This image is an illustration by Giulia David. It’s a graphic recording of an symposium event that T-Lab1 organised for Labo-Friche Marseille entitled Social impact of cultural projects, that took place on the 4 October 2023 at La Friche. The symposium shared parallel experiences of social power, exploring perspectives of social and cultural value specific to the contexts of La Friche, Marseille, and Camden, London, both case studies of the T-Factor project. It brought together practitioners, academics and policy makers to share knowledge and consider urban values. With the growing recognition that urban cultural production, generated through collaborative art, architecture and design practice, fostering the development of hybrid and community spaces, questions arise about how socially engaged cultural practices and institutions can interact with complex urban development systems without unintentionally making things worse for disadvantaged communities.
The symposium explored these presentations and discussions through the rubrics of Power and Value and the graphic recording captures the key points, metrics, evaluation, relationships to communities etc. We hope this recording can be applied to other projects and situations and the key points can act as a useful guide to apply to your activities.
To read from top left to the right:
One of the biggest difficulties of the cultural and artistic players is to explain/demonstrate the intangible value of the work that they are producing within the society and communities. The actions for communities’ engagement by creating the condition of the cultural expression has a great positive impact on the society but beyond the economical metrics, which are the easiest to grasp, policy makers and cultural players need to find a common language.
Research on social value for cultural projects is existing, such as the one which has been led by Ville Innovation lab for the hybrid arts network HACNUM in France presented during the event. The purpose was to grasp positive externalities of digital and hybrid arts. During the conversation, the first obstacle highlighted in this context was the sectorial language and the lack of alternative tools for going outside of the economic impact of cultural activities and production. It was necessary to be inspired by social practitioners who need to assess the value and the impact of their activities. Bridging cultural and social sectors seems to be necessary in terms of practices and also knowledge exchange. How can we measure the social link progression of a person? How can we observe the influence of social action for improving mental health? A shift of mindset needs to happen and a focus on the quality of the services instead of performance is necessary.
Practitioners are able to create cooperation for enhancing their knowledge within communities. The audiences, the citizens and the beneficiaries of social and cultural activities need to be engaged from the first steps of the value assessment. Bringing together quantitative and qualitative observations, simultaneously and in correspondence seems to be the best practice but is confronted by several obstacles such as language discordances, tool’s incompatibility, and the systemic complexity of the methods to be implemented. User’s experience needs to be considered at the same level as cultural players and policy makers in these processes. A strong cooperation culture between citizen, private and public sectors is the first requirement.
To that extent, social value has a power in society, mostly in changemaking processes. This lever is central in urban planning projects which are today reflecting on “using” but also inspired by cultural and artistic actions. The first condition of a sound cooperation process is trust and social value is a contributing factor. Bringing social value into such a project means also to be based on human mechanisms which, mostly, necessitate urban planners and policy makers to be agile and to be open to contribution at all the steps of the project. If community engagement and considering social value from and with the users is a priority, consultation processes are limited. A project can be participatory at another level considering that, when meanwhile uses are developed into an on-going development project, some unexpected uses can arise, need to be considered, and sometimes integrated even if they were not planned. Each stakeholder of a project has to be in a frame of mind that can allow numerous iterations of the plan.
The assessment of the social value and impact of cultural projects (in their design and action) can be a strong decision-making tool and a political act for change. Methods are complex and casual links are necessary between situations that are generated by meanwhile space development. However, because the reflexion on metrics for assessing social value is not stable, it is important for local players to agree on hypothesises and keep the possibility that they can be questioned and not automatically be proven. For a few years now, because the subject of social value is present between practitioners, along with the fact that policy makers are targeting more and more funds with “impact” in mind, the market for evaluators has developed and while there is not yet a common understanding about the metrics of social value.