Transcending Measurement: Creative Impact as “Currency” for Social Change

This working paper presents findings on the transferability, suitability, and applicability of existing approaches for measuring and evaluating creative impact. It synthesises data emerging from: two interviews with UK-based informants working with notable commissioners, communities, campaigners and social entrepreneurs; three interviews with Fellows from CIRCE’s Fellowship Programme “Creative Impact in Practice”; a rigorous survey completed by all ten Fellows covering the impact of their particular projects as well as their understanding of evidence, measurement, outcomes and creative impact more generally; and ten project reports completed by Fellows.

Drawing from transdisciplinary grey and academic literature, it reflects on what lens or potential methodologies and frameworks CIRCE should use as a foundation for the practical testing and implementation of creative impact in upcoming formats. After reflecting on how creative impact can overcome noise in the measurement market, the working paper poses an age-old question: why are we measuring? It anchors creative impact evaluation in solid, consistent values and principles, and reflects on evaluation approaches that value freedom and flexibility over conformity and rigidity in measurement.

The paper presents a united creative impact measurement that is both “bounded” and visionary, taking a deep dive into one Fellowship project, Körperkino: Embodied Cinema as the future of Storytelling, proposing experiential collaborative storytelling as a vector for change. “Bounded” refers to each CIRCE Fellowship project being “measured” through a bespoke evaluation strategy appropriate to the sector it is positioned in, with its own set of guidelines and approaches compatible to the topic being explored. “Visionary”, on the other hand, refers to CIRCE itself becoming a pioneering thought leader by advocating a vision of transcendence for creative impact measurement reflecting new conceptualisations of time and currency; reality and knowledge; and vulnerability and ethics.

Creative impact – and all the experiential and embodied knowledge it produces – emerges as “currency” for social change. This is not about reducing creative impact projects to transactional exchanges that only have financial value and are extractive. On the contrary, it’s about building solid relationships with beneficiaries and stakeholders, who share similar values and principles and believe that the “currency of relating is trust”.¹

1. Tamber, P.S. (2019). The Politics of Measurement. Available here: https://www.pstamber.com/the-politics-of-measurement/ ↩︎