Indicators of cultural vitality: Hope not harm

Culture is increasingly called upon to serve multiple roles, including as a driver of regeneration, a tool for public health and a means of addressing isolation, inequality and disconnection. We are grappling with the climate crisis, growing inequalities, political polarisation and persistent challenges in health, education and economic growth.

Yet, practitioners and cultural policymakers often work with incomplete, inadequate and inaccessible data that doesn’t reflect the diversity of cultural activities in a place. This makes it hard to prioritise investment, track outcomes or make the case for long-term cultural support.

That is why at the Centre for Cultural Value (the Centre), we are asking how we can make capturing the breadth of cultural activities across communities easier and more holistic.

What are we grappling with?

The cultural vitality of a place is demonstrated by the depth, relevance and connectivity of its cultural life, from the highly visible – such as festivals and performances – to informal, everyday expressions of creativity in green spaces and the home. It fosters pride of place, a sense of belonging and the social fabric woven by bringing people together in shared spaces and through collective cultural experiences.

With funding from Research England, the Centre, along with research partner The Audience Agency, has been conducting scoping research focusing on how practitioners and policymakers set criteria and capture evidence of cultural vitality in their communities.

More than metrics

Traditional measures of a place’s cultural offerings often overemphasise ‘high culture’ and are weighted towards formal provision and economic return. While these are part of the picture, they fail to capture the full ecosystem of cultural life, specifically, how organisations and institutions operate alongside and in relation to informal, hyperlocal and community-driven activities.

We need an approach for measuring how cultural vitality functions as an ecosystem, rather than in silos, capturing interactions between formal institutions, community spaces, policy contexts, infrastructure and everyday creativity.

At the Centre, we see a pressing need to provide a more nuanced, context-sensitive and practical framework designed not only to measure outputs but to surface these deeper insights. Our work towards a blueprint for a National Cultural Data Observatory echoes recognition of this often-treacherous terrain.

Capturing the unseen

We want to support those shaping cultural policy – including communities, practitioners, researchers and policymakers – to understand the cultural vitality of places, what contributes to it, and how the often-unseen and unevaluated dimensions of cultural impact are crucial to building resilient, inclusive and thriving communities. To assess the cultural vitality of a place, we need a broad range of indicators beyond quantitative metrics, capturing the full spectrum of cultural life.

That is why the Centre is developing the  Cultural Indicator Suite project, exploring a framework for everyone from grassroots organisations to cultural policymakers to develop a broad and holistic understanding of how cultural activities interact with different aspects of daily life and contribute to wider public value.

The Cultural Indicator Suite project will deepen our understanding of how different forms of culture are experienced and valued in the range of contexts that are most meaningful to communities, as well as help identify the gaps in access, infrastructure and funding.

Evidence for a deeper understanding

In collaboration with The Audience Agency, the Centre has been consulting with local and regional authorities, cultural practitioners and adjacent organisations across the UK to review existing local, regional and national approaches, as well as current data collection methods.

Their responses, along with a review of recent research and literature, are informing our understanding of the key indicators used to assess and support cultural vitality. More about the methodology and findings to date can be found in this interim report

What’s emerging is a clearer picture of what cultural vitality looks like on the ground. Those consulted have emphasised broader definitions of culture, which include sports, food, green spaces and informal gatherings, as critical to local identity and wellbeing. Others have highlighted how culture intersects with health, youth development and civic engagement. These insights are helping to shape our understanding of the indicators and measures that reflect both the diversity and the specificity of local cultural life.

A resource, not a burden

Critically, the Cultural Indicator Suite project is not about creating more work for already stretched cultural teams and freelance producers. Nor is it to implement a rigid tool for benchmarking or comparing places.

Rather, its aim is to build a flexible and practical resource designed to sit alongside existing strategies and priorities. We’re particularly interested in exploring ways the indicators can help address persistent place-based inequalities, especially in rural, coastal and post-industrial areas. We would like to hear from those interested in helping to shape the future stages of this work.

You can find out more about the project to date, read the interim report and discover more about the next stages here.

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