Whose value is it anyway? A neo-institutionalist approach to articulating and evaluating artistic value

The neoliberal agenda which has dominated the creative industries for the past few decades has engendered a range of problems for arts and cultural managers and policymakers. This article critiques the wholesale application of economic, business and management tools, theory and principles to arts and cultural organizations; it then proposes solutions to assist these organizations in creating, identifying and evaluating value on their own terms and in line with their missions and organizational objectives. The solutions proposed are generated by an application of the literature on arts management and evaluation, cultural policy and sociology and through qualitative research into audiences’ articulations of value.

The article reports and analyzes the responses of 34 semi-structured depth interviews on the value of theatre with participants drawn from audiences in the UK and Australia. It highlights the discrepancies between the neo-liberal, instrumental methods of evaluating value imposed on arts organizations by governments and the personal, intrinsic insights provided by audiences themselves. It argues ultimately for a balanced, neo-institutionalist approach to arts management and evaluation, which would evaluate organizational performance in line with artistic goals and objectives. In so doing, it makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about cultural value and provides a creative, alternative evaluation framework for arts managers, marketers and cultural policymakers.