At Stanford Social Innovation Review, Ian David Moss has a thoughtful blog post on whether there is coherence in the notion of separating intrinsic and instrumental benefits from the arts. He writes:
One problem with the intrinsic vs. instrumental distinction is that it’s something of a false dichotomy: Interrogate a dedicated arts supporter about why she believes funding is important, and you’ll eventually uncover reasons that are not specific to the arts. The arts teach us how to see and understand the world? So do history books. The arts provide a space for exercising creative potential? So does electrical engineering. One could reasonably argue that all the benefits of the arts are instrumental at some level, in service of some larger goal. But what is that goal, exactly? When we try to maximize the good in the world, what does that actually mean in practice?
I’ll come back to this, but I worry that here at the outset Moss is begging the question: “all benefits are in service of a larger goal, and so it doesn’t make sense to divide the benefits into intrinsic and instrumental.” He continues:
A loose community of scholars has been trying to answer precisely that question for the past 70 years or so. Drawing from fields as diverse as economics, public health, psychology, and philosophy, and variously using the terms “wellbeing, “quality of life” and other variants, this area of inquiry developed in large part as an effort to provide holistic alternatives for conceptualizing and measuring human progress and vitality, in contrast to narrow, siloed metrics such as gross domestic product (GDP). For a field so young and diffuse, it has nevertheless had some notable impacts on social policy. The nation of Bhutan was one of the first government entities to explicitly reject GDP, adopting the novel concept of gross national happiness in its wake. Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen created the United Nations Human Development Index in accordance with his theory of human capabilities—the notion that what makes life worth living is the freedom to be the person you want to be. Other attempts to construct integrated measures of social progress include the Sustainable Development Goals, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, the OECD Better Life Index, and the quality-adjusted life year indicator. The UK government has gone especially far in adopting “subjective wellbeing,” which is basically equivalent to self-reported happiness, in its own policy apparatus. Meanwhile, the burgeoning effective altruism movement has made efforts to institutionalize the practice of “cause prioritization” based on clear-headed analysis of how to do the most good.
Even though the various examples above represent a lot of variation, they are variations on a singular theme: What is most important in this world? They all attempt to answer that question from a holistic perspective, and share a willingness to make a connection between measurable, real-world outcomes and philosophical ideals.
He is correct to say these approaches are variations on a singular theme. But, that theme is to look to the arts (or sport, or community centres, or whatever) as means to a measurable, quantifiable ends. As soon as we have a felt need to measure the “impact” of anything, we have moved into the world of instrumental benefits, whether it be urban development, “economic impact”, or “subjective wellbeing”. Moss:
Like the dialogue about defining specific wellbeing and quality-of-life metrics, the research literature establishing the arts’ contribution to wellbeing is very much in active development. But already, we know for example that participatory arts activities provide myriad benefits to older adults, improving subjective wellbeing along with more concrete capabilities such as motor skills, cognition, and reduced dementia risk. As other benefits become well-established through better research, the role that the arts have to play in enabling a better world will become clearer to all.
And if we cannot find any impacts, if attending music recitals doesn’t lead to your giving higher reported subjective wellbeing, what then? If we accept the need to report on quantitative outcomes from the arts, then we are locked into a particular vision of art and how we respond to it. Moss’s article has an optimistic tone. I think he is making an important point, but not necessarily the one he intends.
Exactly.
Also–
First, I hesitate to agree with Moss that “we know … that participatory arts activities [over other types of activities] provide myriad benefits to older adults.” Compare this literature to the one that illustrates that a college degree leads to higher wages and you’ll see it’s far from conclusive. Second, even if we do know the arts provide these and other benefits, is it fair to design policy that provide the arts with more support when we know that the arts are disproportionately enjoyed by populations with higher income and education levels? His post ignores the adverse impacts of funding the arts, which policy makers against arts funding are as much (or more) concerned about than whether the arts provide us with any benefits.
The value of art is art, even if it has many other intangible benefits.
All the same, perhaps one could do a study of important political leaders throughout history and correlate their actions with how cultured they were. Stalin and Hitler were not very cultured. Their crude sensibilities were directly reflected in their politics. The world would have been a better place if they had listened to the many cultured people around them. It seems that culture contributes to wisdom.
Genghis Khan created the largest empire in human history, but without culture and the arts, there is very little by which it is remembered. It was a brutal, stupid, artless empire that vanished into nothingness.
George Bush’s witless paintings look like something from a Special Ed class, and so did his political work. I would like to say the Medici’s were better, but they were ruthless gangsters even if they created one of the greatest cultural flowerings in the history of humanity.
But on balance, I think one might find that political leaders under which the arts flourished, were as a whole better leaders. Athens under Pericles, Elizabethan England, Austria under the Esterházy’s, and so on.
And from an even more practical standpoint, without government patronage we would probably not have had Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Wolfgang Mozart, Joseph Hayden, and countless others. The value of art is art, even if it seems to do many other things as well. We should not be too literal or pat when trying to define something so intangible as art and culture.
I always appreciate your sharp eye on my work, Michael, but in this case I think you have it wrong.
Instrumentality and measurability are distinct concepts, and one does not necessarily imply the other. Instrumentality just means, as you put it, that “benefits are in service of a larger goal.” An intrinsic benefit is one that needs no further justification. If we decided that, say, high-quality art was its own justification, that would not make it any more or less measurable or quantifiable — indeed, there are lots of ways we could try to measure quality of art, and one could argue we already do this through the likes of juried competitions, etc. Similarly, if we decided that the only worthwhile justification for art was the extent to which it contributes to the elevation of our souls in the eyes of God, that is an instrumental outcome that would be very challenging to measure indeed. They are separate concepts.
Indeed, your interpretation disguises the fundamental point I’m making in the article. Createquity’s preferred definition of wellbeing at the moment is Martha Nussbaum’s take on the capability approach originally developed by Amartya Sen, which is one of the least quantified definitions of wellbeing out there. I would hate to be associated with a simplistic argument that the arts need to be associated with measurable outcomes just because they are measurable. I do believe that it’s worthwhile to try to measure the outcomes we think are important, so I can understand how that position can be confused with the one in the previous sentence. But it’s very important not to confuse the cart with the horse here. We should decide why we care about the arts first, and then seek to measure afterwards.
There are questions threading through this discussion that reasonable people can disagree on:
– Is the act of creating art is its own justification, as William claims?
– Is the strength of the evidence underlying claims of benefit of participatory arts for older adults compelling, as Joanna disputes? (Joanna, I’d love to hear more from you on this — we welcome critiques of the evidence discussed here and in our most recent article: http://createquity.com/2016/12/everything-we-know-about-whether-and-how-the-arts-improve-lives/.)
– Is the awarding of grants to nonprofit arts organizations a good use of philanthropic dollars, on the whole, as Joanna and Michael question?
But let’s be clear: these threads are all entirely separate from each other, and from the question of how measurable and quantifiable various benefits of the arts might or might not be. Sure, the answer to the first might affect your answer to the third, but that doesn’t change the fact that you need to approach the questions separately.
Thanks Ian, for your reply – this is an important discussion that you, and your colleagues at Createquity have launched.
I’m not quite persuaded by your statement that instrumentality and measurement are separate issues. Conceptually, perhaps. But look at the examples you choose of new ways to think about the benefits of the arts – they are quantitative+instrumental. Even Stern and Seifert (whose work I admire tremendously), whose work is based in the capabilities approach, still turn to indices of well-being that they see as following in the capabilities framework of a good life. In the UK right now, it’s all about the arts and different measures of well-being. These measures might be good, or misdirected, but measures they are, and they are attuned to a new *instrumental* benefit of the arts. We might think subjectively reported well-being is the very best instrumental goal, but it’s still using the arts as a means to something else.
Where’s the harm? I see a few ways this could turn sour. Improved data and metrics showing that some arts presentations or programs increase reported subjective well-being and some don’t. What would be the practical implication? And, inevitably, the response from arts councils and presenters themselves: how do we get the best numbers on these new, improved metrics?
So, I see your point in theory: measurability and instrumentality are separate concepts. I don’t see how in practice that will be maintained. And arts organizations and their funders will be directed: “do things that improve these new, improved, reported metrics.”
So my hesitancy about this approach remains.
It seems like the anxiety you’re expressing here is just about overspecifying to a metric, which I agree is a valid concern when we don’t know exactly what the right metric is (and I say explicitly in my piece that we aren’t there yet when it comes to wellbeing, subjective or otherwise). A very overzealous treatment of the ideas in my piece would be to have arts councils and funders pick self-reported happiness or life satisfaction as the metric to beat, require all grantees to track the effect of their programs on life satisfaction, and bully organizations into dropping programming strategies that score poorly on the metric. That would be a nightmare for arts administrators and artists, and it’s debatable whether it would actually be good for audiences. It’s not what I’m advocating. (Not least because the life satisfaction of artists and arts administrators matters too!)
Nevertheless, I would make two points about metrics:
1. If working with metrics inherently carries some risk of overspecification in practice, it would cause a lot less harm and create fewer bad incentives to overspecify to life satisfaction than, say, “economic impact.” That is to say, life satisfaction may not be exactly the best metric to optimize arts funding towards….but isn’t it closer than a lot of other things?
2. The alternative to working with metrics is not to work with metrics. You haven’t made any case yet for why this alternative is better in practice when it comes to arts funding. When I look at arts funding, I see a whole lot of money going to expensive buildings in big cities that are crippling their parent organizations, money driven by personal relationships and vanity goals, and money propping up organizations that ceased to be relevant long ago. In short, I see a lot of waste. Having grantees take subjective wellbeing too seriously as a success metric would create waste too, sure–but do you seriously believe the amount of waste would be greater than what we’re seeing now?
Are ‘subjective well-being’ measures better than ‘economic impact’ or overbuilt vanity projects? Sure. But neither ‘economic impact’ (yes, I’m always going to write it in irony quotes) nor unnecessary construction projects needed any new sets of metrics to expose their flaws – a bit of training in cost-benefit analysis is all that’s needed to shoot down both those (quite entwined) bad ideas.
But I’m still not ready to leave my initial point: ‘new, improved’ metrics are about art as a means to an end. That will end up influencing how organisations do their work, as they adjust to the new new thing. And I think we should ask whether this felt need for metrics has done, or will do, our cultural lives any good.
To clarify, I think the creation of art is perhaps its own justification, but that there are many other justifications for art as well. Justifications of art become an impossibly complex Gestalt impossible to fully define. Intangibility will always be one of the central characteristic of art. It will thus always confound concepts such as instrumentality and measurability, even if those concepts help us better understand art and its place in society. We just have to remember there’s a big gap between theory and reality — a perennial problem in the juju of social science. That’s also why the social sciences are so interesting.
Let’s be clear, we don’t really have “arts funding” in this country. For the most part we don’t fund Art or Artists; we fund arts organizations. We fund arts administrators, arts buildings, arts advocates, and all the people it takes to keep these organizations perpetuated including those who measure the metrics.
Taken as a whole only a small faction of all the federal, state, philanthropic, and private money that is funneled into the “arts” ends up in the pockets of our cultural producers-the artists and performers. In my home state of Michigan the Pew Cultural Data project showed in 2014 over $500 million dollars passed through all the organizations and institutions in the state and of that less that $50 million went into “programing” and of that amount we have no idea what actually went to fund artists.
I counted all of the individual shots in the recent NEA promotional video. There were 9 of children or students making art, 9 of musicians playing, 4 crafts people working, 11 theatrical performances, 1 writer and 1 poet speaking, 6 famous celebrities, 6 arts administrators, 2 or 3 art historical shots, 3 large outdoor public art events of a unknown variety, 4 flashes of some public art installations, 1 spray paint busker selling on the sidewalk, and a whopping 23+ shots of individuals and groups of people dancing, but not a single example of a adult visual artist working in their studio of having an exhibition. Not a single one; because the NEA doesn’t directly fund the visual arts. It will directly give money to an organization or institution but it doesn’t fund “the arts”.
https://www.arts.gov/video/nea-serving-our-nation-through-arts
So it seems to me before we argue over what is the intrinsic value of art (something philosophers and artists have known for centuries) we should at least have a better understanding of what is being funded. Because it sure isn’t “the arts”.