Written evidence submitted by MB Associates

Summary for arts and culture

1. Engagement skills are as important as excellent art, and ‘everyday culture’ and activities that are fun, are good at boosting access.  Libraries make accessible hosts and community-led work particularly enhances social assets.  Transport is a big barrier.
2. Creative encounters can engage people considered ‘hard to reach’ – they capture attention, create appealing, experiential learning and are social (see Behavioural Insights guidance). Stewardship and asset-based approaches are a strength.
3. Place-making is a USP, but we need to focus more explicitly on environment.  Place-making does not necessarily need newly commissioned work, but quality is important. Sense of achievement coupled with pride in product or place is a potent mix. 
4. Culture contributes to learning, but shouldn’t only be valued by impact on formal education or jobs.  Personal capabilities and skills that lead to hobbies are valuable.
5. Culture can create ‘flow’ and enhance mental health and personal wellbeing.  It can impact isolation and relationships within families, teams, and communities - but these are not necessarily compatible and relationships must be handled with care. 
6. Economic impact from upstream and preventative work, with savings to the public purse must be explicit.  Working with businesses for productivity is an area for economic growth.
7. The fragmented sector undermines many opportunities, not least career progression and commissioning.

About our evidence

1. We are a consultancy specialising in caring, cultural and community value with years of delivery experience.  Our associates are SROI practitioners.  One of us is on the Social Value UK board; another is an SROI assessor. 

2. Our evidence comes from these reports (we don’t address sport):

2a.  Happy Museum embedded evaluation, from 2011 to 2017[1]

2b.  Make My Day, 2013[2], the impact of creative carers in older people’s care homes             

2c.   Fun Palaces evaluation 2014[3], an international campaign for communities to recognize ‘everyone an artist, everyone a scientist’ with an annual activity weekend

2d.  Arts at the Heart of new public services, 2015[4], evaluation of a pilot arts commission in Kent using the six ways to wellbeing with disadvantaged young people

2e.  Transported, 2016/2017[5], five SROI analyses for a ‘Creative People and Places’ programme in Lincolnshire, including an assured report Taking pART[6],  about an open access mental health project; a photography project at a local business Elsoms, an art trail installation of sculptures of local people at Spalding, and two library projects in static and mobile libraries, making paper sculptures and silk paintings.

2f.    Make Culture Work, 2017[7], action research into collaborative evaluation for place-

2g.  Kent CC, 2018[8], audit of social impact and development of a new assessment approach

3. We define social impact in line with social value expertise, as impact on society, (Fujiwara, D). ‘Social’ is shorthand for environmental, economic, and social outcomes, a triple-bottom-line.

How can venues (and others) boost access and social impact and which programmes  best support it?

Access to support greater diversity and social mobility

4. Limiting this question to venues risks some of the best work on access by everyday/community based programmes like Fun Palaces, Transported, Suffolk Artlink’s Creative Carers and Kent’s Six Ways programme.
5. In Fun Palaces’ first year 138 communities took part.  We found community-led projects seemed to generate the greatest benefit, in new and stronger relationships (social assets, community cohesion) and potential for people to meet their own need (social productivity, RSA).  These benefits appear to be more important to people than physical or financial assets and looked most likely to last.
6. Transported runs much of its programme in town centres or existing festivals.  Artists are selected for quality of engagement as much as their art. This combination of accessible process and excellent art is manifest in how Transported breaks down barriers to attract above average lower income and transient groups.  It makes the everyday exceptional.
7. We coded all of Transported’s delivery for ‘quality intent’ using simplified quality metrics. Audience events were coded Fun or Captivating, participatory events as Engrossing.  All events were also coded for Local Resonance. We then cross-tabulated with postcode analysis and outcomes.  ‘Fun’ projects attracted new and casual audiences, ‘Captivating’ projects attracted a more discerning group, and ‘Engrossing’ projects attracted from across the spectrum those who are more engaged. 
8. Different socio-economic status didn’t correlate with outcomes, rather it was the nature of the engagement that seemed to make the difference.  Engrossing (participatory) projects attracted most people who wanted something new (with Captivating projects in second place), and had the best outcomes.
9. Specifically commissioned projects didn’t necessarily have better outcomes, (though more expensive projects did), and programming an event to be Locally Resonant did not particularly attract those who wanted ‘to support local events’, nor did they create better outcomes, indicating quality as more important than locally specific work. Local projects did however attract, older and young people as opposed to families.
10. Creative encounters, in which the unexpected is encouraged rather than feared can attract some of the most isolated and vulnerable in society.  By using Dementia Care Mapping with residents in care homes before and after carers’ creative training, Make My Day saw residents engagement during activities increase by 16%, but even during ‘everyday care’ they were 7% more engaged four months later. 
11. Kent’s Six Ways programme was to persuade Public Health colleagues of the value of commissioning the arts for disadvantaged people.  (See Trusted Providers). Both provider reports and commissioner perspectives aligned about what makes the arts useful for public health:
12. Capturing attention - Using surprise, delight or unfamiliarity to jolt participants to pay attention.
13. Creating conversations and experiential learning - Projects don’t teach, they facilitate through experience, and appeal especially to young people whose experience of school is poor.
14. Celebratory social encounters embedded in communities - Young people were more likely to engage with an ‘arts’ than a ‘wellbeing’ project.  Performing arts and a shared experience especially promote pro-social behaviours. 
15. This is in line with the Behaviroural Insight Team’s guidance, that to ‘nudge’ positive behaviours opportunities should be Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely (EAST)

Personal impact

16. Cultural programmes contribute to education at its broadest, enhancing arts, social and academic skills and capabilities best summarized as wellbeing.  In place-making work we see a shift away from schools - who’s mission seems to be diverging - towards partners like housing providers. We believe hitching the cultural wagon too strongly to formal education and the work economy contributes to an over-emphasis on GDP as our measure of social good, which Teddy Kennedy said ‘measures everything except that which is worthwhile’. A thriving work economy is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
17. Increased respect for wellbeing is a huge opportunity for the arts. Our research with Happy Museum identified cultural wellbeing as Learning, Interaction, Feelings and surroundings and Environment (our LIFE research).  It has three ‘degrees’: short term feelings, longer term feelings, and functioning (participation, activism).  We are pursuing this with partners Oxford University, Social Value UK and The Audience Agency. 
18. Being engrossed in participation, or captivated as an audience can create ‘flow’, with a stronger impact than merely enjoyable experiences[9].  There is increasing evidence that wellbeing leads to better other life chances[10]. So cultural projects can help people feel better, and impact on their self-esteem and interest in new skills[11]. 
19. Happy Museum effected wellbeing especially when there was a focus on craft and making, linked to artefacts, surroundings and the outdoors.  We call this ‘stewardship’, not only of collections, but of people and planet, including the past present and future.
20. In LIFE, Feelings includes the three pro-social wellbeing questions identified by ONS allowing us to compare with population averages: happiness, life satisfaction and feeling worthwhile or able to influence (related to our ‘degrees’ above).  Because our clients tend to focus on Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) we steer clear of the fourth question about anxiety. 
21. All four of our directly comparable Transported projects improved outcomes in three areas: Learning (the artistic skill), Feelings (everyday wellbeing) and Interaction and Environment (combined as a sense of belonging which we cover below).
22. The Small Library project (in static libraries) had the best results with a very high (39%) increase in skills, and sense of belonging (25%) and happiness (27%). (We do not know that these results are all down to Transported and we account for that in the SROI analyses).  Taking pART also identified libraries as a good host for vulnerable people as they are both geographically central and non-judgmental.
23. Small Library attracted participants who were quite disadvantaged by unemployment, homelessness and disability.  In each outcome their starting point was low and so it was possible to make a bigger difference than at Elsoms where the group was already quite skilled, or Spalding, where people had high wellbeing.
24. In year 1 Fun Palaces made over 90% of groups happy and 60% judged they had learnt a lot. Having fun seemed to be more important than greater access to arts or science and was linked to learning through the freedom of experimentation.  Make My Day, described above, has a similar approach using creative encounters.
25. It is worth saying that it is not all about fun and profound wellbeing is by no means superficial.  In our consultation with children at Derby Museums, they cited war, and climate change as very important and relevant for the museum.
26. Participatory projects especially develop skills. Transported activities can be quite complicated and demanding in terms of quality.  Artworks were taken into the library for loan and were all taken out; learning and pride both enhancing participants’ sense of achievement.
27. When skills can be taken up as a hobby and pursued in a self-managed club, a small amount of ongoing support can make a big contribution to sustainability.
28. The fifth of our Transported analyses was funded by Health and used WEMWBS to gauge impact on mental health.  Participants started with wellbeing below the national average (46 points against 52), and ended with an eight point increase, above the five points considered ‘worthwhile’. Critical success factors were: open access and lack of stigma, a regular engagement, non-judgmental, central library location, achieving something every week, working on your own and together, being engrossed with a break from problems, mutual support and high quality, tangible results leading to confidence and pride. 
29. Arts at the Heart tested evidence and advocacy processes.  WEMWBS results were just positive, but it’s worth noting the commissioners relied as much on the evidence of their own eyes.

Social impact

30. Interaction and relationships are highly valued outcomes but need to be treated with caution.  In Taking pART the main reason for positive results was given as  ‘the people’.  The smaller, more cohesive of the two groups translated directly into 6% better results. 
31. Small Library participants valued a reduction in isolation and in Elsoms, and Spalding we saw better understanding of workforce roles, and better cross-generational relationships develop.   Isolation was a key challenge in place-making with Make Culture Work.
32. The dominant challenge in overcoming isolation was transport in all four of our place-based projects. In some places there is no public transport at all in the evenings or weekends so people can neither engage with nor work in the arts.  This is backed by evidence from Audience Finder which suggests distance from cultural infrastructure may be more significant for low engagement than social grade, income or other demographic factors. 
33. Nationally, there is strong evidence that wellbeing is highly correlated to good relationships; happy people tend to be more sociable and to like people better. Reducing isolation and focusing on wellbeing can enhance communal spirit; and potentially trust and empathy. The analysis in Spirit Level[12] shows the huge benefit of trust.
34. A note of warning is that when some relationships develop, others may be left out.  At Elsoms and Spalding, we heard about new ‘cliques’ and some participants feeling side-lined.
35. Another is that a shared experience can dilute individual wellbeing by reducing ‘flow’.  Research for ACE by Fujiawara found the greatest happiness and relaxation comes from participating in the arts alone[13].  A Transported artist describes that ‘group dynamics can often impact on the overall quality of participants’ experience’. 
36. Families can have important relationship outcomes. Make My Day, describes a daughter’s experience of how creativity enhanced staff relationships with her mother, to the point where ‘I got my mum back’ and some people in Taking pART had powerful family experiences.  Nearly three-quarters of Transported audiences come with families, a quarter specifically to be with family and friends. 75% agreed Transported gave opportunities for better family time, linked to activities that suited a range of ages.  Involving families can be an easy way of adding impact. 
37. But some families saw Taking pART as an opportunity for respite instead, and targeting families may be damaging where relations are bad.  We saw that impact could be more safely increased by developing an audience for the artworks and advocating for mental health.

Surroundings and Environment

38. Happy Museum highlights the importance of caring for the environment, not just for protection but for wellbeing. Kent CC is taking the environment seriously too, and we are working with them to asses cultural impact on the circular economy.  Our original work with them had this vision – “Kent has a thriving cultural sector and sense of place which make children and families happy to live and work here. In turn this lessens demand for expensive public services to support health or welfare. In turn others nationally can learn from this success”.  (As a result we produced the Arts and Cultural Commissioning Toolkit[14].) 
39. ‘Place’ is more confidently addressed by arts and culture than environment, for example through CPP and Great Places. Make Culture Work found that cultural place-making is about three things;

39a.           quality of life. CABE describe in People and Places how residents ‘are ready to see public figures taking beauty seriously’. Transported creates better public space with world-class public art, a tangible outcome generating long-term pride.

39b.          Instrumentalism. An ongoing public service impetus for multi-stakeholder teams that can be commissioned to address intractable social disadvantage is well met by culture. Collaboration has become an imperative.

39c.           Regeneration. The Warwick Commission urges a shift in place-making from the financial to the social economy. 

40. A focus on relationships and surroundings, which at Elsoms’ photography project resulted in ‘seeing through new eyes’ and ‘seeing my workplace in a different light’, was significant in team building that can affect productivity in business.  In communities it can even reduce crime and contribute to resilience[15]. 

Economic impact

41. For years economic impact has been evidence by the visitor economy and creative industries, and savings to the public purse have been largely ignored.  Yet social value for money (SVfM) can be huge.
42. The social return of Fun Palaces will far exceed the yearly investment of around £85K.  An estimate of value generated for the Makers alone is between £200,000 (value of time they were prepared to give for free) and £500,000 (‘subjective wellbeing valuation’ of relationships from a similar experience; adult learning).  This ‘upstream value’ supports resilient communities.
43. With high levels of disadvantage in Kent, we estimated the cohort might have included 175 young people with emotional needs and 170 NEET. With an average CAMHS case costing £4.5K and the cost to the state of a young person NEET £3.2K, preventing these dual needs could save £7.7K. The commissions would need to save 22 young people from needing this support to break even; or make all 655 young people 3% less likely to have these needs.
44. The return on the investment in Transported and Taking pART range from one to 0.4 to 7.0 .  Maximising value is not a mystery.  It comes from the following areas:

44a.     targeting people with high needs is easier to make a bigger difference

44b.    efficiency - where there is a fixed cost and low marginal cost, make sure all places are filled

44c.     generating long term impact by investing in ongoing, especially self managed activity and creating artworks or material culture that lives on

44d.    ‘adding stakeholders’, for example an audience for participatory project displays, or families at celebrations

44e.     focusing on empathy and relationships from team building to social capital

44f.      bearing in mind we should always allocate overheads, considering how they can be kept down

44g.     taking a 'smaller slice of a bigger pie[16]' - although allowing for attribution of others reduces the impact we can claim, by modelling impact we can see if the bigger benefit outweighs the 'sharing' of credit.  (This was very well demonstrated in our first SROI for Museum of East Anglian Life[17] which needed partnerships for participants to progress)

45. The arts can contribute to business productivity directly through on-site projects that enhance job satisfaction and team building  (See the Govt’s Farmer Review[18]).  Make My Day shows the tangible benefit of better relationships resulting in increased residents’ independence and reduced calls for contact.  This equated to £7.20 per staff hour saved, the value of this can mount up to around £13.7K for the home.  Analysis at Elsoms[19] used academic research to show that team spirit can increase turnover by 13% and profit by 2.5% - estimating an increase in profit of £24K and a multiplier in the economy of a further £8K. This could be a useful counter to the rise of AI and automation.

A fragmented sector 

46. Colleagues want to commission the arts - we’ve heard this from the head of PHE, and had this confirmed in Kent. But the sector is too fragmented for this to be practical.  The biggest challenges in the Kent pilot were the targets and timescale, both of which could be addressed by better collaboration and communication. We recommended a hub and spoke structure.

Pipeline of talent

47. One of the own goals that result from this fragmentation is how poor the sector is at career progression.  Our action research for place-making in London showed huge opportunities for cultural careers, and excellent work engaging diverse young associates, that falls down without collaboration across these small organisations.

Best departmental practice

48. Programmes that have most focused on the USP of culture, rather than generic social impact are the place-making programmes like CPP and Great Places.  The value of place-making could be better disseminated.
49. The Cultural Commissioning Programme promoted instrumental benefit.  We now need a structural focus on the fragmentation that undermines commissioning and a pipeline of talent.
50. We should address the gap in the economic story, for example savings to the public purse were not coverd in the last Arts Council’s evidence review[20].
51. Finally lack of transport is a major issue for cultural and social inclusion.  Culture and no doubt sport can only be a route to social mobility if people can get there.

Sources