MESOC Serapeum | Where culture meets AI

Id		198
Author		Crossick, G.,
Title		The Social Impact of Cultural Districts
Reference		Crossick, G. (2019). The Social Impact of Cultural Districts. Global Cultural Districts Network, United Kingdom.
Link to article		https://gcdn.net/product/the-social-impact-of-cultural-districts/
Abstract		This report, commissioned by the Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN) and written by Professor Geoffrey Crossick, is aimed to understand better the ways cultural districts generate social impacts and to explore how those social impacts are evaluated for both cultural districts and their stakeholders.The report analyses the different ways social impact is defined; draws out current good practice, highlighting gaps and challenges; and suggests a framework and principles for future action.

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Candidate transition variables
Introduction Cultural districts have become a global urban phenomenon in recent decades. .
Furthermore, many of the outcomes of targeted interventions, as well as on long-term health and wellbeing, are associated with the aesthetic and personal satisfaction that motivates people to continue engaging in the cultural forms they enjoy. .
One of the most significant contributions lies in the ability of arts and culture to help shape reflective individuals, facilitating greater understanding of themselves and their lives, empathy with respect to others, and an appreciation of the diversity of human experience and cultures. .
Audience diversity and building community strength are key objectives, as with programmes using arts as an educational medium to build creativity and support broader learning. .
Cultures role in strengthening links between people and increasing social capital is what matters in such communities rather than direct economic impact. .
Cultural districts thus have a positive role in supporting communities and several make building social capital a priority focus. .
The social impact of arts and cultural engagement is now getting more attention. .
Cultural districts as a source of civic engagement goes beyond enhancements to the public realm. .
ACTs Cultural Plan sees Providences public spaces becoming vibrant cultural commons where public art, including new media, would create opportunities for engagement. .
There is extensive evidence that arts and culture help produce engaged citizens, not only promoting pro-social civic behaviours such as voting and volunteering, but also fuelling a broader political imagination. .
6. Innovation impacts Cultural districts support the innovative social context in which ecosystems can thrive. .
The rise of new kinds of cultural experience and art forms is bound up in wider innovation, with the need for new digital technologies, facilities for co-creation, flexible accessible spaces and more open and diverse forms of participation. .
Its digital art - sonic, visual, projections - contributes to the cultural vitality of the district while bringing together arts practice and creative start-ups in innovative ways. .
A cultural district will also need to think about this ecosystem in its own strategies, including engaging with grassroots arts as part of delivering its social objectives. .
Civic engagement is also present in the platform provided for cultural associations within the communities to meet and collaborate. .
As a result, cultural districts commonly put attracting new audiences from different backgrounds at the heart of their free programming in public spaces, as is the case with the core social objective of Lugano Arte e Cultura (LAC), Quartier des Spectacles and MuseumsQuartier Vienna. .
Strengthening communities by bringing people together for shared cultural experiences is a priority for Providences political leaders, and ACTs Neighbourhood Performing Arts initiative in local parks across the city works with neighbourhood leaders to build capacity. .
It is also the foundation for the relationship of arts and culture to civic agency and engagement. .
Arts-based methods offer potential not just for more knowledge but also a different kind of knowledge. .
Indeed, cultural districts would benefit from seeing the ecosystem of diverse partnerships within which they play a key part as a potential social impact in itself. .
Cultural districts should welcome evaluation not only for stakeholders but also to help improve their own practice in delivering on their social and artistic objectives. .
It is tasked with creating a lively atmosphere through public realm improvements and cultural activities such as festivals and performance spaces that link the theatre, arts centre and symphony hall as well as housing the design studios and media start-ups that help energise the district. .
There is much to be learned by cultural districts working together, above all with those which share their particular objectives, in order to improve how they approach and seek to deliver social impacts, and the evaluation, narrative and evidence that is presented to stakeholders. .
They add to traditional evaluation tools narratives that are compelling for stakeholders and a resource for a cultural districts understanding of itself. .
Knowing the success of building communities and social capital is, however, a significant evaluation challenge not least because it is about more than just change in individuals. .
A partnership was brought together to enhance the infrastructure and range of events in a downtown district that already existed. .
The goal is to build on their existing substantial social programmes and to design and animate a more engaging public realm. .
Nonetheless, the priorities in the plan are broad and connect with much of the social impact typology above: developing community-based work in neighbourhoods, creating vibrant public spaces, enhancing civic pride and engagement, fostering inclusiveness and participation, building social capital and supporting the creative industries. .
A key imperative behind ACTs strategy is to build stronger communities and integrate neighbourhood-based culture within the wider city. .
How far has a cultural district helped enhance social capital within a community as expressed in the quality and density of community relationships, especially by bridging different groups, empowering marginalised groups, and raising the overall level of civic engagement? .
An example of the latter is the association between long-term arts engagement and improved outcomes for health and in ageing. .
Public art is one priority for this stage of Times Squares development, alongside design of the public spaces and enhancement of food and retail options, and the work of Times Square Arts is being given a high profile that they see as a model for the evolution of BIDs. .
Through high-quality site-specific installations and performances the aim is to foster conversations around urgent contemporary issues and to empower artists who may have been driven out of an area due to larger economic forces. .
The events are fundamental to the business model, with design exhibitions, art festivals and concerts attracting substantial audiences to help support the use of the buildings for creative industries production as well as rehearsal and other spaces for the performing arts. .
Whether these public realm improvements constitute significant change depends on the resources of a cultural district and the influence of funders over its strategy, but even a modestly improved public realm, such as that in which Exhibition Road Cultural Group is currently engaged, can be important for those who visit major cultural institutions. .
Here is a district that was once cultural only in a narrow commercial sense but is now seeking a great deal more with a view to using celebratory and challenging public art both to sustain the commercial success of its partners and to contribute to diversity, democratic debate and artistic empowerment. .
Here is a role for cultural districts in nurturing small-scale cultural assets to strengthen poorer neighbourhoods. .
The stated ambition is for the BID to use the arts not simply for rebranding or increasing footfall, but for its ability to support a diverse and democratic society. .
The income generated from events and retailing is a key part of the business model. .
Nurturing such assets and infrastructure might find a place in cultural districts social equity agendas. .
Here is a cultural district formed from major cultural institutions with the explicit goal of securing additional artistic, social and economic value. .
This includes what are sometimes seen as instrumental social objectives, such as health and social inclusion, but also embrace social impacts fundamentally linked to the character of cultural experience, such as reflectiveness, understanding people from other backgrounds, imagination and innovation. .
It also points out that, although many social impacts arise from a cultural districts presence in a specific location, others are those that arise from cultural engagement wherever it takes place, and the report encourages cultural districts to think about both when considering their social impact. .
Cultural districts must position themselves within discussion of the value of arts and culture, and this report seeks to broaden and nuance how they and their stakeholders think about social impacts. .
This bringing together of diverse stakeholders can itself constitute a major civic outcome of cultural districts. .
This attempt to integrate creative businesses with each other and with artistic and cultural experiences for visitors suggests potential for cultural districts better to integrate creative content and design industries within their own vision. .
Supporting liveable neighbourhoods, a key driver of these placemaking programmes, is a priority within ACTs strategy. .
There were real concerns over public safety in the Square, and ACT worked with an arts centre there to become a stronger multiarts anchor which could help build capacity for its resident local cultural organisations and for collaborative work with neighbourhood social service organisations. .
Resources of a different kind are emerging to help cultural institutions evaluate the breadth of impact achieved. .
Times Square is particularly ambitious, seeking through cultural activities not only to give coherence to an iconic public space but to create an environment where installations and performances foster conversations around urgent social issues. .
How an umbrella cultural district of this kind adds value to the social impact of its constituent institutions is of much wider relevance. .
So too is the prize of a cultural district achieving the cultural objectives and the social objectives about which it feels passionate. .
Understanding the social impact of cultural districts is fundamental both to their value and to how they think about themselves. .
Engagement with other cultures to facilitate understanding is a key part of their programming, joining with community partners for festivals on African, Asian, Caribbean, First Nation and other cultures. .
The intensity of cross-sectoral collaborations that a cultural district can provide are central to this vision for innovation. .
This kind of data is needed to establish a cultural districts association with neighbourhood change over time but requires research expertise and resources to collect and analyse. .
Consideration of this typology might help cultural districts and their stakeholders develop a more expansive approach to social impact. .
They require specialist expertise and can be expensive but, although less useful in guiding cultural institutions in their own practice, they have proved of interest to public funders in some countries. .
Partnerships with non-profit social and arts organisations facilitate social impact, not least through collaborations to attract funding. .
The educational outreach programme of the Barbican, a key member of Culture Mile, builds working relationships with young people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in east London. .
It connects artists to neighbourhood groups and catalyses partnerships to attract visitors to areas beyond the Citys central business district. .
Exhibition Road Cultural Groups annual schools event encourages young people to consider creative careers and to engage with the districts cultural and university institutions, with a particular focus on reaching schools in less prosperous areas. .
Learning focuses on developing the link between creative learning and social mobility among Londons young people, while Communities, led by the LSO and working across the project, provides arts participation opportunities for residents within the City and adjacent boroughs. .
Community groups have special access to ACMs arts programmes as do school groups to explore the performing arts. .
This includes what are seen as instrumental social objectives such as health or social inclusion, but they also embrace social impacts more fundamentally linked to cultural engagement, such as reflectiveness, understanding people from other backgrounds, community cohesiveness, imagination and innovation. .
For Arts Centre Melbourne (ACM), building a strong and cohesive community is one of its core objectives and involves community-led arts activity to develop social capital, especially through cross-cultural and intergenerational understanding. .
The political and convening strength of the cultural district could ensure that the delicate ecosystem for creative, technological and social innovation thrived, including its capacity to accelerate creative collision between sectors. .
It can go beyond cosmetic improvements and reshape the public realm for new ways of living in the urban space, sometimes explicitly using culture to shape democratic civic engagement. .
Clarifying and extending social impact objectives might also broaden the business model, attracting other sources of public and philanthropic funding, and new third-sector investment. .
This could extend to sharing ways of working with communities and partners to deliver social programmes. .
The creation of the kind of atmosphere appreciated by regular cultural visitors may, of course, deter those whom social equity programmes seek to attract. .

ARTICLE - CANDIDATE TRANSITION VARIABLES

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