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Art as a means of alleviating social exclusion: Does it really work? A critique of
instrumental cultural policies and social impact studies in the UK
Article in International Journal of Cultural Policy · January 2002
DOI: 10.1080/102866302900324658
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ART AS A MEANS OF ALLEVIATING
SOCIAL EXCLUSION: DOES IT REALLY
WORK? A CRITIQUE OF
INSTRUMENTAL CULTURAL POLICIES
AND SOCIAL IMPACT STUDIES IN THE
UK
Eleonora Belfiore*
Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
INTRODUCTION
One of the most interesting recent developments of British cultural policy is that debates on
possible ways to tackle social exclusion and debates on the role of the subsidized arts in society
have intertwined, so that the contribution that the arts can make towards alleviating the
symptoms of exclusion is today highly emphasised by the government and the major public arts
funding bodies. Indeed, in the last few years, we have witnessed the widespread adoption of
the philosophy of social inclusion within both the cultural policy arena and the debate among
professionals in the arts sector. Young people and the socially excluded seem to be now—in the
rhetoric of the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS)— at the top of the funding
agenda:
Following the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, DCMS will be reaching new funding
agreements governing its grants to its sponsored bodies. These will set out clearly what outcomes we expect
public investment to deliver and some of these outcomes will relate to social inclusion (Smith, 1999).
The arts are therefore officially recognised to have a positive contribution to make to social
inclusion and neighbourhood renewal by improving communities’ “performance” in the four
key indicators identified by the government: health, crime, employment, and education
ISSN 1028-6632 print/ISSN 1477-2833 online q 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/10286630290032468
*Corresponding author. Tel.: þ44-2476-523020. Fax: þ44-2476-524446. E-mail: elebelfiore@yahoo.co.uk
International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2002 Vol. 8 (1), pp. 91–106
(DCMS, 1999a, pp. 21–22). Moreover, their very contribution to tackling social problems is
identified as a justification for public “investment” in the arts.
This is hardly a phenomenon limited to the UK. The shift towards an instrumental cultural
policy, which justifies public expenditure in the arts on the grounds of the advantages that they
bring to the nation (be them economic, social, related to urban regeneration, employment,
etc.) is indeed a European trend (Vestheim, 1994, pp. 57–71).
The aim of this research is to investigate the policy implications of this new stress on the
subsidised arts and arts organisations as agents of social change. Indeed, if the funding bodies’
emphasis on the social impact of the arts and the activities of cultural organisations is genuine, it
should not be long before evidence of activities to include the socially excluded will be required
on all funding applications.
This paper thus aims to look critically at the consequences that would follow from the
adoption of the social impacts of the arts as a new policy rationale for future arts funding.
SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND THE ARTS
The concept of “social exclusion” is a relatively new one in Britain, and represents a shift from
the previously dominant concept of “poverty.’ The notion of “social exclusion”, first developed
as a sociological concept in France, has been subsequently embraced by the European
Commission, and its adoption in Britain can be seen as an aspect of the EU harmonisation
process (Fairclough, 2000, p. 51; Rodgers, 1995, p. 43). However, within the British arts sector,
the concern for the actual exclusion of large sections of the population (mainly belonging to the
working class) from publicly funded arts activities has been a source of concern since much
earlier. The Arts Council’s Royal Charter (1967) contains an explicit pronouncement of the
Council’s obligation to increase the accessibility of the arts to the public throughout Britain and
across social classes. Interest in social exclusion has since grown in Britain and throughout
Western Europe in relation to rising rates of unemployment, increasing international
migration, and the cutting back of welfare states. The emergence of the term thus reflects an
attempt to reconceptualise social disadvantage in the face of the major economic and social
transformations that characterise post-modernity.
Indeed, it has been argued that the transition from modernity to late modernity can be seen
as a movement from an inclusive to an exclusive society (Young, 1999, p. 7). The market
economy emerging in post-Fordism was the result of a restructuring of the economy
encompassing a reduction of the primary labour market and an expansion of the knowledgebased secondary market. This has resulted in the creation of an underclass of structurally
unemployed, and to what Will Hutton has described as the 40:30:30 society: 40% of the
population in permanent and secure employment, 30% in insecure employment, 30%
marginalized, out of work or working for poverty wages, and most at risk of social exclusion
(Hutton, 1995, pp. 105–110).
In Britain, the attempt at tackling social exclusion was strongly promoted by New Labour
after it won the general election in 1997. Social cohesion and a more inclusive society are
indeed—at least in the party’s rhetoric—crucial factors in the success of Labour’s “Third Way”
towards the aim of Britain’s “national renewal” (Fairclough, 2000, p. 22). To this end, in
December 1997, the Prime Minister set up the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU1
) whose aim is to
92 E. BELFIORE
help improve government action to reduce social exclusion across all departments by producing
“joined up solutions to joined up problems.”
The notion of social exclusion has the benefit of seeing poverty and disadvantage as multidimensional rather than merely in terms of income and expenditure. Even though material
disadvantage is still a primary focus of strategies for social inclusion, they also encompass
important new strands. In the context of this research, the most important dimension of the
debate is the new focus on the cultural and social dynamics of inclusion, and the emphasis on
the positive role of the arts and heritage in alleviating the symptoms of exclusion. In the UK,
the view that the arts have a positive contribution to make to the cause of social inclusion—a
position long held by community arts groups—has been enthusiastically endorsed by the
government via the DCMS, and by the SEU’s Policy Action Team 10 (PAT 10), which deals
with the Arts and Sport.2 The Report compiled by the PAT 10 on neighbourhood renewal
reads:
Arts and sport, cultural and recreational activity, can contribute to neighbourhood renewal and make a real
difference to health, crime, employment and education in deprived communities.3
Such a strong formal commitment towards inclusion on the government’s part has a direct
impact on arts funding provision. Indeed, in Britain, the government sets overarching goals for
the arts, which are reflected in the strategic policy that the DCMS sets for the arts sector. The
implementation of this policy is then carried out in partnership with the Arts Council of
England (ACE), the Regional Arts Boards, the Department for Education and Employment,
and a number of other bodies following the so-called “arm’s length principle.” This principle
defines the relative autonomy of the Arts Council and the Regional Arts Boards in deciding
how to allocate the available resources to individual art forms and artists, and it should ensure—
at least in theory—that decisions are not affected by political considerations. However, it should
not be forgotten that all decisions relative to funding allocations are informed by the Funding
Agreement between the DCMS and the Arts Council, which incorporates DCMS’s objectives
for education, access, excellence, and—more recently—social exclusion. Moreover, ACE has
to show, through a series of performance indicators defined by the agreement, that it is actively
seeking to fulfil the government’s objectives for the arts.
The DCMS’ formal commitment to social inclusion is therefore reflected in the funding
agreement with the Arts Council covering the period April 2000–March 2002. The document
declares that in order to fulfil its aims of making high quality arts “available to the many not just
the few,” DCMS will work to “promote the role of the Department’s sectors in urban and rural
regeneration, in pursuing sustainability and in combating social exclusion.” More specifically,
the DCMS has ten “goals for the arts”, one of which is “to develop and enhance the
contribution the arts make to combating social exclusion and promoting regeneration.” The
ACE has to “deliver” against performance indicators derived from these goals. Consequently,
the Arts Council is expected to produce various pieces of documentation showing the activities
targeted at ethnic minorities, disabled and generally excluded groups and to assess its
contribution to the inclusion and regeneration cause (DCMS, 2000a).
Even though a quick glance at ACE’s funding package for 2000–2002 seems to show that
ACE’s commitment to social exclusion might be stronger on the level of the rhetoric than that
of the resource allocation Arts Council of England, 1999a,b), it is evident that the major public
funding bodies of the arts in Britain, DCMS, ACE (and consequently the RABs) have
subscribed to an instrumental view of cultural policy. In this view, the public spending on the
ART AS A MEANS OF ALLEVIATING SOCIAL EXCLUSION 93
arts is justified in terms of an “investment,” which will bring about positive social change and
contribute to alleviate social exclusion in disadvantaged areas of the country.
It is interesting to note that the DCMS has taken on board the cause of the arts’ contribution
to inclusion despite the fact that Phyllida Shaw, author of the Research Report: Arts and
Neighbourhood Renewal—a literature review on arts and social in/exclusion commissioned by
the PAT 10—came to the conclusion that “it remains a fact that relative to the volume of arts
activity taking place in the country’s poorest neighbourhoods, the evidence of the contribution
it makes to neighbourhood renewal is paltry” (DCMS, 1999b, p. 6). It is indeed very significant
that, despite the official admission of the lack of indisputable evidence of the effectiveness of the
arts in contributing to social cohesion and neighbourhood regeneration, in recent years, Britain
has witnessed an increasing use of publicly funded arts initiatives to address socio-economic
problems, ranging from major capital projects to local participatory projects.
THE 1980S AND THE INSTRUMENTAL ARGUMENT FOR ARTS
FUNDING
The 1980s represented a difficult period for the British arts world. On the one hand,
postmodernism had eroded the legitimacy of the very notion of “culture” on which cultural
policy had hitherto been founded, leading to what Craig Owens refers to as “a crisis of cultural
authority specifically of the authority vested in Western European culture and its institutions”
(Owens, 1990, p. 57). In the past, the fact that the State should contribute—through the public
arts funding system—to the preservation, diffusion, and promotion of “high quality” culture in
the name of the citizens” welfare was considered a matter of course. Once the principle of
equivalence entered the cultural debate, decisions made on the basis of excellence, quality, and
artistic value were not so easily justifiable. Nevertheless, in policy debates, cultural value had so
far represented the main criterion for deciding which activities were to be supported by public
subsidy (that is, by people’s taxes), and which were not.
The Arts Council was now faced with the task of justifying to the nation the fact that public
money was spent according to the aesthetic judgements of small groups of people who could no
longer claim the authority for higher artistic judgements. Even the principle of “access,” which
together with “excellence” represented the keywords of cultural policy since the post-war
years, had now lost its hold. In the new relativist cultural climate, many felt that the Arts
Council’s attempts at bringing high art to the people—based on the assumption that it would
“do them good”—was the product of a paternalistic and patronising attitude that was no longer
acceptable (Bennett, 1996, p. 9).
On the other hand, another crucial event for the arts world in the UK was the election of a
Conservative government in 1979 and, with that, the beginning of the “Thatcherite era.” The
new government declared that one of its key missions was to promote the enlargement of the
private sector and to “roll back the frontiers of the state” in order to reduce public expenditure
and increase efficiency. Consequently, the level of public support of the arts remained
unchanged for a number of years (and that corresponded, in real terms, to a reduction in
funding). In this new climate of uncertainty about future levels of public expenditure, it was
believed throughout the arts world that, in order to survive, the arts needed to be able make a
strong case against further reductions in funding.
94 E. BELFIORE
To this end, in the 1980s, the arts sector decided to emphasize the economic aspects of its
activities and their alleged contribution to the wealth of the nation. This was originally a
defensive strategy of survival, aimed at preserving existing levels of cultural expenditure. The
hope was that, if the arts sector (now referred to as the “cultural industries”) could speak the
same language as the government, it would perhaps have a better chance of being listened to.
However, as Bianchini points out, this initially defensive attitude pretty soon seemed to offer
the opportunity for more positive arguments for the expansion of public expenditure on
culture on the grounds of its economic returns (Bianchini 1993a, pp. 12–13). This new
approach to justifying public arts funding was officially embraced by the Arts Council in a
glossy brochure produced in 1985 entitled A Great British Success Story. It was designed and
written to look like a company report: the “prospectus” indeed described itself as “an invitation
to the nation to invest in the arts” and used freely the language of the “enterprise culture.”.
Productions became “the product,” the audiences “consumers,” and the language of subsidy
became the language of “investment” (Hewison, 1995, p. 258).
The new cultural policy rationale that was now taking root is best represented by The
Economic Importance of the Arts in Britain, a book written by John Myerscough that attempted to
demonstrate and measure the positive economic contribution that the arts sector could make in
an era of industrial decline in terms of job creation, tourism promotion, invisible earnings, and
its contribution to urban regeneration. In the book, the logic of an instrumental view of culture
was clearly proposed as the best possible grounds for a defence of public arts funding:
This was a time when central government spending was levelling off. Arguments based on their intrinsic merits
and educational value were losing their potency and freshness, and the economic dimension seemed to provide
fresh justification for public spending on the arts (Myerscough, 1988, p. 2).
While the economic argument achieved vital recognition for the arts and cultural industries,
and became both influential and fashionable, its flaws were very soon pointed out (Hansen,
1995, p. 309). In 1989, the economist Gordon Hughes contested the all-inclusiveness of
Myerscough’s definition of the arts, and challenged the validity of the methodologies through
which he had collected his data. It has also been noted that the jobs created by the arts and the
so-called “symbolic economy” are mostly part-time, insecure or low wage, and therefore far for
being a solution for contemporary problems of structural unemployment (Lorente 1996, p. 3).
Hansen actually not only challenges the validity of the results of the economic impact studies
carried out by Myerscough and by many others after him, but also maintains that in such an
approach the arts are evaluated on an incorrect basis because the real purpose of the artistic
activity (which is not producing economic returns) is not taken into account.
However, despite the well-founded criticisms, studies on the economic impacts of the arts
carried out in the 1980s and 1990s had a long lasting influence over cultural policy debates. At a
first glance it might seem that much of the keywords in the rhetoric of the community arts
movement have become an integral part of current debates around cultural policy. The DCMS
and the Arts Council seem, moreover, to have embraced the once oppositional values and
predicaments of the community arts movement, and to have brought themes such as
participation, empowerment, and community development into mainstream cultural debate.
However, this paper aims to show that, notwithstanding the similarities of arguments and
shared “buzz words,” the spirit that animated (and in many respects still does) community arts
and that which now informs “offical” cultural policy discourse are in fact quite different.
Indeed, the thesis proposed in this paper is that current policies focusing on the arts as a tool
ART AS A MEANS OF ALLEVIATING SOCIAL EXCLUSION 95
towards social inclusion are in fact rooted in the instrumental notion of the arts and cultural
policies that affirmed itself in the 1980s.
THE ARTS AND NEIGHBOURHOOD RENEWAL: AN INSTRUMENTAL
CULTURAL POLICY FOR THE 1990S
The new focus of DCMS policy and funding to promote social inclusion originates from the
government’s commitment to the regeneration of poor neighbourhoods and is an integral part
of the development of a social inclusion policy in the context of the National Strategy for
Neighbourhood Renewal (DCMS, 1999a, p. 3). The belief that the arts can have a positive role
in community development and urban regeneration, however, is hardly a New Labour
discovery.
The links between the economic benefits produced by the cultural sector and issues of urban
renewal had already been explicitly made by the Arts Council back in 1986, in the publication
Partnership: Making Arts Money Work Harder. In this document (whose very title is symptomatic
of the cultural and political climate of the times), economic arguments for the public support of
the arts and the cultural industries were applied to highlight the arts’ contribution to urban
renewal. According to the Arts Council, the arts, in partnership with the local authorities,
could “bring new life to inner cities,”, create new jobs, and “help develop the skills and talents
of ethnic minorities and other specific communities” (Hewison, 1995, p. 258).
In the rhetoric of the Arts Council we can easily identify themes that have been “recycled”
by current policy documents. However, in the 1980s, the emphasis of urban regeneration
strategies all over Europe was pretty much placed on the pursuit of economic growth, in the
name of which social factors were often overlooked. Policies for urban regeneration were
initially led by physical development aimed at improving the internal and external image of
former industrial cities all over Europe. The most conspicuous investments were channelled
towards cultural “flagships,” such as the new gallery for the Burrell collection in Glasgow, the
Albert Dock, and the Tate of the North in Liverpool, and Centenary Square in Birmingham
(Bianchini, 1993a, p. 16).
Unfortunately, the “urban renaissance” hoped for by the Arts Council did not happen.4 In
fact, the urban renewal projects of these years were criticised for representing a “carnival mask”
used by local and national politicians to cover up persistent and growing economic and social
inequalities among the population (David Harvey, quoted in Bianchini, 1993a, p. 14). On the
grounds of this failure, and in association with a growing interest in issues of quality of life, the
social dimension of urban regeneration became the new focus of attention. By the early 1990s
the government and the funding bodies had acknowledged that regeneration was not just about
new buildings, but rather about people and the quality of the lives that could be lived in certain
areas.
One other circumstance that contributed to the shift of focus towards social rather than
economic considerations in cultural policy was the ever-increasing involvement of local
authorities in arts funding. Indeed local authorities’ spending on the arts exceeded that of
central government for the first time in 1988–1989, and has done so ever since. This came to
mean that local authorities became important contributors to the ongoing debates on cultural
policy. As a result of the involvement of non-art agencies in the arts funding, the agenda has
shifted. The Arts Council may place aesthetic considerations above all others, but the public
96 E. BELFIORE
sector (health authorities, social services departments, etc.) is mainly interested in the social
impact of the arts rather than in aesthetic or economic considerations.
The same phenomenon can be witnessed at the European Community level, where only
7.7% of expenditure in the arts for the period 1989–1993 derived from specifically cultural
programmes. The bulk of resources for the cultural sector (82, 79%) derived from the Structural
Funds and various Commission initiatives programmes (Fisher, 2000, p. 34).5 These additional
resources are vital for the arts world, especially when set against the background of reduced
national spending on culture. However, the Structural Funds are measures that address regional
inequalities, in the attempt to promote more balanced economic and social development
within the European Union. Therefore, access to these resources is conditional on the ability of
the arts to prove their efficacy in the social sphere.
In the light of this survey of the main developments in cultural policy over the last twenty–
years, it should be easier to put current polices on social exclusion and the arts in context.
Despite the rhetoric of the funding bodies (evolving around the keywords of participation,
empowerment, social cohesion, personal and community growth, so reminiscent of the 1970s
debate on cultural democracy), current policies in the cultural field are the direct derivation of
the instrumental theories of culture that dominated the policy debate in the 1980s. Policies
aiming at tackling social exclusion through the arts still justify public “investment” in the arts
through the argument that they provide “value for money”: a cost-effective contribution to the
solution of weighty social problems.6
THE ARTS AGAINST EXCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS OF AN
INSTRUMENTAL CULTURAL POLICY
The main implication of this instrumental view of cultural policy is that the claim that
investment in the arts actually does produce positive social impacts has to be convincingly
proved. Moreover, for the argument to hold, it should also be demonstrated that investment in
the arts can make a significant contribution to the cause of social inclusion, in fact more than
investment in other areas of public and social policy. In this perspective, the evaluation of the
social impact of arts programmes assumes paramount importance. Quite surprisingly, however,
virtually no critical study of the social impacts of the subsidised arts has been conducted in the
UK (DCMS, 1999b).
The only exception is the project carried out by the consultancy and research organisation
Comedia on the social purpose and value of participatory arts. The aim of the project was “to
develop a methodology for evaluating the social impact of arts programmes, and to begin to
assess that impact in key areas” (Matarasso, 1996). To this end, around 60 arts projects were
chosen to represent the core case studies, with some 600 people (both organisers and
participants) contributing through interviews, discussion groups, and questionnaires
(Matarasso, 1997, p. 7). In the final report on the project, Use or Ornament?, Franc¸ois
Matarasso has summarised and presented the findings on the social impacts arising from
participation in the arts. This is indeed the area of the arts to which social benefits are most
commonly attributed in policy discussions (Matarasso, 1997, p. iii).
The unquestionable merit of the project, and of Matarasso’s work in particular, is that it
represents the first—and so far the only—attempt at formulating a specific methodology for
evaluating if and how participation in arts activity does change people’s social life. Moreover,
ART AS A MEANS OF ALLEVIATING SOCIAL EXCLUSION 97
this work strives to offer an alternative evaluation method to the output-driven Performance
Indicator approach favoured by the Arts Council. The need for a move from “hard,”
quantitative indicators to “soft,” qualitative ones had already been advocated, in 1993, by
Franco Bianchini, who had called for “new methodologies and indicators to measure the
impact of cultural policies and activities in terms of quality of life, social cohesion, and
community development” (Bianchini, 1993b, p. 212).
Comedia’s work presents itself as the first attempt to apply the method of “social auditing” to
the evaluation of arts projects. Comedia defines social auditing as “a means of measuring the
social impact of an activity or organisation in relation to its aims and those of its stakeholders.”.
The advantage of this approach is that it views an activity or organisation as a complex whole,
placing emphasis on values and on the opinions of all the stakeholders of arts projects (funders,
arts organisations, and participants). Moreover, social auditing is presented as an effective
mechanism to show funders the values of the organisations’ objectives and the extent to which
they are successfully met (Lingayah et al., 1996, pp. 21–22).
Directly linked to the values of social auditing is what probably represents the most
remarkable aspect of this project: the emphasis on the need to adopt “people centred
approaches to evaluation” that can address the outcomes, rather than the outputs, of policy
initiatives (Matarasso, 1996, p. 13). This means a focus not so much on the programmes’ output
(the artistic product), but on its long-term impacts on the participants.
However, if on the one hand the pioneering nature of this work has to be acknowledged, on
the other, the whole project, and the methodology it proposes, is not without flaws.7 As this
section of the paper will show, on the one hand precious and important observations on the
difficulties and potential pitfalls of arts projects evaluation are responsibly put forward. On the
other, it seems that—in the practice of evaluation—Comedia’s researchers are the first to ignore
completely those very same warnings.
First of all, the emphasis on outcomes rather than outputs—which is certainly the most
innovative of Comedia’s suggestions—seems to be contradicted by the five-stage evaluation
model proposed by Matarasso. The five stages of the process are: planning, setting indicators,
execution, assessment, and reporting. The problem is that it is advised that the assessment stage
should take place “on completion of the project” and that, the different stakeholders should all
compile reports on the results of the projects “shortly after completion” of the project. This is
indeed the methodology followed by all the reports and the evaluations carried out within the
project (Matarasso, 1996, p. 25). However, what about outcomes? These, as one of Comedia’s
working papers clearly points out, “will typically take longer to emerge than outputs”
(Lingayah et al., 1996, p. 33), and would not therefore be taken into account by such an
assessment process.
It is arguable that this consideration strongly undermines the findings of a study that claims to
evaluate how arts projects can have life-changing effects on participants, and on how this can
contribute to community development. For instance, Matarasso (1997, p. vi) tells us that 37%
of participants have decided to take up training or a course. What we will never know is whether
that was just the result of a short-lived enthusiasm or a real life-changing decision. It would have
probably been more significant to show what proportion of projects participants had actually
taken up further training a few months after the programme. An evaluation method that really
placed outcomes at its heart should rather focus on long-term monitoring of the participants
and the effects of the arts on their lives. However, long-term monitoring is a very complicated
and expensive form of assessment, as it involves repeated interviews with the participants over
98 E. BELFIORE
the years. Moreover, it can be expected that arts organisations would rather opt for a “quick”
evaluation process, as they need to prove their success to the funders in order to advocate
continued funding.
One more methodological difficulty identified by Matarasso is that of the cause–effect link.
Indeed, being able to show change in relation to a predefined indicator does not prove that the
change was produced by the arts programme being evaluated. The solution proposed in
Matarasso’s (1996, p. 19) working paper, Defining Values, was to seek to establish a causal link
between the programme and its outcomes “by the elimination of outside factors” (that is, all the
variables that might have affected the programme’s outcomes). However, when the issue of
establishing a causal link—critical in a discussion of evaluation—is presented again in the final
report on the project, it seems to be dismissed without having been resolved. Indeed all
Matarasso has to say to support the causal link he purports between changes in people and the
arts project studied is:
it cannot be denied that there is a cumulative power in the hundreds of voices we have heard over the past
18 months, in vastly different circumstances, explaining again and again how important they feel participation in
arts projects has been for them. How many swallows does it take to make summer? (1997, p. 6).
This is hardly a consistent or strong argument!
One more source of concern in Defining Values is the use of statistics in the context of arts
projects evaluation, and the often ambiguous way in which questions are phrased with bias
towards getting a higher proportion of the desired answers (1996, p. 15 and Moriarty, 1997, p.
9). However, Use or Ornament? (as well as all other Comedia’s reports here considered) makes a
massive use of statistics, some of them derived from ambiguously formulated questions. For
example, Matarasso boasts that 73% of participants have been happier since being involved.
This percentage represents the proportion of the interviewees who have expressed agreement
with the sentence “since being involved I have been happier.” These results are accepted as valid
without any further discussion. However, it is arguable that the attempt at measuring
quantitatively something so subjective and for which there is no predefined scale as happiness
would at least require more in-depth discussion and a more complex investigation of the
participants’ experiences. In the same way, Matarasso (1997, p. 101) claims that 52% of
participants felt better or healthier after participation in the arts; 49% had even changed their
ideas (about what, though, we do not know, since people were simply asked “has the project
changed your ideas about anything?”).
One more point that it is interesting to make is that in Use or Ornament? Matarasso poses the
question of whether social policy issues could be tackled more cost-effectively by other
methods rather than the arts. He maintains that “participatory arts project are different, effective
and cost very little in the context of spending on social goals. They represent an insignificant
financial risk to public services, but can produce impacts (social and economic) out of
proportion to their cost” (1997, p. 81). It is not clear, though, on the basis of what data
Matarasso reaches such a conclusion, since no comparative data on costs and results achieved
with different methods accompany these considerations, a fact that undermines the validity of
his claims.
Matarasso asserts that the results of Comedia’s research project lead to the conclusion that “a
marginal adjustment of priorities in cultural and social policy could deliver real socio-economic
benefits to people and communities” (1997, v). However, some of the claims he makes about
the capacity of arts projects to empower individuals and communities are founded on flawed
arguments and statistics. As a consequence, his advocacy for the redirection of public funds
ART AS A MEANS OF ALLEVIATING SOCIAL EXCLUSION 99
towards participatory arts projects is not very convincing. Moreover, in the perspective of
national arts funding, participatory arts projects represent a very small proportion of public
spending on the arts, especially on the part of the DCMS and the Arts Council.
Indeed, in the only research that Matarasso has conducted on audiences at an art event (rather
than participants in an arts project) the impact of the arts on people’s life appears substantially
less remarkable. In Magic, Myths and Money, Matarasso has studied the social and economic
impacts on Manchester of a week in English National Ballet’s tour of Cinderella. Here there are
ambiguities similar to those registered in Use or Ornament?, such as the 93% of audiences
disagreeing with the statement “watching ballet has no lasting impact on me” (1999, p. 50).
Whether this impact refers to an enjoyable night out or a life-changing experience is a mystery
the report does not disclose. Despite its merit in pioneering this kind of research, the findings in
Magic, Myths and Money can hardly provide grounds for justifying public expenditure on the arts
on the basis of their positive social impacts.
One final problem with Comedia’s approach to the evaluation of the impact of arts projects
on excluded people and communities is that very often the importance attributed to social
outcomes overshadows aesthetic considerations. Indeed, in some cases, such as in his work on
the impacts of community arts in Belfast, Matarasso (1998b, iii) explicitly excludes artistic
considerations from the scope of his analysis. This can be explained with the fact that quite
often the projects analysed by Comedia’s researchers are funded by local authorities as part of
anti-poverty strategies (i.e., Portsmouth in Poverty & Oysters ), or by development or
regeneration agencies (as is the case of Belfast).
ISSUES OF QUALITY
Matarasso’s work does provide clear evidence that many local authorities do not put artistic
concerns at the top of their list of funding criteria for the support of arts projects. Consequently,
aesthetic considerations have often little or no place in their evaluation of the success of their
arts-related programmes. This marks a strong difference with the position of agencies
specifically devoted to arts funding. For these bodies, all allocations of resources are founded on
and imply a quality judgement based on aesthetic considerations. Moreover, the less money
there is to spend on the arts, the more necessary it is to make judgements based on quality
(ACGB-National Arts and Media Strategy Monitoring Group, 1992, p. 37).
In this perspective, it will not come as a surprise that quite often issues of quality have been
the cause of friction between major funding bodies (especially the Arts Council) and
community arts groups. On the one hand, the former value quality and excellence in the arts
and make of them important criteria for subsidy. On the other, community arts activities,
which are mainly participatory, place more emphasis and value on the artistic process—with its
empowering effects—rather than the artistic product (Webster 1997, pp. 1–2). This is
particularly true of those projects targeted at disadvantaged communities, where often the
participants have little or no previous experience of the arts. Despite the formal recognition, on
the part of the arts “establishment”, of the intrinsic value of participatory arts in the community,
quality is still a delicate issue in the relationship between the national funding bodies and
community arts groups.
This situation is best exemplified by the problems recently faced by Green Candle. This is a
dance company strongly committed to education and work with the most fragile elements in
100 E. BELFIORE
the community: young people, the elderly, and the sick. As Green Candle’s artistic director,
Fergus Early, has explained during a conference on community arts and social exclusion
organised by Mailout in July 2000, the company has been facing the possibility of a cut in
funding from ACE. The reason for this is the different evaluations of one of the company’s latest
projects involving a group of elderly people in a movement and dance project. As can be easily
imagined, the bodies of elderly people are not as agile and flexible, or slender and beautiful as
those of the professional dancers employed by the national dance companies funded by ACE.
Nor had the project participants ever had formal dance training before. The Arts Council, Early
argues, probably on the basis of a notion of quality in dance that would be more appropriate for
English National Ballet than participatory dance projects, deemed the project of poor quality;
hence, the threats of reduced subsidy. However, the very same project was judged highly
successful by Green Candle staff and by the participants in the project, since it had given old
people the chance to express themselves through their body and to enhance their flexibility,
with good effects on their health and their general feeling of well-being.8
Who is right? Can a group of elderly people dancing awkwardly be art? And, more
importantly, can it be “quality art” worth of funding? Or should this kind of project be funded
merely on the grounds of its positive effect on the participants, regardless of any consideration
of quality?
This example clearly shows the need for new definitions of quality and value in arts projects,
in order to solve and surpass the sterile dichotomy of these two very different notions of quality,
in particular in relation to participatory arts. Today a new idea of quality is needed that can give
dignity to participatory arts projects and that recognises their specific characteristics and aims.
Some moves towards more inclusive notions of quality have already been made. For instance, in
the context of this research, the contribution of the Norwegian scholar, Henrik Kaare Nielsen,
could prove particularly useful.
Nielsen has tried to distinguish some of the criteria of quality that have so far appeared in
cultural policy debates. These are a “universalistic-normative” identification of quality with the
traditional fine arts (the basis of post-war democratisation policies); a relativistic “anything
goes” position in which quality is not really an issue; and a “particularistic-normative position”
(originating from post-modern theories) where quality can only be defined within certain
contexts. Nielsen supplements these “traditional” notions of quality with a fourth, innovative
one. He introduces a “pluralistic-universalistic normativity”, where the experience process
determines quality. In this view, the quality of a cultural activity, or of the process of creation, is
related to the artist’s or participant’s engagement with the complexities of reality and the
enriching experience that derives from it (Waade, 1997, p. 337).
The usefulness of this diversified notion of quality is that it does allow us to sidestep the
friction between the differing notions of quality upheld by the Arts Council and community
arts groups. Moreover, it offers arts organisations working in the field of participatory arts a
chance to argue their case to the funding bodies more effectively, and to finally be able to
defend their projects by using criteria of quality relevant to their activities.
MUSEUMS AS “CENTRES FOR SOCIAL CHANGE”
In the context of the present research, museums and art galleries represent an interesting object
of analysis, since they are traditionally seen as institutions presenting more “difficult” and
ART AS A MEANS OF ALLEVIATING SOCIAL EXCLUSION 101
“elitist” forms of art. This notwithstanding, during the last decade, within the climate of
accountability and competition for scarce public resources already discussed, museums too have
faced an increasing pressure to present a convincing case for their role and value in society. This
new attitude towards museums finds clear expression in the “policy guidance” document on
social inclusion published by the DCMS in May 2000, entitled Centres for Social Change:
Museums, Galleries and Archives for All. The document states that:
[museums] can play a role in generating social change by engaging with and empowering people to determine
their place in the world, educate themselves to achieve their own potential, play a full part in society, and
contribute to transforming it in the future (2000b, p. 8).
In the document, the DCMS presents the possibility of museums becoming positive agents
of social inclusiveness as an uncontroversial matter. However, the aim of inclusiveness is rather a
challenge for museums, which in many ways can be seen as representing “institutionalised
exclusion” (Sandell, 1998, p. 407). As Ames explains, “[m]useums are products of the
establishment and authenticate the established or official values and image of a society in several
ways, directly, by promoting and affirming the dominant values, and indirectly, by
subordinating or rejecting alternate values” (Quoted in Sandell, 1998, pp. 407–408).
This means that the political, social, economic, and especially cultural dimensions of social
exclusion are often reflected in museums. For instance, we might argue that the exclusion that
minority groups experience in many aspects of their lives is reflected, at the cultural level, in the
museum that fails to tell the stories of those groups and hence denies their validity. Museums,
thus, are hardly the neutral spaces that the DCMS document makes out. In fact, Sandell argues
that museums, because of their validating role in society, not only reflect the social exclusion of
certain groups, but also, by promoting a unilateral cultural perspective, reinforce the prejudices
and discriminatory practices diffused in the wider society (Sandell, 1998, p. 408). The
“exclusive” nature of museums is actually confirmed by the statistics, presented by the DCMS
itself, relative to research carried out by MORI in 1999. It showed that only 23% of people
from social classes DE visited museum and galleries, against a proportion of 56% of visitors from
classes AB (DCMS, 2000b, p. 8). This seems to confirm Tony Bennett’s view that “museums,
and especially art galleries, have often been effectively appropriated by social elites so that,
rather than functioning as institution of homogenisation, as reforming thought had envisaged,
they have continued to play a significant role in differentiating the elite from popular classes”
(Quoted in Sandell, 1998, p. 409).
However, the DCMS (2000b, p. 25) has made clear that future funding agreements with
publicly funded museums and galleries will reflect the DCMS’s aim of promoting social
inclusion. Consequently, alongside their more traditional role as educational institutions,
museums today must justify the public support they receive in terms that demonstrate their
ability to promote social inclusion, tackle issues of cultural deprivation and disadvantage, and
reach the widest possible audience. So, if the museum has, up until now, acted mainly as a
reinforcement of exclusion, is it realistic to expect it to reinvent itself, almost overnight, as a
“centre for social change”?
The possible contribution museums can make to the cause of social inclusion is quite a
complex matter. Indeed, it is not limited to the more obvious issues of access and participation.
Because of museums’ legitimising role in society, the “inclusive museum” has to engage also
with the sphere of representation, that is “the extent to which an individual’s cultural heritage is
represented within the mainstream cultural arena” (Sandell 1998, p. 410). So, according to this
line of reasoning, the truly inclusive museum is the one that seeks to give a voice to groups and
102 E. BELFIORE
communities that museums have silenced in the past and tries to become relevant to their lives,
thus encouraging them to access its services.
More practically, it seems that museums in Britain have chosen to act as agents of social
regeneration, with the aim of delivering positive social outcomes to specifically targeted groups
affected by disadvantage and exclusion. This is proved by the increasing number of museums
hiring staff devoted to outreach work. Even “flagship” museums, following the funders’
requirements, are seeking to reposition themselves in the direction of inclusiveness. A telling
example is the new and much discussed Tate Modern, and the ways in which it has tried to
establish a positive connection with the disadvantaged community of London’s Bankside.9 The
museum has not only built a resource centre for the benefit of the local community, but also
organised a number of participatory projects involving the local community, and even training
sessions in arts management for a group of local unemployed people. However, is it right to
expect one of the most prestigious museums of modern art in the world to become a training
agency in the name of social inclusion? Is there a conflict between the pressure to include the
excluded that museums are undergoing and their specific responsibilities for the conservation,
interpretation and presentation of the artistic collections for which they are responsible?
This is quite an important issue, since museum professionals have expressed concern about
the possibility of conflict between museum’s scholarly duties (especially for museums with
highly specialised interests) and the needs of inclusiveness. Sandell warns that “it would be
prudent to recognise the many limitations of the museum and accept that their role in directly
tackling the social problems associated with exclusion is likely to be marginal” (Sandell, 1998, p.
416).
This invitation to prudence sounds very different from the confident tone used by the
DCMS’ document. In its foreword Chris Smith writes:
the evidence is that museums, galleries and archives can…act as agents of social change in the community,
improving the quality of people’s lives through their outreach activities.
Museums are thus being asked by the funding bodies to assume new roles, to demonstrate
their social purpose and more specifically to reinvent themselves as agents of social inclusion.
However, despite these new demands being placed on museums and galleries, there has been
very little supporting analysis and evaluation of the social impact of museums’s activities, and
virtually no discussion or questioning of the relevance of the social exclusion debate to the
museum sector.10 Despite Smith’s declarations, the assumption that museums can realistically be
expected to become “agents of social change” is hardly a well proven fact. Rigorous studies of
the social impacts of museums working with disenfranchised communities are therefore badly
needed, and will probably be most welcomed by the museum community. However, one
cannot help but conclude that if positive social impacts on the part of museums have not been
yet demonstrated—and if in fact their role in society still seems to be that of helping perpetuate
the status quo of cultural deprivation among lower socio-economic groups—museums’
contribution to positive social change can hardly be held up as a justification for public funding
of museums and galleries.
CONCLUSIONS
It seems possible to conclude—on the basis of the arguments put forward by this paper—that
the issue of the social impacts of arts projects is here to stay and is likely to have a prominent
ART AS A MEANS OF ALLEVIATING SOCIAL EXCLUSION 103
position in future debates over cultural policy in Britain and beyond. The impression that social
issues will probably gain a substantial centrality in future cultural policies seems to be reinforced
by the European Community’s cultural programme Culture 2000, which builds upon the
commitment to cultural access expressed by the Article 151 of the Treaty of Amsterdam (ex
Article 128 of the Treaty of Maastricht). The programme formally acknowledges the
contribution that culture can make to social cohesion across Europe. Consequently, targets of
the programme’s initiatives are essentially all European citizens, but in particular the young and
socially underprivileged ones (European Commission, 2000).
The argument has already been made that—for the instrumental view of the arts to be
vindicated—the case should be made convincingly that the arts do indeed produce social
benefits, and that they do so more significantly than investment in more traditional social
policies. This paper has also attempted to show that not only has the effectiveness of socially
orientated arts projects not been the object of extensive study, but the little research available
has far from succeeded in presenting a strong case for the social impacts of the arts.
In the light of these considerations, the same observation that has been made for the studies
on the economic impact of the arts during the 1980s might now be made for the social impact
studies: that in attempting to sustain the cause of public funding of the arts, they have in fact
weakened the argument for public support of the arts (Bennett, 1995, p. 61). If the arts cannot
prove to be a cost-effective means of delivering social benefits, they are destined to lose the
struggle for funding against other areas of public spending of established effectiveness in tackling
social issues.
However, the main problem created by the argument that the arts are a source of urban
regeneration, or that public subsidy is in fact an “investment” with specific, measurable social
returns, is that the arts became entirely instrumental. Degraded to the function of mere tool,
arts become a matter of “value for money”. One non-arts professional, whose view is registered
by Matarasso, puts this baldly:
I’m very positive about the use of the arts as long as it’s not art for arts sake: it’s a tool. You’ve got to have clear
determined aim and objectives, and have an end product (Moriarty, 1997, p. 61).
This study is not aimed at advocating a model of public support for the arts based on the “art
for art’s sake” rationale. In fact, it is informed by the belief that since the arts are made possible
by the commitment made by society through public spending, it is to be expected that they
should have clear responsibilities towards the society that maintains them. In this perspective,
the fact that so much of public money goes to art forms the consumption of which is effectively
still the preserve of the well-educated and the relatively wealthy (after over 50 years of “proaccess” policies) is undoubtedly a source of unease. However, the aim of this paper is to show
how instrumental cultural policies are not sustainable in the long term, and how they ultimately
may turn from “policies of survival” to “policies of extinction”.
If the logic of the instrumental view of culture presented by the quote above is taken to its
extreme (but intrinsically consequential) conclusions, there would be no point in having a
cultural policy at all, as art provision could be easily absorbed within existing social policies—
hence the need for public arts funding bodies that put artistic considerations at the heart of their
resource allocations. Culture is a not a means to an end. It is an end itself. Many attempts have
been made to demonstrate that culture is a peculiarly successful means of promoting social
cohesion, inclusion or regeneration, but they miss the point if they regard culture as one means
to social regeneration among various possible others. To borrow the words of Lewis Biggs, ex
104 E. BELFIORE
curator at the Tate of the North, Liverpool: “Culture is a successful regenerator because it is an
end in itself: the activity is inseparable from the achievement” (Biggs, 1996, p. 62).
Notes
1 www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/seu/ 2 PAT 10 is a cross-governmental Policy Action Team within the SEU with the task of studying the
contribution of arts and sport to neighbourhood renewal. 3 DCMS (1999a), p. 8. 4 An Urban Renaissance was the title of a pamphlet published by the Arts Council in 1988 to reinforce the
view that the “enterprise culture” could contribute to the development of deprived areas. 5 The Structural Funds are aimed reducing regional disparities between the European member States.
One of their priority objectives is to promote the development of less-developed regions in the EU. In
particular, Objective 1 funds are aimed at the poorest regions, where GDP is up to 75% of the average
in the EU. Commission initiatives are a number of other programmes that are aimed at correcting
various regional imbalances within the framework of regional policy (e.g. INTERREG, URBAN,
LEADER, SME, etc.) 6 The term “investment” with reference to public expenditure in the field of arts activities promoting
inclusion was used by Chris Smith, the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, in a
speech he made in 1999 (see bibliography), and is widely used in all of DCMS’ and ACE’s documents
on the arts and social exclusion analysed in this research. 7 The criticism of Comedia’s work is based on the analysis of the already mentioned reports published by
Comedia, with the addition of Northern Lights (1996), Taliruni’s Travellers (1996), The Creative Bits
(1997), Vital Signs (1998), Poverty and Oysters (1998), and Magic, Myths and Money (1999). Full
references in the bibliography. 8 The source of the information on Green Candle is the presentation entitled “Issues of Quality” given
by Fergus Early at the Mailout conference Moving the Margins, held in Derby on July 12, 2000. 9 Information derived from the proceedings of the conference Inclusion: An international conference
exploring the role of museums and galleries in promoting social exclusion, held at the University of Leicester in
March 2000. 10 This point is made by Sandell (1998), but the lack of reliable evaluation of the social impacts of the
activities of the museums that have already embraced the cause of inclusion was also put forward by
many of the speakers at the Inclusion conference.
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OTHER SOURCES
Proceedings of the International conference Inclusion: An international conference exploring the role of museums and galleries in
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Proceedings of the Mailout conference on community arts and social inclusion Moving the Margins, held in Derby on
12th July 2000.
106 E. BELFIORE
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