Summer Harvest: My 3 Top picks for Reading about Impact + Cultural Heritage
As the summer draws to close galleries, libraries, archives and museums have been going about their daily business of changing people lives. But who are the investors, researchers and cultural heritage institutions talking about impact + culture, and why does it matter?
Selecting pieces that stood out for me from my research over the summer — these articles have inspired my own work, and show a little bit of how far and wide the conversations around impact+cultural heritage is spreading.
Split into three parts, let me walk you through what investors, researchers and cultural heritage institutions are saying, and why that matters. After each top pick, I also share a longer read for anyone wanting to dig a bit further into the topic.
If you’re new to the subject; take a look at this article describing why impact + cultural heritage is an important topic to explore, and why it’s about more than just numbers.
Let’s take a look at my top picks for reading more about impact + cultural heritage…
What investors are saying about culture + impact
Why does it matter what investors are saying?… for a sector that is sustainable thanks to a mix of public-private funding, looking at what investors are saying about culture + impact gives us an insight into how this value of this investment is perceived, and where opportunities may lay for cultural heritage institutions.
“Art … unlocks a certain piece of who we are that just isn’t found anywhere else”
Cultural Heritage doesn’t often get featured on it’s merits as a business, so I was honestly delighted to find an article about cultural heritage + impact featured in a business-focused publication. It’s got community action, a public-private partnership, policy recommendations and a personal story packed into it — too much to try to summarise, but the interview style makes it easy to read.
“Society lacks emphasis on art because it’s often seen as unimportant or secondary, but that lack of emphasis is unfortunately leading to a loss of creativity and opportunities for people who need them.” — Corey Fagan, First Friday Foundation Development Director
💎 Why does this article stand out? It’s time for a mind shift: business leaders, investors, philanthropists should talk more loudly and openly about investing in Cultural Heritage, and what changes they hope their support helps to bring about. More articles like this can help to put the value of investing in Cultural Heritage squarely on the map
📖 Read it now: Yitzi Weiner interviews First Friday Foundation’s Development Director, Corey Fagen about developing public-private partnerships to meet community needs in “I Wish People Knew How Important Art Is In The Lives Of Children And How Much It Impacts Their Future Opportunities” for Authority Magazine.
🍿 A longer read: The final awards of UK’s 3 years long Arts Impact Fund supports artistic ambition, resilience and doing good in society. Designed to test the demand for repayable finance in the UK arts & culture sector, it also sought to establish social impact as eligibility criteria. What they found was more than they bargained for: “the breadth and depth of that socially focused work is staggering”. Browse through their website and dig into some of the many wonderful case studies showcasing what has been possible through their funding.
Researchers are talking about impact + culture
Why does it matter what researchers are saying? … It’s difficult to dispute the positive impact that access to cultural heritage has. Research provides us with the evidence to substantiate this. It helps everyone better understand the value of Cultural Heritage, and the life-changing experiences it offers.
Lessons learned: Looking at the evidence of the impact of arts research
This article resonates a lot with the work we’re doing at Europeana exploring the impact of digital resources from the cultural heritage sector. As a condition of their funding, it’s common for academics to be required to report on the impact of their research. It’s really interesting to read the lessons learned written from this point of view and to see how similar the challenges are that we face. The break down of each lesson contains some valuable pointers — providing food for thought for anyone considering their own impact.
“Art … needs to be able to evidence research impact, but this is particularly difficult where the impact occurs in people’s hearts and minds, and where the art researchers may not be able to define, let alone identify, who their research has reached, for example through a public exhibition.” — Lesley Brook, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
💎 Why does this article stand out? It’s packed with good advice, based on strong research. With so many disciplines and topics populating the research landscape, examples of how arts researchers have addressed impact can inspire and quite simply show others how to do the same. The more research that is undertaken into the role of cultural heritage, the better we can support the uncontroversial assertion that access to cultural heritage change lives.
📖 Read it now: Lesley Brooks article — Lining up the dominoes: lessons from art research on how to evidence impact, published on the London School of Economics Impact blog — summarises the 3 key lessons emerging from her study of how evidence was used to demonstrate the impact of art research, which she acknowledges has its challenges.
🍿 A longer read: Dr Rafaela Ganga, research associate for the Institute of Cultural Capital (ICC ) writes about her experiences marrying the realms of digital heritage policymaking and mental health research. Look out for a nice break down of the impact of House of Memories — a beautiful example of the positive changes that can be enabled through the creative use of digital cultural heritage. Once you’re done with that grab a cup of tea and browse the rest of the ICC’s research — it’s packed full of papers, events and policies that address the question of how ‘ use of cultural capital can help shape wider social and economic agendas whilst also contributing to cultural advancement’.
How Cultural Heritage Institutions are talking about impact + culture
Why does it matter what Cultural Heritage Institutions are saying? … By their very existence, cultural heritage institutions have an impact on the people, communities and economies around them.
… but this is not a new concept for anyone. Looking at how institutions talk about the impact of their work can teach and inspire us to talk more about what changes as a result of the things that we do.
Envisioning a world where cultural and civic resources are shared generously
Not so much an article as a movement — OF/BY/FOR ALL is one to watch. Reading about this I was struck by how much of a bundle of positive vibes OF/BY/FOR ALL brings to the cultural heritage sector. Advocating the benefits of facilitating real connections between culture and community, its self-assessment tool has been used by 450+ individuals seeking to understand how their organisation stacks up against the developing OF/BY/FOR ALL framework.
“We used OF/BY/FOR ALL thinking in Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) to transform a struggling museum into a vibrant community center. Museums, libraries, art centers, parks, and community institutions around the world have used the same principles to become more valued, relevant, and sustainable” — https://www.ofbyforall.org/
💎 Why does this stand out? It’s based on real hard-fought experience — as opposed to the ‘I’ve been working a long time and now it’s time to put my knowledge to good use’ type of experience, which adds depth to their propositions. And they put engagement with their community quite seriously at the heart of their rejuvenation, so it comes as little surprise that they then looked to share this approach with their other community; fellow cultural heritage organisations. In other words, they walk the walk, and more of us should follow this example.
📖 Read it now: Dig into their website, be inspired by them on Twitter and sit tight until they report on how their recently recruited first wave research cohort gets on. In the meantime, pour yourself another cup of tea and watch Nina Simon’s inspiring keynote at London’s 2018 MuseumNext conference to find out more about OF/BY/FOR ALL.
🍿 A longer read:: Since the beginning of 2017, Denmark’s national museum, Statens Museum fur Kunst (SMK) have been writing (in English) about how they are developing their museum experience to make it open and available to everyone. Touching upon the physical and digital experiences, SMK Open on Medium covers a range of perspectives from Head of Digital Jonas Heide Smith, Curator & Senior designer of digital practice Merete Sanderhoff and Community Builder & Communicator Alicja Peszkowska. If these guys don’t have a strong case to articulate for the positive impact of opening up access to their collections digitally, then I don’t know who would.
What about you? When you think about impact + culture what springs to mind? What would you share in your top picks?
EOM
📸 A bit about me: I work in a not for profit setting, across a pan European — and sometimes international — network, with remote teams developing and delivering great (and effective) policy.
I write about the impact of digital transformation throughout the cultural heritage sector, what I’ve learned from using agile & lean startup principles and a little bit about my pastime; opportunities to increase civic engagement.
