In October, the
Federal Minister for the Arts Peter Garrett announced plans for the
development of a national cultural policy. The spectre of future public
belt tightening increases the need for the museums sector to make a
compelling case when competing for the government dollar. What's a
compelling case and how do you make one?
MEASURING THIN AIR BUSINESSES
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| Image: National Windfarm
Developers nationalwindfarmdevelopers.com |
Justifying public
expenditure on museums is often tied up with measuring government
spending on the arts and creativity. The British commentator on the
creative economy, Charles Leadbeater, once described such as activities
as ‘thin air businesses’ in which participation, rather than consumption
or production, will underscore future value. For the American public
anthropologist Robert Borofsky, (Cultural Possibilities, 1998),
defining culture is akin to ‘engaging the wind’.
Engaging the wind has
been the subject of numerous studies and commentaries. A few
of them are considered in this article.
Overseas reports and commentary
In 1991, Arts Business
Ltd, following a seminar sponsored by the Arts Council of England and
Birmingham City Council, published a checklist of 99 indicators under 12
headings to guide public policy on the arts. It included both
quantitative and subjective formulas for measuring funding programs,
financial performance, employment and training, equal opportunities,
innovation, audience building, quality, and economic impact. Some
indicators could be relevant to future funding of museums – such as the
ratio of centrally provided funds to locally provided funds, centrally
provided subsidy per head per region, and training days per employer per
annum.
In 2007, the Department
of Canadian Heritage published an Economic Impact Model for the Arts
and Heritage as an online tool for “non-economists to calculate the
economic impacts of expenditures on arts and heritage activities at the
provincial, territorial and national levels.” The series of tables,
available on the Canadian Heritage Information Network website at
http://www.chin.gc.ca/mieap-eimah/, generate reports for assessing
impacts on regional economies, organisational spending, and visitor
spending.
Five years earlier,
Michelle Reeves was critical, in her report Measuring the Social and
Economic Impact of the Arts for the Arts Council of England, of a
lack of conceptual clarity and narrow conceptualisations of social and
economic impact, the reliance on self-reporting with little
corroborating evidence, an over reliance on official statistics which
often give a partial picture, and the lack of a common framework of
research principles, assessment processes and standards for evaluation.
She said there were simplistic and naïve explanations for attributing
positive outcomes to arts projects. In putting forward a model for
effective arts-impact evaluation, she acknowledged the sector’s tendency
to rely primarily on aesthetic rationale and intrinsic values. But,
“while these arguments are still valid”, she said, “changing policy
priorities has meant that alone they are no longer strong enough to
enable the arts to win more resources.”
Australian commentary and surveys
Australian academic David Throsby has
wrestled with cultural policy and associated metrics for more than 20
years.
In Economics and Culture (2000),
he identified aesthetic, spiritual, social, historical, symbolic and
authentic components of cultural value. These values must be respected,
he said, even though they aren’t grounded in money and can’t be counted
and weighed. The arts can never be reduced to figures. But economics, he
said, is central to the way the arts are managed.
In Does Australia Need a Cultural
Policy? (Platform Papers no 7, January 2006), he considered a number
of overseas approaches to cultural policy before tracing the history of
government patronage of the arts in Australia from 1818-19, when the
poet Michael Massey Robson was granted two cows for his services as Poet
Laureate. In the post-World War 11 expansion of government support for
the arts, three public figures have stood out for their wide embrace of
cultural policy: HC Coombs, EG Whitlam and PJ Keating.
Keating’s Creative Nation (1994)
promoted itself as our first national cultural policy. Although it
emphasised arts policy, it included preservation of Australia’s
heritage. Throsby observed that one of its most ambitious aspects was
its attempt to link cultural development with economic development. It
provided “not only a rationale and advocacy for an active Commonwealth
role in Australia’s cultural development, but also a set of proposals
with resources attached for putting that role into effect.”
Arts and heritage, he said, are core
components of a cultural policy. However, we should avoid the risk of
overemphasising economic value over cultural value. To support this
conviction, he cited reports of Productivity Commission’s Inquiry into
Conservation of Historic Heritage Places (2006), which entertain the
proposition that heritage is, like the arts, an area where market
failure occurs. Although heritage markets can deliver some direct-use
benefits, the overwhelming source of real and measurable benefit lies
outside the market. The benefit “derives particularly from the general
contribution of heritage to the understanding and expression of
Australian identity.”
Throsby cautioned against the use of hype
in such a policy and of loading all responsibility on to the shoulders
of governments. “We get the sort of society we make for ourselves. It is
our own cultural perceptions and aspirations that shape our destiny,
not those of any government.”
He proposed a cultural accord rather than
the “sort of magisterial cultural statement handed down by the Prime
Minister, the Cabinet or a parliamentary committee” or “a single
document or a single piece of legislation.” Cultural policy, he
said, is not a single definable thing but “a pervasive mixture that not
only determines the immediate and obvious ways in which we practise our
culture.”
Others have questioned whether it is the
fit role of government to develop, protect and oversee a national
culture. They have expressed doubts about the ability of bureaucracies
to shape culture. They have questioned whether such policies actually
lead to practical outcomes. But, with a new national cultural policy in
the wind, those who have been critical appear as departing travellers
viewed from the back window of a bus.
Several recent reports by the Australian
Bureau of Statistics deserve special scrutiny by the museums sector.
Its Arts and Culture in Australia: A
Statistical Overview is a suite of surveys and statistics,
incorporating the most recent survey of museums as well as data on other
topics such as tourism, household expenditure, funding by government and
business, employment, and cultural industries and trade. This approach
echoes the ABS suite of indicators released in 2003 about Australia’s
knowledge-based economy and society (KBES). The suite was preferred
over a single report because the latter ran the risk of presenting an
over-simplified and possibly misleading representation of the issues.
The metrics in the KBES suite consisted of data on contexts, economic
and social impacts, innovation and entrepreneurship, human capital,
information communication and technology.
The ABS Arts and Cultural Heritage: an
Information Development Plan, published in 2008, describing data
gaps to inform future statistical development and research work.
Its Cultural Funding by Government,
Australia, 2007-08 provides data on public funding for arts and
cultural activities, facilities and services across the three levels of
government. Total government funding for cultural activities was $6.3
billion, to which the Australian Government contributed 37%, the state
and territory governments 47% and local governments 16%. Environmental
heritage received the largest proportion (28%).Libraries received over
$1 billion or about 16% of funding, Other museums and cultural heritage
programs received about $630 million (10%). The phrase “other museums”
flags the fact that there are ambiguities within the figures because not
all states and territories are consistent in the way the report data. In
some jurisdictions art museum statistics are not bundled with other
museums.
The Australian Government allocated $1788
million of its cultural funding to arts activities and $571 million to
heritage activities. It gave the bulk of its heritage funding on other
museums and cultural heritage ($232 million or 41%). In contrast, the
state and territory governments allocated most of their funds on
heritage ($2,266 million or 77%). They spent $178 million on art
museums, $365 million on other museums and cultural heritage, and $318
million on libraries. Local government allocated the majority of it
cultural funding (65%) to libraries ($653 million). Variations within
each state are worth noting, as are the proportions of funding per
person. Out of a total of $297 per person, the Australian Government
kicked in $111, the state and territory governments' contributed was
$139 and local government cultural funding was $47.10 per person.
The ABS report Australian National
Accounts: Non-Profit Institutions Satellite Account, 2006/07 reports
that non-profit institutions contributed close to $43 billion (or 4%) to
the Australians economy. The culture and recreation contribution to this
figure was 16%. Volunteers contributed 623 million hours to non-profit
institutions, equating to 317,200 full-time equivalent jobs. The
economic value of these hours was estimated to be $14.6 billion.
MAKING
THE CASE FOR MUSEUMS
To complement data
published by the ABS, the Council of Australasian Museum Directors and
Council of Australian Art Museum Directors have published statistics
about the work of major museums and galleries. A survey conducted in
2007 by the Council of Australasian Archives and Records Authority in
partnership with Australian Society of Archivists and Archives New
Zealand, provides some understanding of museum collections controlled by
archives, historical societies and related record-keeping agencies.
A recent special issue
of Museum Management and Curatorship (volume 24, no 4, September
2009) is devoted to the value of museums. In this article, I’ve selected
two essays for special attention.
The work of the Institute of Museum and Library Services
Marsha Semmel and Mamie
Bittner explore definitions of public value based on the work of the
Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and other bodies in the
United States. They describe past and current research that may
“increase the collective knowledge of the strengths and core competences
of museums, lead to new methodologies for improved museum practice and
shape the arguments for the role of museums today as valuable community
assets.” These include True Needs, True Partners: Museums Serving
Schools (2002), Charting the Landscape, Mapping New Paths:
Museums, Libraries and K-12 Learning (2004), Museum Data
Collection Report and Analysis (2005), A Public Trust at Risk:
the Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America’s Collections
(2005), Museums in the Neighbourhood: Evaluating the Socio-economic
Impact of Museums (2006), Connecting to Collections (2008),
Interconnections: the IMLS National Study on the Use of Libraries,
Museums and the Internet (2008), and Measuring the Non-Profit
Bottom Line (2009). Future data requirements, they suggest, include
work to define museums as a sector, studies that examine museums in a
broader community context, continued research on learning, and research
that deals with social sector effectiveness and value.
The IMLS report
Exhibiting Public Value: Government Funding for Museums in the United
States (2008), the first major review of museum public finance in
the United States from federal, state and local government sources,
provides an interesting comparison with the ABS studies highlighted in
the broader Australian arts and cultural heritage setting. It noted the
remarkable diversity of museums in terms of disciplines, attendances,
resource needs, and geographic reach. This diversity was also reflected
in the “patchwork of financial support, with institutions of all types
reporting different combinations of revenue from earned income, private
donations, government contributions, and institutional investments.”
There was no consistent pattern of public support across the museum
sector.
At the federal level,
museums receive public funds from a wide variety of sources, including
IMLS, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for
the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. Only IMLS provides
direct support to museums in all 50 states, although 50% of competitive
grants went to only five states. It was difficult to track and analyse
data because of differences in the way the sector codifies museum
grants. Although decentralised funding mechanisms in the cultural sector
are seen as a way to increase citizen access to cultural programs, there
was no federal-state partnership program with the goal of increasing the
capacity to the museum sector as a whole. The lack of a definitive list
of museums in the US made it difficult to assess how deeply
federal-source dollars penetrate into the sector.
Government support for
museums by the states flowed through a variety of different agencies and
funding mechanisms. Some states provided support through a single
agency. Others provided support through multiple agencies for
discipline-specific programs in the arts or humanities or for other
state-wide initiatives. The level was influenced by different
perceptions about museums and different fiscal conditions. State
cultural agencies tend to serve the arts, humanities, heritage,
libraries, and archives as distinct constituencies. There was no
evidence that a federal-state funding partnership would galvanise
support and administrative capacities at the state level. Although
federal dollars may promote integration of the public cultural sector in
some states, in others these federal dollars may prove a point of
contention because they may challenge established agencies to develop
new policies or to shift from discipline-focused practice in order to
serve a broader cross section of museums.
At the local level,
there were a variety of local government cultural funding mechanisms,
the largest of which were driven by targeted tax initiatives. Although
large local investments did not exist in every state, some provided
support in excess of the amount distributed by federal agencies for the
entire country. Concentrated investments may affect the character of a
federal-state partnership for museum support. There is a question as to
how the concentration of local initiatives might affect the ways in
which states administer federal-state partnership funding.
The report said more
information was needed to determine whether and how a new funding model,
such as a population-based state grant, could make a significant impact
in addressing any identified gaps in museum services. An assessment of
the impact of new funding models will require additional discussion
about the purpose of new funding strategies as well as more information
about the size of the sector and the character of museum services to be
delivered. The IMLS is working to address the need for more data and is
developing a more robust museum research program in consultation with
state, regional and national museum organizations and other relevant
agencies and organisations.
Questions about evidence
Carol Scott, a former
President of Museums Australia, says in her Museum Management and
Curatorship essay Exploring the Evidence Base for Museum Value,
“The present time holds both threats and possibilities for museums. In a
period of unprecedented economic crisis, monies are being diverted to
fund and stabilise new recipients of the public purse. Correspondingly,
some areas of the public sector, such as museums, may face static
funding at best, or a decline in funding at works. The capacity to prove
value may acquire increasing importance in the uncertain years to come.
Within this climate, it is incumbent on the museum sector to be able to
express its worth from a position of strength and to defend that
position.” The concept of value is an evolving one. Developing an
evidence base is a challenging task. There needs to be more rigour.
After exploring a
typology of museum values, Scott considers indicators against three
value dimensions in a series of tables as represented in the following
simplified consolidation, with examples only of the list of measures she
suggests.
|
Value dimension |
Indicators |
Measures |
|
Use |
Direct use. Indirect use. Willingness
to engage. Non-use |
eg Numbers of visitor attendances to
museums annually, users of outreach programs, volunteers, members,
visits per visitor per year, willingness to pay irrespective of
direct use. |
|
Institutional |
Recognition of trusted expertise.
Building relationships. Attracting investment. Capacity to attract
bequests and donations |
eg Numbers of public enquiries,
external projects, partnerships, the significance of projects,
government grants, donations, bequests. |
Instrumental
|
Providing educational resources.
Knowledge building. Contribution to tourism. Contribution to local
economy. |
eg Number of school students
visiting, partnerships with education bodies, adult educations
programs, research publications, domestic tourists, international
tourists, tourism awards, visitors by ethnicity and socio-economic
status |
THE
WINDS OF CHANGE
Future efforts by
Museums Australia will be shaped by two main contexts.
Changing government policies
At the National Press
Club in October, when launching the process for developing a new
cultural policy, Peter Garrett emphasised three themes: “keeping culture
strong, engaging the community; and powering the young.” The National
Cultural Policy website at http://nationalculturalpolicy.com.au/
solicits feedback on a discussion framework that fleshes out the three
main ideas as 10 principles. In the discussion framework the role of
heritage organisations is implied rather than spelt out These
consultative mechanisms will remain open until 1 February 2010.
Government policy on culture finds a good companion with emerging policy
on “social inclusion”. The ABS surveys have been joined by the
Productivity Commission’s study on the contributions of the Australian
not-for-profit sector to the Australian economy and society, which sets
out to remove obstacles for maximising the contributions of the sector
to society. The draft report recommends “smarter” regulation, building
knowledge systems, developing the capacity of the sector, stimulating
social investment, improving the effectiveness of direct government
funding, removing impediments for better value government funded
services, and building stronger, more effective relationships. The final
report is due in December.
Changing economic circumstances
In assessing the
impact of the global financial crises on the museum sector
internationally, Jacques Attli (President of PlanetNet Finance) and
James Chung (President of Reach Advisors), at the June 2009 meeting of
the International Council of Museums in Paris, reflected on possible
responses by museums. Jacques Attali was optimistic. Museums will remain
real whatever happens, but they must learn to think on a global
scale to take advantage of future economic growth. He says
tomorrow’s museum must return to the concept of the “living museum” of
the 19th century. James Chung noted the increased level of redundancies
and the drastic decline in private funding in North American museums,
which rely on private sources for 90% of their funding. Some American
museums have been more resilient that others. To secure their future,
they must adapt to the new audience demands and behaviours and they must
work more efficiently.
Although there is a
sense in Australia that we have escaped the worst consequences of the
crisis, there are signs for some pessimism. Among other funding cuts in
the wind, the Cultural Ministers Council has just axed the under-funded
Collections Council of Australia, the one arms-length collections sector
body with responsibility for marshalling top level issues. The reasons
for its closure have not been published. No alternative plan for an
overarching catalyst has been flagged. The Government has announced that
funding of its Cultural Portal will cease.
IMPLICATIONS FOR MUSEUMS AUSTRALIA
Museums Australia
represents the interests of more than 1,184 museums that earn nearly $1
billion, employ 7,856 people who are paid, and attract over 30 million
people to their buildings and over 63 million to their websites. Most of
the money to sustain their operations (65%) is provided by governments.
But a lot of the value is generated by the 23,426 people who are not
paid any money. The association’s contribution to a national cultural
policy on behalf of museums will revolve around a number of issues.
Getting the language right
The right kind of action is
often driven
by the right words.
Throsby noted that
“whether reactive or pro-active, cultural policy in Australia has almost
always been interpreted as arts policy.” Chris Puplick, in Getting
Ahead (Platform Papers no 18, October 2008), was critical of the
confused and opaque rhetoric used in discussions about arts policy. “The
slippery segues from art to culture to creativity, from creativity to
output to productivity leave one in real danger of missing what the
debate is all about. The looseness of terms and definition, the
inexactness of measurements and the incomprehensibility of some of the
jargon becomes mind-numbing.”
The Australian Bureau
of Statistics, in its discussion paper Arts and Cultural Heritage: An
Information Development Plan (2008), defined cultural heritage as
“the preservation of culture through the collection and management of
objects and ideas that represent ways of life of particular groups of
people.” Cultural heritage, it said, includes activities generally
associated with museums, art museums, libraries and archives.
This definition needs
to be debated. Categorising museums, archives and libraries as ‘cultural
heritage’ agents runs the risk of distorting their overall purpose and
value. While cultural heritage is a central aspect of their function, it
is important to emphasise their converging roles in providing access to
information, producing cultural content and experiences, and
contributing to educational, social, scientific, technological and
economic agendas. Although arts and cultural heritage share common
ground, it is important to differentiate some of the elements in case
they call for different approaches.
Focussing on evidence
Lobbying for government
support has tended to rely on broad brush strokes. Much energy is
devoted to finessing words around visions, values, frameworks, and
principles. Governments already think museums are valuable and they are
prepared to pay about $660 million to keep them running. The case for
money calls for more than rhetoric.
The Collections Council
of Australia made a number of recommendations to the ABS review of
Service Industries Surveys in 2007 and 2008. It sought a more
comprehensive sampling of archives, museums and galleries. In response
to a recommendation that the ABS provide 'in principle' support for the
Collections Council to create and manage a fixed list of Australian
collection organisations, the ABS responded that “the way in which any
particular industry wishes to manage its own industry data is a matter
for that industry to determine.”
Adrienne Muir and
Charles Oppenheim, when reviewing national information policies
worldwide for the Chartered Institute of Libraries and Information
Professionals in 2001, considered issues in three clusters – broad
society issues, areas to which the library sector must contribute and
areas of most pressing need, where the library and information
profession should be seeking to achieve greatest change (such as skill
and organisational capacity).
In developing future
funding strategies for the museum sector, most gains are likely to come
from focusing on the things over which it has some control.
Addressing technological imperatives
Technological
developments and the Internet have changed the nature of game for
museums. But museums are still, by and large, rooted in the past as
standalone facilities with feudal information management practices.
Museums Australia is
responding to this new challenge through a Digital Strategies Committee.
Its work is likely to consider the changing contexts and opportunities,
roles, strategies, capacity, capabilities and quality of existing
efforts, information management practices, ICT infrastructure and
training needs, research and economic imperatives. After an inaugural
meeting in November, the committee will flesh out the issues in the new
year.
Working in concert with others
Chris Puplick, in his
Platform Papers essay, was critical of the lack of a single national
arts body to coordinate and represent the arts sector as a whole. As a
consequence, he said, “the sectoral interests of this vast constituency
tend to focus on matters of immediate interest to themselves, often at
the cost of others.”
In September Museums
Australia organised a meeting with kindred organisations to explore ways
of advancing common ground. Organisations represented included the
Council of Australian Museum Directors, the Collections Council of
Australia, the Federation of Australian Historical Societies, ICOM, and
a number of state-based bodies. Museums Australia, on behalf of the
group, subsequently prepared a statement on the value of museums to the
Minister for the Arts before his National Press Club speech in October.
The Group will be meeting again early in the new year to work on future
steps.
Summing up
Australia already has a
cobbled-together national cultural policy costing $6.3 billion.
Australian governments agree that museums are a good thing and they
provide about $660 million to support museum operations.
Museums Australia
has a strategy for promoting opportunities in the education sector,
local communities, and the digital economy. The prospect of
increased funding for museums through a new cultural policy may have
arrived at the wrong moment in history. At a time when the sector has
not yet transformed its representative bodies into a unified force,
advancing its interests in federated Australia may be akin
to prosecuting the war in tribal Afghanistan.
The main challenge
for the association will be to devise a vision that takes into
account the money trail across the three levels of government. One of
the critical tasks will be to gather evidence to influence the way
future effort and funds will be spent by museums.
