect.
Tomorrow we pick our architecture and discoveries of the year.
It’s the season when newspapers publish their ‘best ofs’ for the year. We thought we’d join in the fun by choosing our own cultural highlights of 2011. We’ll print them over the next three days, starting today with our choices of book, film and theatre. The descriptions come from the BOP staff member who nominated them.
Books
Book of the year by a former BOP employee: Fold by Tom Campbell
Tom’s first novel is a tale of male friendships steadily coming apart over the poker table. Published in early summer, it won good reviews from some of our most distinguished literary journals (the TLS, Metro) and collected several five-star raves on Amazon, not all of which were written by Tom’s friends. In a double triumph, Tom also wrote this blog’s most popular post of the year (see here), for which many thanks.
Book of the year by anybody else: Snowdrops by A.D. Miller
An intelligent, atmospheric thriller about a thirtysomething English lawyer dangerously out of his depth in post-communist Moscow.
Runner-up: Sunset Park by Paul Auster
Films
A mixed bag this year, like most years, but we found some films we liked.
Film of the year (drama): The Skin I Live In (directed by Pedro Almodovar, starring Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya).
Almodovar back to his best: this film is a stylish, thrilling and disturbing exploration of identity.
Runner-up: Hanna(directed by Joe Wright, starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana and Lady Mary from Downton Abbey).
A modern fairytale disguised as a Euro action thriller, Hanna also manages to meld road movie and comedy into the mix to great effect.
Documentary film of the year: TT3D: Closer to the Edge (directed by Richard de Aragues)
A 3D documentary about participants in the Isle of Man TT, the Guardian was bang on in saying: “What could have been a pretty dull film just for motorbike fans and devotees of the Isle of Man TT race, achieves real human interest and excitement”. The crashes are spectacular and heart-wrenching. A British film better than The King’s Speech.
Runner-up: 12 Angry Lebanese (directed by Zeina Daccache)
Maybe not the best film of the year, but a moving one: a documentary about the power of the arts.
Theatre
Our choices here reflect the increasingly hard to categorise nature of theatrical performance – mixing styles and art-forms to achieve its impact.
Water, at the Tricycle theatre, Kilburn.
Created by David Farr and the experimental theatre company Filter, Water was immersive, cinematic and moving (making it a good year for Farr as he also popped up as co-writer of Hanna).
Dance Marathon by bluemouth inc., at the Traverse theatre, Edinburgh.
Interactive performance event that had the audience dancing for four hours non-stop. A feat of endurance, the joy of watching people dance, and exploring your own boundaries: how far can you go without collapsing before time is up?
Common Sounds: Touching the Void by Rambert Dance Company, the London Contemporary Orchestra and the NeoFuturist Collective, at the former Commonwealth Institute, Kensington.
Part of the InTRANSIT festival, Common Sounds was an intense two-and-a-half-hour 'site-responsive theatre experience' that included modern dance, installations, theatre, and a beautiful interpretation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth.
Amsterdam Fringe Festival
Now in its seventh year, this was an eye-opening mix of theatrical anarchy and creative explosions – more than 500 performances from all over the world held in nightclubs and theatres, on the streets, in living rooms and even in a swimming pool. And all held together (in terrible weather) by excellent organisation and endless invention.
Tomorrow we'll make our TV, art and music choices. We'd love to hear what your favourites were too.
Last week, BOP’s Head of Research, Richard Naylor, spoke at the Seventh Session of the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO) Advisory Committee on Enforcement (detailshere). Richard was there to present BOP’s work on Consumers’ Attitudes and Behaviours in the Digital World and their Implications for Copyright, commissioned by the Intellectual Property Office's predecessor, SABIP. Here he gives his impressions of the Session.
The meeting was very much one of those UN-type meetings familiar from news reports and movies – an array of delegates seated according to their country, listening on headsets to simultaneous translation in six languages.
The work that we (David Humphries of the IPO and I) were presenting was actually published at the very beginning of 2010. Much has happened in UK intellectual property policy since then, particularly the Hargreaves Review earlier this year. Looking back, it is pleasing to see that the main thrust of our conclusions within the report – that research into consumers’ attitudes and behaviours needs to move away from framing the issue exclusively as one of criminality, and look at it instead as a consumer decision in which the consumer is confronted with a wide set of choices and constraints (of which illegality is only one among many) – has helped to influence policy, at least in the UK.
BOP was asked to present alongside the IPO as it (the IPO) is keen to see the kind of approach that we suggested, especially the framework for understanding consumer behaviour and attitudes we proposed (see below), taken up and used internationally.
The presentation went down well, with a number of interesting questions asked in response. In particular, it seemed to strike a chord with representatives of emerging and developing countries present in the room, as well as with the Swiss IPO, Public Knowledge (a digital think-tank from Washington DC), and the representative from the Internal Market & Services DG at the European Commission, who have established an Observatory on IP.
In later discussions, everyone could agree with the Commission’s stated desire to establish ‘IP policy that is effective and proportionate’. But the devil is in the detail. Each country and organisation has a different take on what the adjectives ‘effective’ and ‘proportionate’ mean in this context. In turn, this reflects differing economic and political ideologies. The different emphasis applied to these terms was most apparent in debates around IP and international development, particularly regarding medicine. As one delegate put it, ‘IP cannot be addressed unless poverty and literacy can be addressed’.
It was an instructive two days that provided BOP with a valuable insight into how a key international institution for the regulation of intellectual property functions. Unlike many sessions or conferences, there was plenty of time for discussion and the airing of disagreements – which were frequent, though always expressed impeccably politely. Smiles, though, appeared to be banned, but at least nobody fell asleep!
If you would like to know more about how BOP could help you research areas related to intellectual property, please contact Richard Naylor on contact@bop.co.uk or ring 0207 307 3090.
The Work Foundation has published an interesting report - Streets Ahead: what makes a city innovative? - looking at innovation in British cities. The report, written by Lizzie Crowley, argues that different cities support very different innovation systems, but that the Coalition government's policies don't acknowledge this. Indeed, despite the commitment to localism, Crowley suggests that innovation policy is becoming incresaingly centralised.
The report goes on to identify different types of innovating cities. They include:
High performing cities are highly productive, specialised in a range of knowledge intensive innovative sectors, and benefit form a concentration of skilled labour. This set of cities include London as well as other cities located in the Greater South East: Guildford, Peterborough, Southampton and Swindon.
Service sector innovators have highly productive economies but are specialised in high tech services and businesses services activities. They include Milton Keynes, Glasgow, Manchester, Reading and Bristol.
High technology innovators generate significant economic output and are specialised in high tech manufacturing activities. They include Coventry, Derby, Northampton, Preston and Warrington/Wigan. These high tech clusters are often anchored by one large global firm, such as Rolls Royce in Derby and Coventry.
Crowley goes on to suggest, among other things, that the government should introduce an Innovation Fund for Local Enterprise Partnerships.
BOP consultant, Callum Lee, offers his take on the new Creative Europe programme.
Last week the first proposals were announced for Creative Europe, the big European funding programme (running from 2014-20) that supports the creative and cultural sectors. It includes the merger of the Culture Programme, which funds the arts, with Media, which funds film and media, into a single programme.
Although the strategy contains a hint of fiddling-while-Rome-burns, it does include an interesting new cross-sectoral financial facility, a development that echoes a number of calls from UK bodies, such as the CBI and BIS, to try to improve access to finance for creative SMEs. It’s a €210 million scheme, building on a successful model in the Media programme aimed at film. This is still a proposal so a lot may change but it seems a good idea to us.
There are also a number of other relevant initiatives for the creative industries, like the European Creative Industries Alliance, which fall under other directorates.
Dave O'Brien of City University has published an article in the Guardian setting out the argument for using economic valuation techniques to measure the benefits of culture. For all the challenges inherent in such approaches, O'Brien believes they are the only way to get to grips with the issues in a way that government will understand.
Using economics to value culture is sound for pragmatic reasons because this is how central government is supposed to appraise policy. Her Majesty's Treasury recommends the use of cost-benefit analysis for policy decisions, with economic valuation techniques for things that don't have prices associated with them. Decisions about arts and cultural funding therefore need to find ways to fit in with this way of making public policy.
He goes on to point out:
Measurement in the arts and cultural sector is difficult but this is no less true of any other area of public policy. How can we value a human life? What is the value of the environment? These difficult questions were faced by the Departments for Health and Environment during the 1990s, with similar objections voiced about the uniqueness of these respective policy areas.
However both areas have engaged with disciplines such as economics to construct useful tools for decision-making. These tools are not perfect and are subject to criticism, but they have made transparent and informed decision-making possible in areas where demand is high and resources are scarce.
We linked to O'Brien's report for the DCMS (Measuring the value of culture) back in January - it can be read here.
(Update: The critic, Tiffany Jenkins, has written a response to O'Brien's piece, also in the Guardian - it's here.)
Creative Compass is a joint Finnish-Russian programme designed to build links between the two countries, particularly in culture. As part of this work, the organisation has commissioned a number of reports, one of which assesses the creative industries in Russia.
The report, Creative Industries Russian Profile, by Elena Zelentsova and Elena Melvil, finds that Russia's creative industries are still struggling to make an impact, and are very much concentrated in Moscow and St Petersburg. The sector face a number of problems, ranging from weak consumer demand, a preference for imported creative products, weak enforcement of copyright laws and a lack of networks or associations within the industries themselves.
Indecon Consulting has produced a report for the Arts Council of Ireland looking at the economic contribution of Arts Council-funded organisations, the wider arts sector, and the creative industries to the Republic of Ireland's economy. The report, Assessment of the Economic Impact of the Arts in Ireland, finds that:
It is estimated that the creative industries – of which the wider arts sector activities form a sub-set – contributed a total of €4.7 billion in GVA terms during 2010. This was equivalent to approximately 3% of Irish Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during that year.
The sub sector with the highest contribution was software which accounted for €2.77 billion of the overall GVA impact, more than half of the total contribution of the creative industries.
The number of direct jobs supported by the creative industries was estimated to amount to 49,306 jobs during 2010.
The Crafts Council has just published a short report, Crafting Capital, looking at the fruits of collaborations between artists (craft makers in particular) and scientists, technologists and engineeers. The report's author, Dr Karen Yair, argues that 'Craft makers today work in a far greater range of contexts than is widely realised', and cites a number of examples of such collaborations, including:
The world’s first tissue engineered organ transplant took place in July 2011, saving the life of a throat cancer patient. Glass maker Matt Durran played a crucial role in developing the technology behind the operation, specifically in creating moulds for the tissue that could withstand the fierce heat of a bio-reactor.
New ‘smart’ fabrics that connect people with their physical environment and the internet are being developed by textile maker Philippa Brock. The woven fabrics are conductive and can incorporate touch, skin and environmental sensors whilst connecting wirelessly to mobile phones and other web-enabled devices.
Biojewellery, a collaboration between Royal College of Art and Guys Hospital researchers, is exploring the potential for engineered human bone tissue to be grown into new shapes, supported by a bioactive scaffold.
Last month, the Arts Alliance published a report it commissioned from New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), looking at three arts charities that work in the criminal justice sector.
Unlocking Value reviewed the activities of Clean Break, Only Connect and Unitas, and found that all three were making significant contributions to reducing re-offending rates, and hence to saving taxpayers' money. While the cost-benefit analysis that NPC conducted did not amount to a full-scale evaluation of each charity, it was nevertheless able to estimate that Only Connect's activities, for example, were saving the taxpayer £3.2m over six years.
Earlier this month, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) published the third and final year of BOP’s research into the social impact of volunteering in the heritage sector. A link to the first (pilot) and second year reports can be found in this blogpost. In the third year the research sought in particular to answer two outstanding research questions:
Is there something special about volunteering in heritage activities that brings about different outcomes compared with other types of volunteering
Are volunteers’ demographics determining the positive outcomes that we have captured?
In order to tackle these issues, we added to new elements to the research mix: a control group of volunteers from Oxfam; and an econometric analysis of volunteering and its relationship with mental health, using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). (Some of these findings were discussed in last Friday's post.) We found, among other things:
HLF volunteers continue to report levels of mental health and well-being that are far higher than for the general population, or for the general volunteering population, particularly with regard to their ability to ‘play a useful part in things’ ... HLF volunteers make (modest) skill gains in many areas as a result of their participation in HLF-funded projects. Greater numbers of volunteers report using these skills in other areas of their life than in previous years, and they are using them differently: predominantly within their workplace and in further community engagement.
The econometric analysis found that:
Younger volunteers are most likely to make the greatest improvements in skills development (compared with older volunteers)
Those without a degree are more likely to experience gains in a number of the areas of mental health and well-being than those with degrees
Unemployed volunteers (rather than employed or retired people) are most likely to report that their volunteering has contributed to them subsequently taking a course.
We are proud of the work that we have undertaken over the three years for this project, as is our client. Here’s Gareth Maeer, the HLF’s Head of Research and Evaluation:
Since we started this work the well-being issue, in particular, has really caught on – at the highest political level. Culture, heritage and volunteering are so clearly of great importance to this debate. But it is a debate that is using strong social science research, so the research we produce as a sector needs to be at that level.
We think the work the BOP team has done for us is of the highest standards and will, I’m sure, find its way into that wider policy discussion. The BOP researchers very successfully mixed traditional qualitative findings with the newer statistical modelling approach, in a way that provides us with a far more meaningful set of results than we’ve achieved through similar research in the past.
Over the coming months, both BOP and the HLF will work to disseminate the research more widely. In the meantime, if you would like to know more about how we could help you to better understand the social impacts of your programmes or organisation, or have a research idea that you would like to explore as a jointly-funded venture, please ring our Head of Research, Richard Naylor, on 0207 307 3090 or email him at contact@bop.co.uk.
The Department for Education and the DCMS have jointly published the National Plan for Music Education, which sets out the future shape of music education in England. It draws on the Henley Review of Music Education, which we have discussed before.
The main change proposed by the Plan is that local authority music services will be replaced by a series of 'hubs' (an idea suggested by Henley). These hubs can cover one or more local authority area, and professional orchestras and ensembles will be involved in their local hub. The hubs' funding will be adminstered by Arts Council England. The overall budget for music education will drop, although some programmes, such as In Harmony, will receive extra support.
The Plan has been broadly welcomed by the sector, though with some reservations - see this piece in the Guardian, for instance.
In July BOP consultant Cristina Rosemberg spokeat the OECD in Paris about BOP's research into volunteering and mental health. Here, she gives more details of her findings:
The social sciences literature has uncovered evidence of a positive correlation between volunteering and well-being before. Examples include Li and Ferraro, who found that formal volunteering has beneficial effects on well-being, particularly on fighting depression among older people, and Helliwell and Putman, who established that civic engagement has a robust positive correlation with happiness and life satisfaction.
However, establishing and measuring the causal relationship between volunteering and mental health poses a series of methodological challenges that, if unsolved, can lead to misleading conclusions. In particular the relationship can be affected by:
Reverse causality – do people who volunteer end up with higher levels of mental health, or do people with higher levels of mental health decide to volunteer?, and
Self-selection – are there inherent characteristics, such as an optimistic attitude towards life, that could be explain both a higher level of mental health and the decision to volunteer?
In order to try and unpick these issues, we undertook a piece of research with the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), as part of a larger project we were carrying out for them. We based our analysis on British Household Panel Survey (BHPS).
The econometric analysis shows that once we account for reverse causality and self-selection, volunteering still has a positive effect on mental health. The effect is statistically significant, but mild. More interestingly, volunteering seems to play a role in alleviating the potentially negative effects of difficult personal episodes. In particular, volunteering:
increases well-being among retired people – retirement is already positively correlated with mental health, but this relationship is stronger among those who volunteer.
decreases the negative effects of going through an episode of financial strain.
ameliorates the otherwise negative effect of being separated, divorced or widowed – if a person is volunteering in the same year any of these these happened to her, then the negative effect of the life-event is no longer statistically significant.
If you would like to know more about this research please contact Cristina on 0207 307 3090 or email contact@bop.co.uk.
The turmoil in Britain's libraries sector continues. Visits and book loans both fell in 2010/11, while a number of legal challenges to proposed library closures are working their way through the courts. Pro-library campaigners claimed a notable victory last week when they won a ruling forcing Somerset and Gloucestershire councils to reconsider funding cuts to the sector. Meanwhile the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee of the House of Commons, fresh from its skirmishes with the Murdochs, has just announced an inquiry into library closures in England - more details here.
In a bid to try and find some practical solutions, the Arts Council and the Local Government Association have introduced a Libraries Development Initiative to try and find innovative new ways of bringing arts and culture into libraries. The scheme will fund 8-10 projects.
In Scotland, things are rather different. While Scottish libraries are not immune from budget cuts, the number of visits appears to have remained steady last year, and Fiona Hyslop, the Culture secretary, has said that local library services are to be 'protected' in 2012/13. There is also a new National Library of Scotland bill, designed to modernise the governance of the country's flagship library.
Who will take space in the Olympic media and broadcast centre after 2012? Bids have to be in by December 2nd, but a number have already been revealed. One of the largest current bids is from Loughborough University, which wants 90,000 sq ft for a postgraduate sports research facility. Loughborough also proposes a joint initiative with University College London for a large cell therapy technology and innovation centre, including incubation space.
Loughborough and UCL’s ambitions will surprise some, given the much-publicised squeeze on university finances. But BOP’s recent work with universities has suggested three drivers pushing universities to seek new outposts and enterprise projects.
Quality of place: the need to offer paying students a desirable location puts campuses in more rural or suburban areas at a something of a disadvantage; universities will increasingly seek city centre and London bases.
Employability: students will favour universities that have links to business and can unlock work placements and internships.
Graduate entrepreneurship: more graduates now choose to work for themselves, encouraging universities to provide access to business support and affordable workspace after graduation.
Add the potential for a very good deal from a grateful Olympic Park Legacy Company, and the Loughborough and UCL bids make a lot of sense.
A new website, Connected Culture, has just been launched to try and raise the profile of adult participatory arts. It is an initiative of the Spare Tyre theatre company, backed by Arts Council London, and aims to build a network for the sector. It is primarily London-based for now, though it intends to reach further afield. Connected Culture has three main goals:
Encourage an exchange of ideas and practice
Influence a wide spectrum of policy making
Raise the profile and status of adult participatory arts.
The 2011 conference of the Forum d'Avignon was held last week, in Avignon. Under the theme of 'Investing in culture', the conference explored a number of aspects of the relationship between culture and the economy. Much material related to the conference has now been published online, including a number of reports. Among them are pieces by;
Tera Consultants, on The impact of cultural spending
Charles Landry, on Creativity, culture & the city: a question of interconnection
Ernst and Young, on Intellectual Property in a digital world
The debates about how to strike a balance between the rights of creators and consumers of creative content continue to rage around the world. In the US, the proposed new Stop Online Piracy Act (which also seems to be known as the Protect-IP Act) is causing considerable controversy, as critics argue it will end up censoring the internet to protect the interests of entertainment companies. James Fallows of the Atlantic has more here, and also recommends the video below, making the case against such a law.
RIBA has issued two guides for architects to help steer them through the complexities of the Government's new planning regime. Part 1 is a guide to neighbourhood planning, Part 2 looks at getting community engagement right. RIBA believes:
Localism needs design professionals to succeed, but the quality of the places created by this new process will be dependent on their ability to appropriately engage with local people and local issues, right from the beginning, designing 'with' rather than 'for' communities. Architects already have the skills to ensure that this approach is a success, but the profession must look to actively promote these skills within the emerging planning policy context.
The Cultural Learning Alliance brings together the cultural, education and youth sectors to emphasise the benefits of cultural learning. It has just issued a punchy advocacy document - ImagineNation: The Case for Cultural Learning.
The Alliance is backed by a number of funders, including BOP client the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. They have also helped fund the supporting evidence base: Key Research Findings, which makes five arguments, backed up by survey evidence. (Click the links to see more detail in each case.)
Earlier this month, Baroness Bonham-Carter secured a debate in the House of Lords to 'call attention to the importance of the creative industries in the United Kingdom'. The transcript of the debate can be read here - it provides a useful overview of current debates and issues in the sector. It also has this entertaining exchange:
Earl of Glasgow: The most successful British film in Britain this year is something that I doubt any of us here will have seen, called The Inbetweeners. It is about a whole lot of young people behaving very badly. It is what is sometimes called - oh dear, I have forgotten the name now, but there is a certain type of word for that particular type of film. It tends to be all about people behaving badly. What is the word for it? I cannot remember now.
Baroness Benjamin: Anti-social?
Earl of Glasgow: No. There is a word for it. Damn it; I should have written it down on my bit of paper but I did not.
Baroness Rawlings summed up for the government, and addressed many of the points raised in the debate. Her comments on skills were particularly interesting:
My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones rightly lays emphasis on skills. In tandem with the skills working group of the [Creative Industries] council, a number of actions have been taken forward to improve skills in the digital and creative industries. These include identifying 360 science, technology, engineering and maths - STEM - ambassadors from the creative and digital industries, and encouraging graduates from the sciences, technology and maths to seek out careers in these sectors.
I have great sympathy with the worries of my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter and of several others about not including the arts, such as music, and computer sciences in the EBacc. This is a matter for the Education Secretary, but it does not stop these subjects being taught in schools.
BOP Consulting specialises in understanding the economic and social impacts of culture and the creative industries. We were established in 1997 and are based in London and Edinburgh.
We are always happy to hear from people interested in our work or in the items posted in this blog. Please visit our main website (see below), email Chris Gibbon at contact@bop.co.uk, or ring us on +44 (0)207 253 2041.
