Lara Chapman - Measuring what matters

Measuring what matters

"Why do we exist? What is our purpose and mission? Who do we want to attract? What are their unmet needs? How do we know when we’ve achieved our goals? And, what does success look like for us?” 

These are some of the questions that Debbie Spence, Director of audience insight consultancy Morris Hargreaves McIntyre (MHM), says that museums, arts organisations and institutions must ask themselves if they truly want to have an impact. If these sound a little like the kind of soul-searching questions a therapist or psychologist might ask you, this is no coincidence. Spence has a background in psychology and uses this to help cultural organisations truly understand their goals and audiences and then understand how to measure these meaningfully. You cannot measure impact, she argues, if you do not know what impact you are trying to achieve and for whom. 

Too often, she reflects, organisations are stuck in patterns of measuring “surface level metrics” that are tangible and easy to measure – things like footfall, ticket sales, income generation or the postcodes of visitors. These metrics are used for funding applications, to attract donors or for the internal teams to make tricky decisions on programming and marketing strategies. While these numbers can have value when used in certain contexts, Spence believes a different approach can have a more valuable and wide-reaching impact. Instead of measuring numbers, she calls for a bigger focus on qualitative data about the socially positive potential of museums. 

Rather than asking: how many people came to that exhibition? Museums should ask questions such as: How many audience members visited a museum for the first time because of this exhibition? How did it make them feel? Did it decrease feelings of loneliness? Or increase a sense of civic pride or place? How did it help foster a sense of community and identity? Ultimately, Spence says, cultural organisations should ask themselves: “What's the change we've contributed to?” 

Measuring these less tangible and number-driven impacts, however, is a challenge. How do you even begin gathering this kind of data? Spence says that this is the “big, big question...” When measuring something the impact a cultural institution has on an issue like loneliness, for example, Spence says it “requires the coming together of many organisations and agencies including local government departments, community leaders at the social policy and national level, and the different departments within institutions from the curatorial team, to the marketing team to the learning or audience teams. MHM, for example, has spent 15 years working with Creative Victoria in Australia and other stakeholders to understand how audiences feel when they engage with culture. 

This collaborative approach is not just important for measuring impact, it also helps “reframe cultural organisations’ role in society” says Spence. “We don’t just use this research to report on organisations, but also to reframe them.” This is particularly important in a world “where organisations are becoming increasingly siloed,” says Spence and are chronically underfunded. 

Thankfully, there is now a growing movement of cultural organisations that are reassessing their current impact, their future impact and how they can define and measure it better. In turn, this means they can communicate their impact and their broader social value better.

The Rijksmuseum, for instance, created a tool in 2022 called the Impact Monitor, which aims to help the museum “articulate its value to society beyond numbers and reach”, focusing on the effect on broader socioeconomic issues including sustainability, education and inclusion. The tool was initially designed as a reporting tool, but the team soon saw its potential to be used as a strategic compass that could help to shape the museum’s ambitions for the future. 

The monitor also “attempts to quantify impact, and replan to re-optimise this approach on an annual basis through critical examination of our objectives and the development of our research methods”, reads the monitor’s introductory webpage. This points to a main challenge for measuring impact: long-term commitment and a trial-and-error iterative approach. This lengthy process requires genuine engagement from museums and their partners – if it is worth measuring, it is worth measuring well. However, before we even begin to measure, we must figure out what we are measuring and why it matters.

To do so, Spence advocates for knowledge and tool sharing across the industry. “The more we come together as a sector and share thoughts, the better. Change isn't something that we're going to be able to achieve in isolation,” she says.

This year’s Communicating the Arts Conference, held at the Rijksmuseum from June 17-19, is one place where leaders in the cultural sector and emerging practitioners can come together to share ideas, foster collaborations and, ultimately, make an impact.

Lara Chapman