‘Impact’, ‘value’ and ‘bad economics’: Making sense of the problem of value in the arts and humanities

Abstract

Questions around the value of the arts and humanities to the contemporary world and the benefits they are expected to bring to the society that supports them through funding have assumed an increased centrality within a number of disciplines, not limited to humanities scholarship. Especially problematic, yet crucial, is the issue of the measurement of such public value. This article takes as a starting point a discussion of the ‘cultural value debate’ as it has developed within British cultural policy: here, the discussion of ‘value’ has been inextricably linked to the challenge of ‘making the case’ for the arts and for public cultural funding. The paper discusses the problems with the persisting predominance of economics in shaping current approaches to framing articulations of ‘value’ in the policy-making context. It concludes with a plea for a collaborative effort to resist the economic doxa, and to reclaim and reinvent the impact agenda as a route towards the establishment of new public humanities.