CDN

A Holistic Framework of Evaluation for Arts Engagement

Kim Dunphy

This chapter in the edited volume Making Culture Count proposes a holistic framework for evaluating the outcomes of arts engagement. It offers an effective approach for arts and cultural development initiatives that seek to contribute to positive community outcomes, including those led by local government and arts organisations that have community change or development agendas. Drawing from broader holistic models measuring community wellbeing and sustainability, these outcomes are categorised within a new framework across the domains of personal wellbeing, cultural vitality, social inclusion, economic viability, civic engagement and ecological sustainability, eliminating the need for the problematic intrinsic/instrumental valuing of arts engagement. The framework also provides a redress for qualitative researchers’ need to distil easily digestible results from large amounts of data, in providing a pictorial representation of outcomes of arts engagement.

More about the book here

Reference: Dunphy, K. (2015). A holistic framework of evaluation for arts engagement, in L. MacDowall, M. Badham, E. Blomkamp & K. Dunphy (Eds), Making Culture Count: the politics of cultural measurement, (pp. 243-263). London: Palgrave.