I didn't join a choir to reduce crime...

"I didn't join a choir to reduce crime", those were the words a colleague told me were said at the recent LGA conference for culture, tourism and sport in relation to a discussion about the Big Society.

It's actually quite a statement, and whilst it could be taken in many ways, it does sum up a general feeling that for many the Arts are about the participation or intrinsic value, and not the outcomes or instrumental value of cultural engagement.  This is an argument that has been long discussed, and one that I feel museums have fed into well over the last decade.  Both the Generic Learning Outcomes framework and the more recent Generic Social Outcomes frameworks are excellent ways of looking at an action or output and matching it across to a desired outcome.  It was interesting that libraries were one of the first sectors to 'test' the GSO framework, and the biggest barrier to myself becoming a true advocate of it in the early days - I felt that libraries had somewhat missed the point, and merely shoehorned outcomes into predetermined pots (its the sole failure of GSOs and GLOs in my eyes, that they are possibly a little too generic and easy to manipulate if you don't use the process correctly).  However, over time I have become a true advocate of measuring outcomes to understand the social and learning values of museums and museum engagement, especially with non-service users.

However, this is a bit of background to what I am really interested in, and will likely seem as if I am about to do a u-turn on the above, but bear with me.

At the recent State of the Arts Conference I was interested in one of the provocation papers that discussed the various merits and benefits of giving equal measure to both the intrinsic and instrumental value of the arts (and culture I would assume!) to society and users - the piece was very good, and did indeed provocate for many.  I think it's fair to say that in the Arts world the intrinsic is seen as the almighty over and above all other values, and whilst the audience understood that being able to pitch yourself to a wider (slightly better funded) audience of service providers (such as the NHS and Education sectors) bounties can be found.  Again, this isn't really anything new to museums, and the concept of strategic commissioning is one that gets airtime if little application.

So what, the above basically backs up my admiration of the outcome frameworks.  Yes, it does, but these aren't the same times we are living in as 10 years ago, and despite the excellent work that has gone into establishing and raising the profile of outcomes, I very much doubt if outside the museum sector, let alone the cultural sector, much worth or value is placed on our discovery of the much loved outcomes framework. 

What is missing from the above is a further 'value' that libraries have managed to almost subconsciously grasp and turn into a weapon of mass construction - the institutional value.  The institutional value is the value that gives a bit of social kudos to a sector, building or institution, and libraries are making the most of this by the bucket load.  The now world famous twitter campaign #savelibraries went global, trending several times and bringing celebs galore out from the bookshelf woodwork, the arguments, although some talking about the other values of libraries, soon became a list of 'you can't close our library'.  this was picked up on by some museum tweeters, who soon realised that the #museumcuts hashtag was a negative line compared to a #savemuseums hastag, and this has moved through the various cultural sectors as a key call to arms across twitter and various social and print medias.

Ok, so the instrumental value of an institution is probably being overlooked, and probably at a cost to real services who are in real trouble, so what can be done about it?  Well, firstly the museum sector should again look at the worth and merit of using the inherent and almost Victorian value of the instrumental to help buy the sector some time.  Whilst the other values are as much, if not more, important , these arguments and provocations are of little value to the community who uses the museum or the community that actively supports and becomes the infantry on the front line of the war on culture cuts.  As the unnamed dissident against Big Society put it - 'I didn't join the choir to reduce crime', and fair enough, whilst he may not know the instrumental value of his actions, and there are probably many, the fact that we have somewhat failed over the last decade to get such people to understand the other values of cultural engagement probably means that in the short time we need to revert to what our supporters know us for best, our value in 'being', or value in 'existing' and our value in 'identity' for a community, society or service user.

This isn't to say we should abandon our goal of showing the important contribution culture plays to our society, but lets get better at winning the decision makers over on that one first, and use the example of libraries as an institutional fundamental to all communities as a model for our first line of defence in the war on culture cuts.