9th ENCATC Working Group on Evaluation
Lucca, ItalyAbout this meeting
This workshop "Temporary Organizing and Evaluation in the Arts and Culture Field" was organised in the frame of the ENCATC Working Group on Evaluation . Held on 30-31 October in Lucca, Italy alongside the 2019 Lucca Comics & Games, the workshop focused on temporary organizing in the arts and culture field and to discuss the implications of the field’s specific characteristics for evaluation.
These characteristics, such as the public good nature, aesthetic
experience and the market failure, require a different theoretical and
practical perspective than the established concepts within the Management and
Organization Studies literature and pose distinct evaluation challenges both
for academicians and practitioners. The previous studies focus on short-term
impacts and tangible outcomes in most instances, which is understandable due to
higher methodological challenges regarding evaluation of socio-cultural
impacts. However, it also entails a risk of reducing the value and meaning of
cultural projects to material benefits[1].
That is why, evaluation studies should meticulously consider and try to reflect
that the main contributions of temporary organizing practices in the arts and
culture field, such as transnational cultural projects, festivals, exhibitions
and biennials, go much beyond the material benefits[2].
In other words, it is necessary to adequately understand and connect the
meanings of artistic and cultural projects from multiple perspectives in order
to develop an appropriate evaluation scheme and to rigorously analyse whether
the project has delivered planned results, expected benefits and desired
changes.
To this end, this workshop at IMT Lucca contributed to on-going discussions by bringing academicians, experts and practitioners together for building an integrated, interdisciplinary evaluation approach considering the particular characteristics of the arts and culture field. The which included keynote speeches and round table discussions, built on the progress achieved by the ENCATC Working Group on Evaluation in the previous meetings in Brussels, Potsdam, Manchester, Antwerp, Maastricht, and Zagreb. Furthermore, the group worked to complement theoretical and methodological discussions with real world case studies.
[1] Frey, B. S. (1994). The economics of music festivals. Journal of Cultural Economics, 18(1), 29–39.
[2] Tonga Uriarte, Y., Antognozzi, T., Catoni, M.L., (2019). Investigating tourism impacts of festivals: An exploratory case study of a big scale comic-con. Event Management, 23, doi.org/10.3727/152599519X15506259855823.
This event is an initiative of ENCATC, in partnership with the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, with local contributions of Lucca Crea, and with the support of the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
Background
The ENCATC Working Group was created to share evaluation experiences of transnational cultural projects and networks subsidized by EU and improve methodologies as well as to identify rigorous indicators for successful cooperation and share them with EU and international organisations.
Evaluation has become a more and more crucial matter for public authorities and professionals in cultural field. Several ENCATC members are involved in the evaluation of European projects subsidized by Creative Europe, Erasmus+, Horizon 2020 or other transnational programmes of European Commission. They have to develop methodologies to help arts and cultural managers to implement the evaluation process. At the same time, several European networks are looking for best practices on evaluation and monitoring. Upon several occasions they have expressed the need to create a space for exchange and mutual learning. The European Commission is also working on finalising its own evaluation policy for the Creative Europe programme. The feedback from the beneficiaries and cultural experts is very important for the finalisation and validation the EC’s work. All of these factors are contributing reasons for the need of a working group on the evaluation of international and European transnational projects.
On 25 October 2016 in Brussels, ENCATC held the kick-off meeting for its Working Group “Evaluation of International and European Transnational Cultural Projects”. Participants included representatives from the European Commission, national institutions, universities, European networks, cultural institutions, and consultancies from seven countries. The Working Group is led by its chair, Pascale Bonniel Chalier, a member of ENCATC from the University Lyon II in France.
In 2017, ENCATC organised two more meetings:
In 2018, ENCATC organised meetings on:
- 27 April 2018 in Manchester, United Kingdom
- 19 June 2018 in Potsdam, Germany
- 13 November 2018 in Antwerp, Belgium
In 2019, ENCATC organised meetings on:
- Partnership
