Metanarratives and the Arts Sector - A fresh way to tell stories of public value
- 20 Aug 2014
As arts practitioners, we are often asked to measure our social impact. In this first of three posts, Catherine Althaus suggests we apply our innate skills as storytellers to convince funders and the public we really do add value to people’s lives.
Stories are fundamental to human nature and part of our everyday human experience. We tell stories to each other when we recount what we did over the weekend. This is just as much an example of our connection to storytelling as when we read our latest novel or the nighttime storybook to the kids.
If storytelling is a primal instinct, what is unique about the cultural sector is its elevation of storytelling as a specific currency, one that is worthy of attention in its own right. People in the cultural sector live, breathe and work with stories all the time. They make stories through dance, art, movies, music, theatre, the written word. The aim of the cultural sector storytelling endeavour is, however, often unique. While many cultural actors create their stories to convey messages – to individuals, communities, societies – they also engage in storytelling to impart pleasure and to connect with our emotions. This logic of the heart lies at the foundation of the role of the arts. It reminds us that, as human beings, we are more than just intellectual machines.
If narrative is so central to how the cultural sector relates to its audiences and communities, why is it then that there seems to be trouble using storytelling to defend its public value to funding bodies and the general public?
If a cultural project doesn’t make money, then there is a greater onus on arts providers to justify any investment. I believe the tricky part is in finding a story that speaks to an investor that provides enough justification for them to furnish the dollars. How is this possible when investors usually come from a bottom line perspective or when they are confronting the challenging task of how to deploy scarce funding across equally important needs such as healthcare or education?
Emery Roe, in his book Narrative Policy Analysis, tells us that rather than look for areas of consensus, narrative policymaking is best used in times of clashing values. He also suggests that evaluations and questions of effectiveness within budget contexts are largely irrelevant. What is more important is to know your audience. Who is determining the criteria for funding and what is on their agenda?
In government circles, this can be done by considering electoral promises, policy statements and using internal networks within policy communities to gain intelligence. Once the agenda is broadly known, narrative policy analysis suggests moving forward by finding the usual clash points and reframing the metanarrative that is at play.
For example, in the case of the arts, a usual clashpoint in values is the perennial cuts in cultural funding in favour of healthcare or emergency service provision. What is more important, says the traditional policymaker – culture or saving lives? To reframe this metanarrative requires a paradigm shift, one where the counternarrative is strengthened in order to transform the argument.
In my example, I might suggest that cultural practitioners and organisations look for evidence that supports how culture saves lives – literally as well as metaphorically. For example, the evidence about laughter providing health benefits, the positive role played by Wish Foundation programs. This evidence should, preferably be targeted to the personal experiences of those in decision making authority. To exemplify this point, it would be helpful to know if a political figure had been involved in any healthscares themselves or with family members. Such experiences are likely to push the emotional buttons of the decision maker to, at worst, consider the proposals, and at best, to agree with them.
By using this evidence in favour of the traditional narrative that acts against cultural programs, the argument can be reframed to something different. If culture can save lives, on what basis should arts programs be compared with healthcare funding? Here, the arts protagonist needs to use their creative skills again. Empathy is a powerful tool here. Use a storyline, again, that puts you in the shoes of the policymaker. How would you decide where to allocate funding? On what grounds would you propose scarce funding be allocated if you, personally, were confronted with providing hospital beds versus funding a theatre production? For example, is there a way of creating partnership models that might help a funder to legitimately fund both functions simultaneously? Could a creative narrative collaboration be achieved that saw investment made in both theatre and hospitals where drama was used in the hospital setting to provide alternative pain management? Hospitals could explore the use of drama for health improvement and theatre practitioners could attract funding to continue their contribution to society.
If your story is convincing enough to illicit an emotional response from the decisionmaker, then chances are you are in a better position of then using traditional statistical or quantitative data to provide evidence to support your case. This process of using diverse quantitative, qualitative and personalised evidence can be called data patching. We’ll look at this issue in our next post. A third post will consider some of the ethical challenges faced in this proposed form of storytelling.
For now, good luck putting your thinking caps on searching for areas of clashing values and traditional metanarratives that you face! There may just be something in these traditional arguments that provides a leverage point to transform the debate into a new story.
Catherine is Associate Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Catherine joined the University of Victoria in 2008 and was recently appointed Associate Professor. There she teaches across the public administration, dispute resolution and community development programs. Her subject areas include policy processes, evaluation, comparative politics and governance, public and community leadership, and community change management. Prior to her time in Canada, Catherine held a number of policy posts in the Queensland Government within the Queensland Treasury department and Queensland Office of the Cabinet. She continues to act as a curriculum, economics and public policy consultant for a range of clients across Australia and Canada. Catherine’s academic training is in economics and politics and public policy and she is currently on sabbatical leave in Australia and England, acting as Visiting Fellow with the School of Politics and International Relations, Griffith University, and then Visiting Scholar with Las Casas Institute at Oxford University. Catherine recently presented at the Brisbane symposium Effecting social change: knowing what works and when to use it, hosted by the Queensland chapters of the Australasian Evaluation Society and the Australian Market and Social Research Society.
Featured image: laughter1 www.freeimages.com