‘Impact’, ‘value’ and ‘bad economics’: Making sense of the problem of value in the arts and humanities

TLDR

The value of arts and humanities, particularly its measurement, has become a central concern across disciplines, especially within British cultural policy where value is tied to justifying public funding. The article seeks to challenge the prevailing economic framing of value in arts and humanities policy and to propose alternative conceptualizations. The authors analyze how economic paradigms dominate policy discussions on value, critiquing their influence on framing and justification. They conclude by urging collaborative resistance to economic dominance and the reinvention of an impact agenda to establish new public humanities.

Abstract

Questions around the value of the arts and humanities to the contemporary world and the benefits they are expected to bring to the society that supports them through funding have assumed an increased centrality within a number of disciplines, not limited to humanities scholarship. Especially problematic, yet crucial, is the issue of the measurement of such public value. This article takes as a starting point a discussion of the ‘cultural value debate’ as it has developed within British cultural policy: here, the discussion of ‘value’ has been inextricably linked to the challenge of ‘making the case’ for the arts and for public cultural funding. The paper discusses the problems with the persisting predominance of economics in shaping current approaches to framing articulations of ‘value’ in the policy-making context. It concludes with a plea for a collaborative effort to resist the economic doxa, and to reclaim and reinvent the impact agenda as a route towards the establishment of new public humanities.