7.1Well-being as evidence for social policy

Now, of course we’ve already got some very strong instincts—even prejudices, sometimes—about what will improve people’s lives, and we act on those instincts … These are instincts we feel to the core, but it’s right that as far as possible we put them to the practical test, so we really know what matters to people. Every day, ministers, officials, people […]

7.1.1Data and evidence in cultural policy

‘Facts about the Arts’ sets out to bring together some of the available statistics on the arts. Anyone who has the temerity to try to do this invites the scorn of those who believe that the concept of the arts itself is elusive and indefinable and any attempt to measure it cannot begin to represent its essential quality. Others, however, […]

7.2Policy spending on culture as good for society

Wellbeing evidence can help policymakers to assess the impact of arts subsidy on wellbeing inequalities, and thus to ensure that the benefits of this spending are spread to those with lower wellbeing, including disadvantaged and underrepresented groups. (Berry 2014, 36) The quote above is taken from a 2014 report that was written to the All-Party Parliamentary Group((All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) […]

7.2.1Well-being data and investment in culture

For now, let’s look at some well-being data to observe the relationship between culture and well-being. To be specific, we are not going to look at the concept of culture as a whole, or, as is normally investigated, the concept of participating in culture (in some way). Instead we are going to look at the money spent on culture. If […]

7.2.2Policy decisions and investments using well-being data

Lord Richard Layard (the Happiness Tsar from Chap. 4) has previously stated that ‘policy is not going to be framed around [well-being] for decades, but unless you have the index you’ll never get to a point where you can influence things’1.(( Legatum Commission Chairman Lord O’Donnell said: ‘We now know much more about what drives the wellbeing of people and […]

7.3Well-being data and cultural practice

So, we know that culture is a tricky word to define and can be measured in different ways; we know the same is true of well-being. We have looked at how we might need to think about how the concept of well-being is ‘operationalised’. This is, of course, also true of culture, and the previous chapter spent some time covering […]

7.3.1Being an artist and well-being

For those of you who didn’t watch Disney-Pixar’s Soul at Christmas in 2020 (and again for those of you who didn’t watch it, I’ll try to not spoil it), the film places a lot of emphasis on the meaning of music for the main character, Joe Gardner. He sees music—specifically jazz—as his purpose in life. The cruel twist is that, […]

7.3.2Two reports on the relationship between being an artist or working in a creative occupation and well-being

The two reports we will turn to were published in subsequent years. Their titles and their named approaches suggest that they both contain findings from research using similar methods to answer a similar research question about the well-being of ‘creatives’. This enables us to see how ‘culture’ can be operationalised as being and working as an artist, and how this […]

7.4Well-being data and ‘cultural access’

Once we put the culture/well-being link under the right set of analytical lenses, it turns out quite clearly that ‘culture counts’, namely, that there is clear evidence that cultural access has a definite impact on individual psychological well being (and particularly so if cultural access occurs in a well-balanced mind–body perspective), and moreover that culture provides for some of the […]

7.5Conclusion: well-being data and its uses to understand policy questions

We began this chapter with David Cameron promising to put ‘instincts we feel to the core’ to ‘the practical test’ so that those whose decisions on policy and spending, that affect people’s lives, take account of what matters. We end with concerns about impact and conflated variables. We considered data and evidence in cultural policy briefly, before looking at three […]

7.6Bibliography