4. Capturing, Interpreting, and Evaluating Cultural Value

This chapter provides a critical summary of the existing debates about cultural value and critically explores the diverse and contested notions of value that are relevant to the performing arts. It achieves this by interrogating a series of core questions: What do we know about cultural value and what is the purpose of asking questions about it? Who wants to know what about cultural value? Why and how do they want to know? In what sense are experiences of the performing arts significant to audiences? What are the most effective ways to evaluate these experiences? What are the implications of this for arts organisations and for cultural policy? In response to these questions, the chapter contends that only interdisciplinary and multi-perspectival approaches will ever be nuanced enough to capture the multidimensional value of audiences’ experiences.