I am always keeping an eye open for different ways arts organizations can employ meaningful measures of impact. AEA Consulting listed different impact evaluation tools and criteria being used around the world. Most of them are in relation to social impact, but a couple, like Social Return on Investment (SROI) tied to economic measures such as dollars worth of social impact for dollars invested.
Others are not tied to a currency valuation.
Participatory and rights-based models, prominent in Latin America, frame impact around cultural rights, community capacity, and social transformation. Examples include cultural impact assessments with Indigenous communities and long-running community arts networks in contexts such as Colombia and Brazil, where impact is assessed through measures such as social cohesion, leadership, and cultural citizenship rather than financial returns.
Local community-focused models, e.g. frameworks such as Singapore’s Neighbourhood Arts and Culture Impact Assessment (NACIA) link arts participation to neighbourhood attachment and social networks, combining spatial indicators with health and wellbeing measures.
In terms of how data is collected, AEA lists a number of modes including
Qualitative Tools….audience and participant surveys, validated health and wellbeing scales, social capital measures, and composite indices that track neighbourhood vitality, diversity of participation, or organisational reach…
Qualitative and participatory methods… focus groups, case studies, observation, and creative techniques (e.g. visual brainstorming, storytelling) are used to capture changes in confidence, identity, and agency. These approaches are particularly important for smaller non-profit organisations, which may lack the resources to implement SROI or large-scale experimental designs.
AEA said some of the commonalities they see in these approaches are focus on outcomes rather than outputs, mixing both quantitative indicators and qualitative evidence, and paying attention to who is participating and benefiting.
Long time readers know I have frequently employed a mantra that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the results are meaningful. While some of these methods and measures are interesting to me, there isn’t enough detail provided for me to determine if they result in data that is relevant and meaningful.
