C|R|E|A|M

Fellowship in the

economic impact of arts and humanities

The Centre for Research in Environmental Appraisal and Management (CREAM), in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, has been awarded a three-year Research Fellowship in the Economic Impact of Arts and Humanities, funded jointly by the Arts and Humanities Research Board and Arts Council England.

The aim of the Fellowship is to develop and test new and innovative aspects of economic analysis and methods to evaluate the economic impact and value of arts and humanities, including arts and humanities research, to society.  The study will analyse impact and value in a number of different arts, culture, and humanities subject areas, including archaeology, museums and galleries, film, and theatre.  The research is being directed by

Professor Ken Willis ( http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/ken.willis ), and

Dr. Jose Grisolia (email: j.m.grisolia@ncl.ac.uk) has been appointed to the Fellowship.

Research context 

The socio-economic impact of the arts has become an increasingly important rationale for public investment in the cultural sector over the last two decades. However, current literature shows that neither the funding bodies nor their clients have managed to establish a methodology robust enough to be accepted and consistently applied across a wide range of publicly-funded arts organisations.  With the growing demand for evidence-based policy making, and in the context of the competition the arts world has to face for limited resources, there is clearly a need to elaborate an economic appraisal and evaluation procedure that is methodologically sound and that can inform the claims made by and for the sector.

Research focus  

The research will focus on using a range of complementary methodological approaches that have been developed in environmental economics, and apply and develop these techniques to examine the utility, economic value, and market share of particular arts and humanities goods to individuals and groups, and to society and the economy.  Existing economic valuation methodologies encompass:

• Market valuation techniques: entrance charges, production costs, replacement costs, conservation costs, and averting and mitigation expenditure to prevent cultural goods being conserved for present and future generations;
• Revealed preference methods: travel-cost methods, including individual visitor count models, to assess how the value of cultural goods can be inferred from the distance people are prepared to travel, and at what cost to themselves, to see and experience these goods;
• Stated preference methods: contingent valuation and multi-attribute based stated choice experiments, which can be used to estimate both use values and also non-use (existence and bequest) values for cultural goods, as well as valuing the attributes of specific cultural goods, and assessing how market share might change if attributes (e.g. the composition and displays in museums) are varied.    

These techniques will be applied to value different aspects of archaeology, museums and galleries, film, and theatre.

The benefits of developing such techniques in the arts and humanities context are potentially very important - allowing the quantification of the economic value of the arts and humanities in both financial and in economic terms - as well as measuring public preferences for these cultural goods and changing market share as cultural goods are developed and enhanced.    

Further details and project reports when published can be found on the web site of CREAM at the University of Newcastle. 

The first project November 2005 to March 2006 is analysing demand for art gallery services at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, and also at the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead.