What kind of ancestor do you want to be?

When asked what I do, I find myself juggling many labels. Apart from being advisory group chair for the Centre for Cultural Value (the Centre) and chair of Mental Health First Aid England, I’m also a keynote speaker and futurist, interested in technology’s impact on our sense of identity, culture, processes and systems. And I'm an artist specialising in immersive mixed-media art. 

Yet, there is a common thread running through them all. I help people to see the world differently by asking: What type of ancestor do you want to be? 

It appears to be a simple question. Yet it is multifaceted and existential. It makes us consider our values, tools and technologies, behaviours, identity, heritage and ecological impact and how, as leaders, we can find creative ways to bring those values to life.

Responding to challenges

So, how will future generations judge our response to current global challenges?

For the creative and cultural sector, how we respond to technological developments, for example, has far-reaching consequences for social justice. Say, for instance, we move theatre performances into the metaverse. There’s the potential to create something new and extraordinary, with a global reach we could never achieve in the offline world. 

However, as the Centre’s Covid-19 research showed, moving online will not necessarily diversify audiences and comes with the risk of excluding people who cannot access the technology for personal and structural reasons. What’s more, it’s important to consider whether such a shift will have a detrimental impact on cultural practitioners' livelihoods or the change we originally set out to create.

We can help shift perceptions of growth away from valuing doing more towards valuing doing better.

Similarly, how will we rise to the challenge of the climate emergency? I often see an instinct in the tech sector to innovate its way out of a crisis. This comes with the risk of mitigating destructive behaviour without taking responsibility or tackling the root of the problem. 

The cultural sector, though, has potential to use its skills to help people recognise the broader implications of environmental destruction. We can tell stories that motivate people and affect their choices and behaviours. We can foreground the experiences and narratives of climate refugees and the environmental knowledge of diverse communities. 

We can also look afresh at challenges with creativity and empathy and model environmentally responsible practices. Through this, we can help shift perceptions of growth away from valuing doing more towards valuing doing better.

Space for reflection

Faced with multiple challenges and with societal and technological developments happening at pace, how do we find the necessary space and time for reflection? And how do we draw on both robust data and lived experiences to co-create a people-centred response, which keeps our values in mind? 

This is especially difficult to navigate considering the constraints of tight budgets and the sector often being squeezed from many sides, working intensively on a project-based mode of delivery. 

As we plan for the future, the Centre can play a vital role in providing room for robust, many-voiced deliberation and discussion. It is already playing a vital role in advocating for a more equitable and regenerative sector. 

The Centre is uniquely placed to provide an independent space to bring together people from diverse backgrounds and sectors, including academics, cultural practitioners, funders and policymakers. This provides the opportunity to collaborate on these big, important questions and find a path to a positive legacy.

Practice underpinned by principles

In this work, we must also consider current definitions and measures of success. Where do we place emphasis and value when evaluating our work, examining not just what we do but how we achieve it? And does this meet our intentions to become good ancestors? 

The past few years have caused the cultural sector to question what we once considered ‘normal practice’. As recent research co-authored by Centre Director Ben Walmsley has explored, there is increasing discomfort and recognition of how systems of power have emerged that have enabled abusive leadership to prevail.

Further to this, with the experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic having left leaders and teams with a level of fragility – and where the Centre’s research highlighted ingrained inequality in the sector – how can we redefine our measurements of success and include different lived experiences and different ways of being? 

Adah Parris is Chair of the Centre for Cultural Value’s advisory group. 
 www.culturalvalue.org.uk | www.adahparris.com/ 
@valuingculture  

Interested in evaluation and how it can provide rich learning and insight into your work? In September 2023, the Centre of Cultural Value will launch a new free-to-access, online course - Evaluation for arts, culture and heritage: principles and practice. Be first to hear more by signing up to our newsletter.  

This article, sponsored and contributed by the Centre for Cultural Value, is part of a series supporting an evidence-based approach to examining the impacts of arts, culture and heritage on people and society.