What Matters?

Toooften, cultural leaders and policy makers want to chase the perfect metric foractivities whose real worth lies in our own personal experience. The majorproblem facing Australian culture today is demonstrating its value - togovernments, the business sector, and the public in general.

When didculture become a number? When did the books, paintings, poems, plays, songs,films, games, art installations, clothes, and the objects that fill our dailylives become a matter of...
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Toooften, cultural leaders and policy makers want to chase the perfect metric foractivities whose real worth lies in our own personal experience. The majorproblem facing Australian culture today is demonstrating its value - togovernments, the business sector, and the public in general.

When didculture become a number? When did the books, paintings, poems, plays, songs,films, games, art installations, clothes, and the objects that fill our dailylives become a matter of statistical measurement? When did experience becomedata?

Thisbook intervenes in an important debate about the public value of culture thathas become stranded between the hard heads (where the arts are just anotherindustry) and the soft hearts (for whom they are too precious to beardispassionate analysis).

Itargues that our concept of value has been distorted and dismembered bypolitical forces and methodological confusions, and this has a dire effect onthe way we assess culture.  Proceedingvia concrete examples, it explores the major tensions in contemporaryevaluation strategies, and puts forward practical solutions to the currentmetric madness. 

Thetime is ripe to find a better way to value our culture - by finding a betterway to talk about it.