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“What is to be Done?”:
Cultural Leadership and Public Engagement
in Art and Design Education
“What is to be Done?”:
Cultural Leadership and Public Engagement
in Art and Design Education

Edited by

Steve Swindells and Anna Powell


“What is to be Done?”:
Cultural Leadership and Public Engagement in Art and Design Education,
Edited by Steve Swindells and Anna Powell

This book first published 2014

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data


A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2014 by Steve Swindells, Anna Powell and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-5890-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5890-8


TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix

Part One: Defining the Landscape: Public Engagement in Context

Introduction to Part One .............................................................................. 3


I Say Aesthetic = Human Being
Steve Swindells and Anna Powell

Chapter One ............................................................................................... 19


Creating #havoc: A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture
Claire Donovan

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 29


The Renaissance of University Galleries?
Sarah Shalgosky and Stephanie James

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 37


Public Engagement, Impact, and the 21st Century University:
A Guide for the Bewildered
Paul Manners

Part Two: Dialogues Present and Past................................................... 51

Part Three: Mapping the Landscape: Application, Measurement,


Articulation

Introduction to Part Three.......................................................................... 63


Measuring the Immeasurable?
Steve Swindells and Anna Powell
vi Table of Contents

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 73


Post-REF: Collecting Evidence from Public Engagement.
Necessity with Unforeseen Consequences?
Rosa Scoble

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 81


Bridging the Divide: Articulating the Value of Creativity to Politicos
Jocelyn Bailey

Where Are We Now? ................................................................................ 89


Steve Swindells and Anna Powell

Editors ....................................................................................................... 95

Contributors ............................................................................................... 97
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Paul Manners: clusters of questions and theoretical framings into


researcher/community interactions.
2. Image from the ICA Symposium, Public Engagement and Impact,
Articulating Value in Art and Design, 2013. Placards showing event
Twitter ‘hashtag’ used for collecting at-event feedback.
3. Image from the ICA Symposium, Public Engagement and Impact,
Articulating Value in Art and Design, 2013. Panel discussion. From
left to right – Ailbhe MacNabola (Design Council), Rosa Scoble
(Brunel University), Helen Phebey (Yorkshire Sculpture Park),
Stephanie James (Arts University Bournemouth) and Sarah Shalgosky
(curator, Mead Gallery, University of Warwick).
4. Image from the ICA Symposium, Public Engagement and Impact,
Articulating Value in Art and Design, 2013. Panel discussion. From
left to right - Sarah Shalgosky (curator, Mead Gallery, University of
Warwick), Paul Manners (Director NCCPE).
5. Image from the ICA Symposium, Public Engagement and Impact,
Articulating Value in Art and Design, 2013. Plenary discussion,
creating mind-maps around key words (‘impact’, ‘public engagement’,
‘value’).
6. Bob and Roberta Smith performative presentation at the ICA
symposium Public Engagement and Impact, Articulating Value in Art
and Design.
7. Bob and Roberta Smith, sketch featuring the words “Art Makes
People Powerful”, created during presentation at the ICA symposium
Public Engagement and Impact, Articulating Value in Art and Design.
8. University College London, example of an Evaluation Toolkit.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to offer our sincere thanks and appreciation to the


following people and organisations: Huddersfield Art Gallery and Kirklees
Council Cultural and Leisure Services, including Ruth Gamble, Richard
Butterfield, Grant Scanlon, Andrew Charlesworth and Kimyo Rickett;
ICA, London, including Sumitra Upham and Karen Turner; colleagues
from the University of Huddersfield, School of Art, Design and
Architecture contributing to the ROTOR programme, including Dr
Catriona McAra and Stephen Calcutt; and finally a special thank you to all
who took part in the ICA symposium (May 2013), including the
contributors to this publication.
PART ONE:

DEFINING THE LANDSCAPE:


PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT IN CONTEXT
INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

I SAY AESTHETICS = HUMAN BEING

STEVE SWINDELLS AND ANNA POWELL

“I say aesthetics = human being”.


—Joseph Beuys, 1973.1

While serving a life sentence for murder in a Scottish jail, the artist
Jimmy Boyle viewed photographs of Joseph Beuys’ performance with a
coyote, entitled “I like America and America Likes Me” (1974), in which
the artist had locked himself in a cage with a coyote for a week. After
viewing the photos, Boyle commented on how the then current art (of the
1970s) was trying to engage with the whole of society but, he suggested,
was failing to do so because of its subjectivity and conceptual positions
which continued to alienate people. Boyle cites Beuys’ performance with
the coyote – despite the conceptual nature of the practice – as a laudable
attempt by Beuys to clarify his position regarding the role of the artist in
society. Boyle went on to assert that:

The only worthwhile statement that has had any effect on me and others in
my [prison] environment has been Joseph Beuys’ dialogue with a coyote.
The others pass over the head of society and lose their impact […].2

Boyle, confined in prison, recognised that Beuys’ work attempted to


harness a group consciousness, while retaining a sense of individual freedom,
as a way of attempting to resolve or emancipate people from social ills.
In his text “Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics,
Politics, Democracy” (2010) Gert Biesta, Professor of Educational Theory
and Policy at the University of Luxembourg, is seriously concerned with
the instrumentalisation of education. In particular he is interested in the

1
Joseph Beuys, “I am searching for field character” (1973), in Energy Plan for the
Western man - Joseph Beuys in America, ed. by C. Kuoni (New York: Four Walls
Eight Windows, 1993), 34.
2
Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys: Coyote (London: Thames and Hudson, 2008), 5.
4 Introduction to Part One

idea that relentless auditing might be reframing educational practices, and


asks whether the current fixation with accountability might in fact be
exacerbating the normative question, “what is good education?” A key
concern for Biesta is whether modes of measurement can be tamed and
utilised as a way of effectively recognising “good education”, particularly
in relation to democratic citizenship.3
So, do Beuys and Biesta have something in common or, indeed, might
there be some commonality between Beuys’ relationship with the coyote
and Beista’s vision of a refined, more discursive measurement system?
Beuys wasn’t trying to tame the coyote as such, merely to establish a
dialogue with a sense of “the wild”, in order to rejuvenate humanity.
Biesta does not suggest that the notion of measurement is wrong, but
seemingly perverse in its current application and in need of dialogue.
Beuys believed Western society had become spiritually bankrupt, and his
coined motif “show your wounds” became an approach to transform
society through what he called “Social Sculpture”: the shaping of society
through the collective creativity of its members.4 Biesta is likewise
concerned with the interrelationships between learning, identity and
agency in people’s lives, and in the ways in which cultural citizenship and
education might be able to respond to the complexities of contemporary
societies. Their commonality, then, might reside in their mutual concern
for promoting both dialogue and democratic citizenship, where Biesta’s
ideas about the instrumentalisation of education through relentless
auditing appear to bear out Beuys’ concern that Western society lacks
meaningful agency, and continues to be spiritually bankrupt.

In 2011 we commenced a formal partnership with Huddersfield Art


Gallery to offer a programme of art and design exhibitions featuring the
work of our colleagues at the University of Huddersfield. Through this on-
going programme, we continue to ask the question of how art and design
practices might engage, and impact upon the locale, and what we should
be looking for in order to better understand this impact and its value.
Biesta might have responded to these questions with, “it depends”; it
depends whether all gazes can be invited, encouraged and equalised

3
Gert Biesta, Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics,
Democracy (Interventions: Education, Philosophy, and Culture) (Boulder, Colorado:
Paradigm Publishers, 2010), 1.
4
See Gregory L. Ulmer, Electronic Monuments (University of Minnesota Press:
2005), 27.
I Say Aesthetic = Human Being 5

through the interpretation and mediation of “the exhibition”.5 Across the


board, artists, curators, universities and research councils are now
considering what it means to be “engaged”, and as the concept of
engagement grows into different conversations, so the possibilities expand
for embedding public engagement within research practices and processes.
In the context of an art and design school within a university, we too are
encountering a complex series of questions and ideas about the role of the
university sector in contributing to cultural leadership within a town locale
and its surrounding region. Some of these questions and ideas are
addressed in this publication, and some will form the basis of future
research.
As Vice Chancellors across the UK position their institutions’
identities and future trajectories in the context of national and international
league tables, John Goddard (OBE)6, proposes the notion of the “civic”
university as a “place embedded” institution; one that is committed to
“place making”. The civic university has deep institutional connections
with different social, cultural and economic spheres within its locality and
beyond. In this respect, the hierarchical research ratings between “old” and
“new” (post-92) universities7 need not concern the civic university, as
practice-led research in the arts, design and humanities aligns them more
closely with the broader impact mission of the Higher Education Funding
Council of England (HEFCE). Further, those academics with established
lasting cultural partnerships might look to the Research Excellence
Framework (REF) impact agenda as a long-awaited means of
acknowledgement of their civic-centred work in their respective sectors.8
As cultural policy becomes an ever increasing component in economic and
physical regeneration, what will be the cultural legacy of the university
sector, with its expanding campuses and burgeoning building programmes
for future generations? It is widely acknowledged that Vice Chancellors
continue to face unprecedented challenges. However, perhaps, for those

5
See Gert Biesta, “Learning in Public Places: Civic Learning for the 21st Century”
(Inaugural Lecture) accessed 3rd December 2013, http://www.ugent.be/pp/sociale-
agogiek/nl/inaugural
6
Emeritus Professor of Regional Development Studies at the Centre for Urban and
Regional Development Studies, Newcastle University.
7
Former polytechnics or colleges of higher education were given university status
by the Conservative Government in 1992 through the Further and Higher
Education Act.
8
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the current system for assessing
the quality of research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs), see:
http://www.ref.ac.uk
6 Introduction to Part One

who can look beyond the incessant demands of instrumentalisation, an


opportunity exists to make a lasting contribution to the cultural legacies of
the moment. In a period of austerity, which is felt no more intensely than
in the arts and cultural sectors, there is now a clear need for universities to
further their contribution to civic society, helping to sustain the cultural
life of towns and cities across the UK. The sentiments in this publication
have been inspired by the Arts Council England’s Achieving Great Art for
Everyone9 publication, and the subsequent second edition entitled Great
Art and Culture for Everyone: 10-Year Strategic Framework 2010-2020.10
With universities, funding bodies, government bodies and cultural
organisations such as the Arts Council all immersed in developing
strategic frameworks towards 2020; so the rationale for this publication is
to intimate and explore emerging points of convergence and mutual
understanding within and across these different agendas.

Across the UK, academics in art and design fields, and arts and culture
organisations, are increasingly facing pressure to demonstrate, by way of
“knowledge exchange”11 the impact and value of their research upon the
public. With the difficult challenge of articulating this in a meaningful
way and in an accessible language, and with “public engagement” being
the current buzzword in both cultural and education sectors, the
foundations of these debates include John Myerscough 198812 with regard
to economic impact, and François Matarasso 199713 in relation to social
impact. “Public engagement”, in the context of art and design, is often
used as an all-inclusive term for an assumed ability to engage with and
positively affect society. Regardless of its common usage across the
university and cultural sectors, however, it remains a contested concept. In
relation to the REF assessment for HEIs, public engagement is considered
one of the valid examples of research impact identified by HEFCE; a
potentially valuable means of identifying the benefits to society of art and

9
Arts Council England, Achieving Great Art for Everyone: A Strategic
Framework for the Arts, 2010, see
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/achieving_great_art_for_everyone.pdf
10
Arts Council England, Great Art and Culture for Everyone: 10-Year Strategic
Framework 2010-2020, 2nd edition, revised 2013.
11
See “Knowledge Exchange and Impact”, Research Councils UK, at
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/kei/Pages/home.aspx.
12
John Myerscough, The economic importance of the arts in Britain (University of
California: Policy Studies Institute, 1988).
13
François Matarasso, USE OR ORNAMENT?,The social impact of participation
in the arts (Comedia, 1997).
I Say Aesthetic = Human Being 7

design research activity. This publication presents “public engagement” as


a flexible term for variant modes of relational impact, whatever form that
impact might take.14 It is written in light of the Department for Business,
Innovation and Skills (DBIS)’ Concordat for Engaging the Public with
Research 2013, whose set of principles sets out the significance and value
of enabling effective public engagement with research,15 and which
underlines the extent to which “engaging the public with research helps
empower people, broadens attitudes and ensures that the work of
universities and research organisations is relevant to today’s society”.16

Part One of this publication introduces and highlights the landscape of


public engagement and cultural leadership in art and design higher
education. The essays were conceived during a symposium which was
hosted by the University of Huddersfield at the Institute of Contemporary
Arts, London, in the summer of 2013, entitled Public Engagement and
Impact: Articulating Value in Art and Design.17 The symposium sought to
explore and provide insight into mechanisms for overcoming socio-
cultural barriers to public engagement. It was also both a response to, and
an exploration of the concepts of “impact” and “cultural value”.18 In the
spirit of public engagement it was our intention to make these proceedings
accessible to a wide readership. It is hoped that they will be of interest to
those working in both higher education and the cultural industries.
Contributions are provided by a range of individuals including artists,
designers, curators and academics. Their essays introduce a myriad of
concerns, debates and viewpoints which together demonstrate the
complexity of the landscape – which was another of the publication’s
aims, and one of the things which at its outset caught, and continues to

14
See Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Paris: Les Presses du Réel, 2002).
15
See “Inspiration to Engage”, Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research,
Research Councils UK,
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/scisoc/ConcordatforEngagingthePublicwithRese
arch.pdf
16
See Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research, Research Councils UK,
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/Documents/publications/ConcordatInspiration.pdf p. 5.
17
Hereafter referred to as the ICA symposium.
18
See the Arts and Humanities Research Council, The AHRC Cultural Value
Project (http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funded-Research/Funded-themes-and-programmes/
Cultural-Value-Project/Documents/Cultural_Value_Project.pdf , and
http://culturalvalueproject.wordpress.com/), and REF2014, Decisions On
Assessing Research Impact, March 2011
http://www.ref.ac.uk/media/ref/content/pub/decisionsonassessingresearchimpact/0
1_11.pdf .
8 Introduction to Part One

catch our imagination. In this respect, the publication does not try to
provide a comprehensive account on all fronts. Rather, it aims to introduce
different perspectives on the public engagement and cultural leadership
environment, and its challenges and complexities. We hope it will enable
the reader to discover future focus and pursue further reading in relation to
this multifaceted subject. A fundamental concern of this research, and one
which was implemented through the ICA symposium is the nurturing of
existing, and the development of new collaborations with cultural partners.
This collection of essays also aims to mirror the symposium’s ethos of
collaboration, and it is hoped that it will provide a useful insight into some
of the challenges and benefits of partnership working. In view of the
escalating number of HEI-cultural organisation partnerships, we hope that
this publication will also prove useful to those already working
collaboratively.

A national perspective: ICA symposium


The University of Huddersfield formed its partnership with the ICA in
2012. The ICA has since worked collaboratively with the University in
developing joint projects and research, designed to engage and promote
greater fluidity and collaborative opportunities between university
students, teaching staff and its public programmes. The ICA symposium
addressed the ways in which recognisable impact, beyond academia, could
be achieved through the effective delivery, measurement and dissemination
of public engagement activity across art and design practices. The call for
participation was framed around the following problematic questions:

- What do we mean when we discuss “public engagement” in


relation to contemporary art and design?
- How do we overcome some of the issues arising as we are
increasingly encouraged to quantify the value of contemporary art
and design research, and its exhibition within the public realm?
- If we are able to create a framework for assessing this value, how
then do we go about capturing, measuring and communicating it?
- How can this information be used to help plan for the future of art
and design research in UK cultural and education sectors?

The ICA symposium was also born of a desire to tackle some of the
often ambiguous language that surrounds these questions. It presented a
platform for sharing ideas and good practice, while encouraging dynamic
discussion through the inclusion of interactive and creative plenary
I Say Aesthetic = Human Being 9

sessions. It also functioned reflexively; simultaneously providing – and


requesting feedback on – a model of public engagement in itself. Speakers
at the symposium were selected from a range of UK organisations and
institutions, and they explored a breadth of approaches to public
engagement, from critical explorations of the very term itself, to practical
examples of its application and the challenges it can present. Each paper
preceded an open floor discussion soliciting input from delegates, while a
live Twitter feed and event questionnaires helped to draw together
common threads and highlight areas of collective opinion. In addition to
discussing strategies for public engagement, papers also included a debate
which countered the perceived assumption that the public is disengaged
from art: Based on her PhD and subsequent research at Yorkshire
Sculpture Park (YSP), Curator Helen Pheby, and founding Director Peter
Murray (CBE) traced the relationship between art and its publics, and the
critical role public engagement and interpretation have played at YSP in
relation to audience development. Their discussion included a
consideration of how the engaged public is perceived and celebrated from
a curator’s perspective. Artist Bob and Roberta Smith’s performative
presentation also placed existing audiences at the core of his argument.
Using art as both a medium for free speech and as a way of exploring new
futures, Bob and Roberta Smith believes ‘Art’ allows people to get out of
the trench of existence and to see how the land really lies, and his
presentation underlined this, demonstrating how art can play a powerful
role in democratic systems.
Sumitra Upham, Assistant Curator – Education at the ICA commented
on the mutual benefits of the collaborative events, stating, “We were
delighted to work collaboratively with the University of Huddersfield [...]
[as] we continuously question notions of ‘public’, ‘impact’, and ‘engagement’
in relation to visual arts practice through our interdisciplinary programme
of exhibitions, projects and events,” adding:

Public engagement is increasingly becoming important for cultural rights,


arts education, audience participation, social cohesion, and cultural
diversity. As a public institution we recognise the importance of public
engagement in the visual arts and are concerned with how we effectively
communicate and learn from our public/s. We hope to develop further a
programme that actively engages a diverse audience across the arts [...]
responding to public feedback and societal concerns.19

19
Sumitra Upham, Associate Curator, Education, Institute of Contemporary Arts,
London, January 2013.
10 Introduction to Part One

Closer to home: ROTOə


Our interest in exploring public engagement – despite its currency
within REF, and other cultural policy rhetoric – goes far beyond the
seeming bureaucracies of governmental impact agendas. Rather, it stems
from a sense of responsibility for bringing together members of the public
with staff from the School of Art, Design and Architecture and their
research, in order to enable “shared access to knowledge and
information”.20 This objective can be recognised in an initiative which
developed from an ardent period of work with Huddersfield Art Gallery,
entitled “ROTOə: transdisciplinary dialogue and debate”. ROTOə is an
on-going programme of exhibitions, public events and talks, and acts as a
platform for disseminating and communicating practice-based-research,
showcasing a community of artists, designers and curators whose ideas
and connective practices migrate and span art and design production. Our
intention with ROTOə is to locate the interpretation of the exhibition
content at the pivot between academic research and public engagement,
where points of intersection are considered and debated from multiple
perspectives. To initiate ROTOə, a two year Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) was signed between the University of Huddersfield
and Kirklees Culture and Leisure Services. The MOU was founded upon
the Arts Council England (ACE)’s strategic framework 201021 to help in
the successful development of conversations between the University, the
Gallery and the public. The ROTOə programme also reflects elements of
the University’s aforementioned partnership with the ICA, namely in its
innovative and challenging approach to visual arts programming, as well
as its incorporation of contemporary music, international cinema,
performance, live arts, talks and debates, all of which provide exemplary
models of public engagement. Of particular relevance to ROTOə is the
ICA’s Student Forum which encourages long-term engagement between
the organisation and emerging practitioners. One of its key aims is to
“interrogate, subvert and re-define traditional pedagogical terminology in
response to academic research and public engagement with art, within the

20
Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK, speaking at The Cultural
Knowledge Ecology - Universities, Arts and Cultural Partnerships - a one-day
conference, 5th February 2014, Liverpool John Moores University.
21
Arts Council England, Achieving Great Art for Everyone: A Strategic
Framework for the Arts, 2010, see
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/achieving_great_art_for_everyone.pdf.
I Say Aesthetic = Human Being 11

context of an arts institution”.22 ROTOə mirrors some of these elements


and, as with the ICA partnership, provides opportunities for creative
exchange, investigation and discussion between practitioners and
audiences, as well as a “fruitful dialogue with students engaged in critical
thinking around contemporary practice.”23 Alongside the ROTOə
programme, we also decided to focus our concurrent edition of the
School’s journal; radar 4, on some of the questions posed above. radar is
the Review of Art, Design and Architecture Research, and in radar 4 we
aimed to present reflexive a means of querying different understandings of
the terms “public”, “engagement”, “impact” and the “contemporary” in
relation to art and design. radar 4 aims to:

[…] address recent trends and issues in the social, political and cultural life
of the University, while tracing their relationship to those art, design and
architecture practices happening beyond the University [...]. The current
issue of radar situates itself at the interface between the research-
orientated arena of the University and the broader [...] public sphere.24

ROTOə has now established its own identity and presence in the
Kirklees community and responses from visitors to the exhibitions have
been very encouraging, demonstrating people to be taking something
positive from their experience of encountering art and design research in a
municipal gallery environment. Interestingly, from a research perspective,
it has been difficult for visitors – and equally for us – to be able to
articulate this; to put into words exactly what caused or comprised the
positive experiences they refer to in written and verbal feedback. We want
to be able to further (understand) our contribution to culture in
Huddersfield, and so this problem – one which is broadly prevalent across
the museums and galleries sector – is influencing our current and future
research.25

22
Sumitra Upham, Associate Curator, Education, speaking at the Institute of
Contemporary Arts, London, January 2013.
23
Sumitra Upham, Associate Curator, Education, speaking at the Institute of
Contemporary Arts, London, January 2013.
24
radar, ed. by Catriona McAra and Anna Powell (Huddersfield: University of
Huddersfield Press, 2014).
25
Future research plans include the development of a project which will consider
the ways in which empirical psychology might be used to test the immediate
experience of art and design upon the viewer, in the context of its impact upon
society. See Rolf Reber, “Art in Its Experience: Can Empirical Psychology Help
Assess Artistic Value?” Leonardo, Vol. 41, No. 4 (August 2008): 367-372.
12 Introduction to Part One

Back to the future: STEAM


In her 2009 paper, “Theory-based evaluation and the social impact of
the arts” Susan Galloway proposed that:

[...] despite the ubiquitous calls, the political likelihood and ethical
justification for investing substantial resources in large-scale longitudinal
evaluations [for measuring the social impact of the arts] remains slim. […]
A key question remains how best to learn from the aggregation of smaller
studies.26

In 2009 it would have been difficult for Galloway and others to predict
just how prominent and problematic the question of measuring “impact”
would be in the lead up to the REF2014. At the point of writing the
outcomes of the REF exercise – in relation to the impact of art and design
upon society – remains unknown. It will be interesting for those involved
to learn whether post-REF analyses of impact case studies will,
collectively, be taken as an opportunity to meet Galloway’s suggestion of
aggregation. Beyond REF, another scheme now within the current sights
of those working in academia is Horizon 2020, which is:

[…] the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever, with nearly
€80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition
to the private investment that this money will attract. [...] EU funding for
research [...] [is] seen as a means to drive economic growth and create
jobs, Horizon 2020 has the political backing of Europe’s leaders and the
Members of the European Parliament. They [...] put [Horizon 2020] at the
heart of the EU’s blueprint for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and
jobs. By coupling research and innovation, Horizon 2020 is helping to
achieve this with its emphasis on excellent science, industrial leadership
and tackling societal challenges. The goal is to ensure Europe produces
world-class science, removes barriers to innovation and makes it easier for
the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.27

It is notable, however, that the arts and humanities do not feature


prominently within this substantial and broad-reaching incentive for
driving economic growth, especially considering the significant contribution

26
Susan Galloway, “Theory-Based Evaluation and the Social Impact of the
Arts”, in Cultural Trends, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 2009), 143.
27
Horizon 2020: The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation,
accessed 12th January 2014 http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-
horizon-2020.
I Say Aesthetic = Human Being 13

of the cultural sector to EU economies.28 Similarly, the organisation Arts


& Business,29 as well as a European Commission Executive Summary,
found that the growth of the cultural and creative sector in Europe from
1999 to 2003 was 12.3% higher than the growth of each nation’s general
economy. In 2003 the cultural and creative sector generated a turnover of
more than € 654 billion, which in 2003 amounted to 2.6% of the EU
GDP.30 The European Parliamentary Research Service noted in 2013:

The economic performance of the cultural and creative sectors in the EU


account for 3.3% of GDP and employ 6.7 million people (3 % of total
employment). Figures are also important if one considers fashion and high-
end industries, which account for 3% of the EU GDP each and employ
respectively 5 and 1 million people. 31

Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK, notes the


extent of the arts’ contribution to the economy when she states, “The arts
are absolutely not marginal – they are core business”.32 John Maynard
Keynes, arguably one of the most influential economists of the 20th
century and founder of the Arts Council of Great Britain, also recognised
the value of state investment in the arts.33 It was largely Keynes who, back

28
See Horizon 2020: The EU Framework Programme for Research and
Innovation, accessed 12th January 2014
http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020.
29
Arts and Business, The value of the Creative Industries & Culture, 2007/08, 70.
Accessed 17th February 2014
http://www.artsandbusinessni.org.uk/documents/2012-05-16-14-04-07-70-
09Jul_REI_PICS0708_Chap3.pdf.
30
“Mapping out the economy of culture in figures”, in The Economy of Culture in
Europe, Study prepared for the European Commission (Directorate-General for
Education and Culture), 65, accessed 12th January 2013
http://ec.europa.eu/culture/pdf/doc887_en.pdf.
31
“European Cultural & Creative Sectors as Sources for Economic Growth
& Jobs”, European Parliamentary Research Service, 17th April 2013, accessed 15th
June 2013 http://epthinktank.eu/2013/04/17/european-cultural-creative-sectors-as-
sources-for-economic-growth-jobs/.
32
Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK, speaking at The Cultural
Knowledge Ecology - Universities, Arts and Cultural Partnerships - a one-day
conference, 5th February 2014, Liverpool John Moores University.
33
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, CB, FBA (5 June 1883 – 21 April
1946). His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian
economics, which advocates a mixed economy, which consists predominantly of
private sector, but where there exists a role for government intervention during
recessions.
14 Introduction to Part One

in the 1940s, conceived of the model of mixed economy funding for the
arts that has been adopted around the world today. How then, today, do we
ensure the arts and STEM34 are given equal regard, when often the arts are
overshadowed by the assumed greater social and economic benefits of
STEM? One scheme currently being adopted in the United States, and of
particular relevance to innovation within science and technology, is the
inclusion of art and design practices into STEM; where “STEM + Art =
STEAM.”35 STEAM has the potential to open new spaces for thought and
debate, where art and science are not considered mutually exclusive but
inextricably connected.
True public engagement in art and design encompasses all of society,
which necessarily includes scientists, engineers, technologists and
industrialists, as well as artists, curators and designers. Maintaining a
vibrant cultural infrastructure enables lateral thought and creative thinking.
This is not to suggest that public engagement within the cultural sector is
the only facilitator for inclusivity and resolving societal needs, neither is it
the only barometer for measuring public thinking. Nevertheless, large
scale European research funds have an essential role to play in addressing
questions of individual and collective identity across Europe, in particular
where political agendas on civic cohesion are concerned. Take, for
example, youth unemployment. Relatively, across Europe the creative and
cultural sectors are responsible for employing a high percentage of young
people. Between 2008 and 2011 growth rates in employment were
evidenced in the cultural and creative sectors,36 and yet “youth
unemployment in Europe has reached 23.8%” to date.37
Taking Galloway’s suggestion that we need to aggregate a breadth of
research to find an effective way of assessing the social impact of art and
design upon society, and Arts & Business’s views on the wider economic
significance of the cultural industries, herein might lie an opportunity for
future European research funds. These interrelated positions and, indeed,

34
Science, technology, engineering and maths.
35
“STEAM” is “a movement championed by Rhode Island School of Design
(RISD) and widely adopted by institutions, corporations and individuals.” See
http://stemtosteam.org/.
36
“European Cultural & Creative Sectors as Sources for Economic Growth
& Jobs”, European Parliamentary Research Service, 17th April 2013, accessed 15th
June 2013 http://epthinktank.eu/2013/04/17/european-cultural-creative-sectors-as-
sources-for-economic-growth-jobs/.
37
Kate Hodge, “Beating Unemployment in Europe: Careers advice surgery”, in
Guardian Professional (2nd July 2013), accessed 5th September 2013
http://careers.theguardian.com/unemployment-in-europe-careers-advice.
I Say Aesthetic = Human Being 15

the essays contained within this publication, reiterate the extent to which
future debates around measuring cultural engagement in the arts need to
equate both its social and economic impacts, as well as recognising the
significance of the arts both to, as well as alongside, STEM.

The essays
The Cultural Leadership Handbook (2011) provides a comprehensive
definition of public engagement, which it describes as:

The interaction between an organisation and its audience when it mounts a


performance, stages an exhibition, issues a publication or provides a
service of some kind –in other words, what it does when it performs its
self-defined function as a cultural organisation. More and more, this is a
two-way process: it is launched by the organisation, but has to be
genuinely responsive to the needs and opinions of the audience. To really
work, this engagement has to be judged successful by both the organisation
and its public. And that will depend not only on the competence of the
organisation and its willingness to respond, but the creative way in which it
approaches that engagement.38

The following papers address these ideas from a variety of viewpoints.


In her essay “A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture”, Dr Claire
Donovan, Reader in Assessing Research Impact and member of the Health
Economics Research Group at Brunel University, provides a summary of a
programme of work carried out for an AHRC/ESRC39 Public Service
Placement Fellowship entitled “Measuring Cultural Value (Phase Two)”
based at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Donovan’s essay
provides a detailed analysis of the issues addressed in her report; which
engaged directly with representatives of the cultural sector.
Sarah Shalgosky is Curator of the University of Warwick’s Art Gallery
– MEAD, and Professor Stephanie James is Associate Dean and Head of
the School of Visual Arts at the Arts University Bournemouth, as well as a
practising artist. In their essay, entitled “Peer Pressure”, Shalgosky and
James discuss the significant expansion of university art galleries across
the UK within the last five years. With reference to 2013 conferences at
the Universities of Cork, Warwick and Bournemouth which critically
examined the roles of the university art gallery, they explore the capacity

38
Robert Hewison and John Holden, The Cultural Leadership Handbook: How to
Run a Creative Organization (Surrey: Gower, 2011), 180.
39
Arts and Humanities Research Council/Economic and Social Research Council.
16 Introduction to Part One

for these spaces to become embedded in a range of strategic objectives,


including the development of research impact; supporting the delivery of a
high calibre student experience; widening participation and improving the
university’s overall profile.
Paul Manners, Associate Professor in Public Engagement at the
University of West England, and Director of the National Coordinating
Centre for Public Engagement presents his essay entitled “Public
engagement, impact, and the 21st Century University: a guide for the
bewildered”. In this essay he teases out the different meanings and
motivations which underpin current trends relating to public engagement
which are currently high on the agendas of university funders and policy
makers, as well as across the wider cultural and public spheres.
I Say Aesthetic = Human Being 17

References
Araeen, Rasheed et al (eds.), The Third Text Reader: on Art, Culture and
Theory, (London & New York: Continuum, 2002).
Arts and Business, The value of the Creative Industries & Culture,
2007/08, 70. Accessed 17th February 2014.
Arts and Humanities Research Council, The AHRC Cultural Value Project
(http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funded-Research/Funded-themes-and-program
mes/Cultural-Value-Project/Documents/Cultural_Value_Project.pdf.
Arts Council England, Achieving Great Art for Everyone: A Strategic
Framework for the Arts, 2010.
Arts Council England, Great Art and Culture for Everyone: 10-Year
Strategic Framework 2010-2020, 2nd edition, revised 2013.
Biesta, Gert, “Learning in Public Places: Civic Learning for the 21st
Century” (Inaugural Lecture) accessed 3rd December 2013,
http://www.ugent.be/pp/sociale-agogiek/nl/inaugural
Biesta, Gert, Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics,
Democracy (Interventions: Education, Philosophy, and Culture)
(Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2010).
Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics (Paris: Les Presses du Réel,
2002).
Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research, Research Councils UK.
Cultural Trends, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 2009).
Dandridge, Nicola, Chief Executive of Universities UK, speaking at The
Cultural Knowledge Ecology - Universities, Arts and Cultural
Partnerships - a one-day conference, 5th February 2014, Liverpool
John Moores University.
European Parliamentary Research Service, 17th April 2013.
Guardian Professional (2nd July 2013)
http://careers.theguardian.com/unemployment-in-europe-careers-
advice.
Hewison, Robert and Holden, John, The Cultural Leadership Handbook:
How to Run a Creative Organization (Surrey: Gower, 2011).
Horizon 2020: The EU Framework Programme for Research and
Innovation,
http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020.
Knowledge Exchange and Impact, Research Councils UK,
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/kei/Pages/home.aspx.
Kuoni, C., (ed.), Energy Plan for the Western man - Joseph Beuys in
America, (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993).
18 Introduction to Part One

Leonardo, Vol. 41, No. 4 (August 2008).


Matarasso, François, USE OR ORNAMENT?, The social impact of
participation in the arts (Comedia, 1997).
Matzner, Florian (ed.), Public Art: A Reader, ed. (Germany: Hantje Cantz
Publishers, 2004).
McAra, Catriona and Powell, Anna (eds.), radar, Vol. 4 (Huddersfield:
University of Huddersfield Press, 2014) .
Mulgan, Geoff and Leadbetter, Charlie, Systems Innovation: Discussion
Paper (Nesta, January 2013).
Myerscough, John, The economic importance of the arts in Britain
(University of California: Policy Studies Institute, 1988).
REF2014, Decisions On Assessing Research Impact, March 2011.
The Economy of Culture in Europe, Study prepared for the European
Commission (Directorate-General for Education and Culture), 65,
2013.
Tisdall, Caroline, Joseph Beuys: Coyote (London: Thames and Hudson,
2008).
Ulmer, Gregory L., Electronic Monuments (University of Minnesota
Press: 2005).
Upham, Sumitra, Associate Curator, Education, Institute of Contemporary
Arts, London, by email, January 2013.
http://stemtosteam.org/.
CHAPTER ONE

CREATING #HAVOC:
A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO VALUING
OUR CULTURE

CLAIRE DONOVAN

A central theme of the symposium Public Engagement and Impact:


Articulating Value in Art and Design was the question of how the cultural
sector might most effectively respond to increased bureaucratic pressure to
supply evidence of the value of culture. This essay proposes a holistic
solution, based on the findings of a research project which directly
engaged with the cultural sector’s views on the idea of measuring cultural
value.1 The project was Phase Two of an initiative funded by the
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and its end product
was a report to the DCMS, A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture.2
This essay provides a summary of the findings of the Phase One report,
which recommended that the cultural sector should embrace the use of a

1
The essay is based on research conducted during a Public Service Placement
Fellowship “Measuring Cultural Value (Phase 2)” funded by the Arts and
Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC), and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), grant
reference ES/J008265/1. The views and opinions expressed in the essay do not
necessarily reflect the official views of the AHRC, ESRC or DCMS. An earlier
version, “Is there a third way? Going beyond instrumentalism versus intrinsic
value”, was presented at a St. George’s House Consultation (in partnership with
the Institute of Ideas) on The Value of Culture and the Crisis of Judgement,
Windsor Castle, 11-12 December 2012.
2
The report’s original title was A Holistic Approach to Valuing Culture but was
modified when a Twitter user suggested adding the word Our as this not only
captured the inclusive nature of the report’s recommendations but also produced
the acronym HAVOC (or #havoc).
20 Chapter One

specific range of economic valuation techniques.3 It also underlines some


serious ideological and practical shortcomings with applying these
measures: the most conspicuous being that the costs and expertise
involved are beyond the means of most cultural sector organisations. It
goes on to outline the Phase Two work that sought to test the principle of
adopting an additional range of alternative approaches (quantitative,
qualitative and narrative), which were accessible to the whole cultural
sector. The essay then offers a brief account of the cultural value debate,
which concerns long-running conceptual wrangling over the instrumental
or economic value of culture versus its intrinsic or “spiritual” value. It
explains how, by finding unanimous cultural sector approval for a holistic
approach to valuing culture, the Phase Two project was able to transcend
this divide. It maintains that a holistic approach to measuring cultural
value can capture the value that is unique to the cultural sector; can be
applied to the full range and scale of cultural sector organisations
including economic and non-economic data; and can be used to inform
funding decisions at local, regional and national levels. Finally, it
concludes that the time is right for the cultural sector to press for funding
agencies and government to adopt a more meaningful, inclusive, and
holistic approach valuing our culture.

Measure for Measure4


The Phase One report Measuring the Value of Culture argued that,
…the cultural sector will need to use the tools and concepts of economics
to fully state their benefits in the prevailing language of policy appraisal
and evaluation.5

3
Dave O’Brien, Measuring the value of culture: a report to the Department for
Culture Media and Sport (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 15th
December 2010).
4
The symposium talk upon which the essay is based was accompanied by images
projected onto a cinema screen. The first was a picture of the back of a £20 note
(which depicts the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet with a pensive-looking
Shakespeare in the foreground) to symbolise the intrinsic/economic divide present
in the cultural value debate. Each section of the talk was accompanied by images
representing titles of well-known Shakespeare plays, including products and
artefacts such as CD covers, book covers, and a variety of posters for films, stage
plays, festivals, and Shakespeare in the park. The essay uses the play titles for its
subheadings. The animation used at the symposium can be found online at
http://bit.ly/1a9vzvD.
Creating #havoc: A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture 21

It recommended the adoption of a specific set of economic valuation


techniques to provide a monetary value for the relative benefits of
culture. In essence, this pragmatic act was seen as an essential step to
secure greater public funding. The following provides a flavour of the
preferred types of measure, or stated preference techniques that
construct hypothetical markets and elicit people’s maximum
willingness to pay for cultural goods or services; and revealed
preference techniques that infer people’s willingness to pay for a
cultural good by observing actual behaviour in consuming the good
itself (for example the cost of tickets and travel) or in related markets
(for example the differential cost of rental or housing prices in areas
closer to cultural amenities). Besides grating against the general ethos
of the cultural sector by presenting the value of culture in purely
monetary terms, a fundamental flaw was that applying these techniques
takes a great deal of time, money and expertise, and so extends beyond
the reach of most cultural sector organisations.

The Phase Two report accepted that economic valuation techniques


might be appropriate for large enterprises and for aiding decision-making
about the potential impact of national cultural policies, but also sought to
test the principle of adopting an additional range of alternative methods to
measure cultural value that were accessible for the whole of the cultural
sector. The Phase Two work therefore sought to test, with the help of
cultural sector representatives, a range of quantitative, qualitative, and
narrative approaches to “measuring” cultural value. There were two
stakeholder workshops, the first of which addressed lists of possible
economic and alternative techniques, measure for measure, to decide
which held the most promise for capturing the value unique to the cultural
sector.

The Tempest
The long-running cultural value debate comprises opposing views
about how data collection relates to the subjective experience of culture.
On the one hand, it is felt that public funding supports cultural value in the
form of instrumental value (for example social and economic benefits),
institutional value (public benefits created by institutions), and intrinsic
value (subjective, intellectual, emotional, spiritual).6 However, governments

5
O’Brien 2010, 4.
6
See Robert Hewison and John Holden, Challenge and Change: HLF and
Cultural Value—A Report to the Heritage Lottery Fund (London: DEMOS, 2004),
22 Chapter One

are perceived only to have an interest in instrumental value and its social
and economic impact. In this respect, not only does data collection
overlook the concept of intrinsic value, but it employs methods completely
incapable of grasping the essence of the subjective experience of culture.7
On the other hand, it is argued that the basis of modern microeconomics is
the analysis of subjective preferences. It follows that economic valuation
techniques, when applied to the cultural sector, necessarily capture
intrinsic values because these underpin people’s preferences, which are, in
turn, revealed through people’s market behaviour or expressed through
people’s hypothetical willingness to pay for cultural goods or services.8
Indeed, it is argued that a “reluctance to use economic methods has
hindered rather than helped the case for the arts”.9
My personal involvement in the Phase Two work began due to my
previous experience in chairing a government committee in Australia,
where I was tasked with recommending to the Chief Scientist the optimum
method for assessing the wider social, economic, environmental and
cultural impact of publicly funded university research.10 I found that there
were many similarities between this experience and the cultural value
debate, although in the case of assessing research impact, international
best practice had moved beyond reliance upon economic measures. It
embraced a range of quantitative and qualitative metrics to support
narrative accounts of the benefits of research for wider society. In the UK I
attended two cultural value events before beginning the Phase Two work
and found entrenched positions and encountered something of a storm
about the use of economic valuation techniques. I characterised the two
camps as the Cynics who, following Oscar Wilde: “[…] know the price of
everything and the value of nothing,” and the Sentimentalists who,
“[…][see] an absurd value in everything, and [don’t] know the market
price of any single thing.”11

and John Holden, Cultural Value and the Crisis of Legitimacy: Why Culture Needs
a Democratic Mandate (London: DEMOS, 2006), 14.
7
Holden 2006, 32, 48.
8
Hasan Bakhshi, Alan Freeman, and Graham Hitchen, Measuring Intrinsic Value:
How to Stop Worrying and Love Economics (London: Missions, Models, Money,
2009), 10.
9
Bakhshi et al., 2009, 2-3.
10
Claire Donovan, “The Australian Research Quality Framework: A Live
Experiment in Capturing the Social, Economic, Environmental, and Cultural
Returns of Publicly Funded Research” in New Directions for Evaluation, Vol. 118,
ed. by Chris L.S. Coryn and Michael Scriven (Wiley Periodicals ,2008), 47- 60.
11
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, (1917 [1893] Act III).
Creating #havoc: A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture 23

From my point of view, the cultural value debate was lagging behind
the impact debate, and was dominated by the tyranny of The Green Book12
in the form of an implicit requirement on behalf of the Cynics to use
economic measures that The Treasury would find acceptable. The Phase
Two work, therefore, sought to propose a Cynical-Sentimental; or holistic
solution.

Much Ado About Nothing


The Phase Two project included two one-day workshops that sought to
engage with a representative group of cultural sector organisations and
experts in evaluation, including Arts Council England, DCMS, English
Heritage, HM Treasury, and also covering London and the regions, large-
and small-scale cultural enterprises, the third sector, consultancy and
academia. Participants were drawn from the visual and performing arts,
heritage, galleries, museums and libraries, and their interests covered cultural
economics, social return on investment frameworks, and questionnaire or
narrative-based approaches. Different philosophies of assessing cultural
value were also represented, ranging from the ideas of cultural economists
to advocates of anthropological approaches, to constructions of narrative
accounts of cultural value. The first workshop narrowed down a range of
promising “measures” of cultural value to test, then decided on a range of
features to be included in case study simulations that would be road-tested
in the second workshop.
The anticipated tempest actually proved to be a storm in a teacup. The
polarisation I had expected to encounter between workshop participants
was not evident: there was unanimous support for a holistic approach that
could draw on economic, non-monetary quantitative, qualitative and
narrative techniques, either in isolation or combination. There was no
opposition to the use of any particular type of technique as long as this
was applied to match the appropriate context, and other measures were not
excluded. For example, it was strongly felt that approaches to valuing
culture should be proportionate according to the scale of investment, so
that while it may be suitable to use economic valuation techniques for
large-scale enterprises, these were disproportionately expensive for
smaller-scale projects where alternative techniques were more fitting. It
was also agreed that non-economic techniques (including narrative
12
HM Treasury, The Green Book, Appraisal and Evaluation in Central
Government (London: TSO, 2011). See
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/220
541/green_book_complete.pdf.
24 Chapter One

approaches) could provide evidence of “added cultural value” – in addition


to economic data – to enhance large competitive funding bids.
This sector-wide support for the principle of a holistic approach to
valuing our culture, that was not “one size fits all”, that was sensitive to a
variety of scales of investment, and that balanced the need for transparent
decision-making with a broad vision of the unique value that the cultural
sector created, transcended the polarisation of the cultural value debate.

A Comedy of Errors
We have seen that the Phase One and Phase Two projects were both
set against the backdrop of, and were in different ways reactions to, the
cultural value debate. The Phase One report clearly fell on the side of the
Cynics and was in line with DCMS policy. In that respect, the Phase Two
project presented a challenge for DCMS in that its Cynical-Sentimental
findings did not simply endorse the Cynical direction of thinking but,
rather, sought to extend it. An additional element of the Phase Two
research was desk-based work to inform guidance to the sector on
applying the economic valuation techniques recommended by Phase One.
Yet after an extensive review of the literature and of government guidance
documents, this part of the Phase Two research also found that reliance on
economic valuation techniques alone was insufficient and unrealistic in
practice.13 In part, this was due to the lack of an adequate foundation of
relevant economic valuation studies – an absence previously noted by
Bakhshi, that the time, expertise, and expense required was beyond the
reach of the majority of cultural sector organisations.14 In that respect, the
theory of the DCMS policy at that time simply did not fit the practical
requirements of the majority of the cultural sector.

As You Like It
The key finding of the consultative part of the Phase Two project was
unanimous support for the principle of adopting a holistic approach to
valuing our culture. It was seen to be responsive to the needs of the full
range and scale of cultural sector organisations, and, set within an
appropriate overarching valuation framework, could be used to inform

13
Claire Donovan, A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture: A Report to the
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (London: Department for Culture, Media
and Sport, 2013), 16-17.
14
Bakhshi, 2012, 2.
Creating #havoc: A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture 25

funding decisions at local, regional and national levels. It could capture


value that was unique to the cultural sector, and while any wider
instrumental benefits were desirable, these were viewed as a spill-over of
the cultural intervention and its intrinsic value. In this light, the starting
point of any valuation should begin with the unique value that the cultural
sector offers, and should address cultural and artistic practice, as well as
including assessments of the value and quality of the art form or cultural
practice in question. Another recognised benefit was that “value” could be
addressed in terms of the viewpoints of various parties, rather than
imposing one vision on the cultural sector in the form of economic value.
In this respect, organisations could start from what it is they value, and
seek to represent this, and valuations could go on to include instrumental,
organisational, or “economic” measures if required. Finally, there was
repeated support for the idea that both economic and non-economic
approaches to valuing culture are valid depending on context, especially
when the cost and the effort required is relative to the size of funds
requested.
In terms of Green Book compliance, the Cynical-Sentimental approach
resonated with workshop representatives from the Treasury who supported
the idea of using robust non-economic data to inform decision-making
when economic data could not be provided. For example, an overarching
decision-making framework (multi-criteria analysis) has been used within
government to bring together economic and non-economic evidence to
inform funding decisions concerning aesthetic aspects of transport and
environmental policy.

Love’s Labour Lost


Despite a highly collaborative project ethos, the findings of the Phase
Two work were perceived to run counter to, rather than building on, the
Phase One report and DCMS policy. The original report and
recommendations were heavily criticised, and publication seemed
unlikely. However, a change in the policy climate occurred, perhaps
prompted by the launch of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s
(AHRC) Cultural Value Project15 which was underpinned by a similar
Cynical-Sentimental philosophy and shared comparable goals. The view
was then taken within DCMS that the holistic approach was, in fact,
compliant with Green Book requirements, and a heavily revised final

15
See http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funded-Research/Funded-themes-and-programmes/
Cultural-Value-Project/Pages/default.aspx.
26 Chapter One

report (minus the critique of various economic valuation techniques) was


successfully published.

All’s Well That Ends Well


The key messages from the Phase Two research regarding the very
idea of measuring cultural value are that: (i) what are often presented as
measures of cultural value do not actually measure cultural value; (ii)
economic valuation techniques (such as stated preference techniques and
revealed preference techniques) are only relevant to a few large cultural
enterprises; (iii) there can be no standard (economic) definition of cultural
value – and this would not be desirable anyway; (iv) “measuring cultural
value” is the wrong term as this presupposes quantification, and so the
terms “assessing cultural value” or “capturing cultural value” are more
appropriate when discussing a holistic approach; (v) narratives are a
powerful way to capture the value of culture, and are even more powerful
when supported by robust quantitative or qualitative evidence.
The Phase Two project tested and found unanimous support for the
concept of a holistic approach to valuing our culture, but it is essential to
develop this further and offer guidance to cultural sector organisations on
what methods of capturing cultural value can be used, and how they can
go about doing this. The AHRC’s £2 million Cultural Value Project seems
perfectly timed in this respect, in that there are numerous organisations
and individuals with expertise in different evaluation methods, and who
are willing to engage with, and develop, a holistic approach to valuing our
culture.
Creating #havoc: A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture 27

References
Bakhshi, Hasan, Alan Freeman, and Graham Hitchen. Measuring Intrinsic
Value: How to Stop Worrying and Love Economics. London: Missions,
Models, Money, 2009.
Bakhshi, Hasan, “Measuring Cultural Value.” Keynote speech presented at
the Culture Count: Measuring Cultural Value Forum, Customs House,
Sydney, Australia, March 2012.
Donovan, Claire, A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture: A Report
to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. London: Department
for Culture, Media and Sport, 2013.
Donovan, Claire, “The Australian Research Quality Framework: A Live
Experiment in Capturing the Social, Economic, Environmental, and
Cultural Returns of Publicly Funded Research.” New Directions for
Evaluation 118, 2008.
Hewison, Robert, and John Holden, Challenge and Change: HLF and
Cultural Value—A Report to the Heritage Lottery Fund. London:
DEMOS, 2004.
Holden, John, Cultural Value and the Crisis of Legitimacy: Why Culture
Needs a Democratic Mandate. London: DEMOS, 2006.
O’Brien, David, Measuring the Value of Culture: A Report to the
Department for Culture, Media and Sport. London: Department for
Culture, Media and Sport, 2010.
Wilde, Oscar, Lady Windermere’s Fan: A Play About a Good Woman.
London: Methuen, 1917 [1893].
CHAPTER TWO

THE RENAISSANCE OF UNIVERSITY


GALLERIES?

SARAH SHALGOSKY AND STEPHANIE JAMES

Earlier this year, it was said of culture in Britain that we are living in a
‘golden age’. It is certainly a time of phenomenal creativity but I think that
that the true golden age could be ahead of us. The society we now live in,
in Britain, is arguably the most exciting there has ever been. The
experience that it encompasses could produce the greatest art yet created.
This will have an impact around the world. We could be on the verge of
another Renaissance.
—Brian McMaster, 2008.1

In late 2007 Brian McMaster could not anticipate that the developing
global financial crisis would usher in an age of austerity for the arts rather
than his vision of a “true golden age” with its worldwide impact. Cuts in
funding have affected gallery programmes and the commissioning of new
work, public access, acquisitions and staffing.2 However, between 2008
and 2013, the same period covered by the Research Excellence
Framework (REF), there does appear to have been a Renaissance of sorts
after all. An influx of new galleries has occurred across UK university
campuses. For example: the Hannah Maclure Centre, University of
Abertay, Dundee; Ruskin Gallery, Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge;

1
McMaster, B., McMaster Review: Supporting excellence in the arts - from
measurement to judgement (London: TSO, 2008).
2
In March 2013, a spokeswoman for the National Museum Directors Council
noted that national museums had received a total cut of nearly 20% since the 2010
spending review. The Museums Association survey, The Impact of Cuts on UK
Museums, of 2012 noted that 51% of respondents reported a cut to their budgets
and almost a quarter had been forced to reduce public access by closing whole sites
or parts of sites permanently or temporarily. Of the respondents that experienced
cuts in 2011 and 2012, over a third saw a cumulative reduction of more than 35%.
30 Chapter Two

Gallery North, University of Northumbria; SIA Gallery, Sheffield Hallam


University; TheGallery, Arts University Bournemouth; Waterfront Gallery,
University Campus Suffolk; Solent Showcase, Solent University,
Southampton; Lethaby Gallery, Central St Martins; Lanchester Gallery,
Coventry University, while others such as the Stanley and Audrey Burton
Gallery at Leeds University have been refurbished. Further new gallery
buildings are planned for institutions such as Glasgow School of Art;
Edinburgh School of Art; Goldsmiths College of Art and the John Hansard
Gallery at the University of Southampton. New programmes and
initiatives have been developed that include Bath Spa University working
in partnership with the Holburne Museum; the development of Eastside
Projects by Birmingham City University; the development of the RADAR
programme at Loughborough University; a partnership between University
of Hertfordshire (UH) Galleries and St Albans Museum and Gallery and
the location of the University of Dundee's Visual Research Centre in
Dundee Contemporary Arts while major cultural institutions like the
Ashmolean Museum Oxford, the Hunterian Gallery at Edinburgh
University and the Whitworth Art Gallery at the University of Manchester
have received significant investment to update their facilities.
The rapid expansion of the university gallery sector in the period since
the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE, 2008) suggests that despite
the cold climate affecting most arts organisations, universities see the
deployment of resources into galleries as a good investment, and arguably,
these galleries may help to develop stakeholder support and enhance the
appearance of the university to the benefit of student recruitment.3
Inevitably, the majority of the investment has been by universities which
already offer art and design undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
However, this concentrated development of an expanding group of
exhibition-focused galleries in close association with courses relating to
art production suggests that a research element also underpins their
development. For example, a recent exhibition entitled Making Knowledge,
at the new Lethaby Gallery at Central St Martins (CSM) introduced the
research pathways of nine CSM research staff. The ideas raised by the
research were developed through a series of lectures and round-table

3
The majority of existing nineteenth and twentieth century university galleries –
which arguably have a more overtly public facing and philanthropic museum
function – are already recognised by the primary network for the sector, the
University Museums Group. The UMG promotes the role of university museums,
galleries and collections in research and HE teaching and the importance of their
contribution to widening participation and public engagement. See
http://universitymuseumsgroup.wordpress.com/about/.
The Renaissance of University Galleries? 31

discussions staged in the Gallery. Central to the ethos of the new gallery, it
seems, is the role of the exhibition in generating knowledge and critical
exchange, bringing together the academic community with experts and
audiences from outside the institution.
Outside higher education, cultural organisations receiving public
subsidy are exhorted to focus on the economic impact of their activities. In
her Testing Times speech of 24 April 2013, Maria Miller extolled the
dividends that creativity brings to the country, in the shape of a buoyant
visitor economy and the global marketing of “brand Britain.”4 The
economic value of the arts, and in particular of gallery programmes, might
be expressed in visitor numbers, ticket sales, turnover of retail and
commercial activities. The Treasury's Green Book notes that “objectives,
outcomes and outputs should be defined and quantified as precisely as
possible” in order to assess the economic impact on local/regional
economies.5 The quantitative data collated by the EIA (Economic Impact
Assessments) measure “change” which, in turn, is translated as value for
money; the additional spending of visitors attracted by the new investment
or project over and above the spending of visitors who would have been
attracted to the area without the investment or project.
But what does this quantitative data tell us about the intrinsic value of
exhibitions? Arguably, it is an indicator of other quantitative attributes
such as the level of marketing budgets, the proximity of the venue to
major transport hubs, the relevance of the exhibition to the national
curriculum, and the public profile of the artists involved. The transformative
significance and impact of an exhibition programme, however, is not
elicited from such data. More pertinent to the university gallery sector are
the quantitative and qualitative metrics that measure culture and knowledge
economies.
The practice of exhibition-making is surrounded by broad-ranging
critical discourses, not only through press reviews, but via essays in
exhibition catalogues, in specialist academic and journalistic arts and
culture magazines such as Aesthetica, Artforum and Art Monthly, as well
as in the growing field of online blogs and discussion forums. Arguably,
these reviews and essays can accrue to provide a critical discourse that

4
Maria Miller, “Testing times: Fighting culture’s corner in an age of austerity”,
24th April 2013, see https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/testing-times-
fighting-cultures-corner-in-an-age-of-austerity.
5
HM Treasury, The Green Book, Appraisal and Evaluation in Central
Government (London: TSO, 2011). See
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/220
541/green_book_complete.pdf.
32 Chapter Two

utilises quantitative and qualitative data sets, which, over a period of time,
could contribute to a longitudinal measure of an exhibition or programme’s
impact. One example of this in practice is EAST International. EAST
.

International features in the early biographical information of many artists


who have now achieved a considerable international reputation, including
artists such as Hurvin Anderson, Zarina Bhimji, Luke Fowler, Laure
Prouvost, Veronica Ryan and George Shaw. Based at Norwich School of
Art, EAST International has helped to expand the boundaries of the
London centred art world, and turned the Norwich Gallery into a
recognised international hub for contemporary art, a phenomenon
described by its curator Lynda Morris in her text The International
Provincial (or Why Every Art School Needs a Dealer).6
As a sector, university galleries have the potential to contribute to
cultural leadership in the arts, both regionally and nationally. Within their
own institutions, however, their terms of reference and agendas are often
complex and can stand in the way of progress in this area. In 2009 twenty-
seven members of the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design
(CHEAD) formed a network to co-share ideas and best practice on
programming and managing a university gallery. In 2011 the network was
funded by the Leadership Foundation to research the effectiveness of the
“Art School” gallery and to evaluate the impact on the learning
environment. This research focused on what the gallery means within the
context of art and design education, and the gallery’s potential to support
innovative approaches to pedagogy and research. The research focused
upon twenty galleries across the UK, and the project highlighted that the
art school gallery continues to make a vibrant contribution to the portfolio
of the parent HEI, albeit one that manifests itself in a multitude of forms.
In general, university galleries are perceived and valued differently within
their parent institutions however; some are programmed within the
management structures of marketing and communications departments and
are engaged in externalising the institution, while others are more aligned
to research and pedagogy, and are located in academic departments. Some
derive from a historic strategic imperative, particularly those located in
major cities, while others are new ventures with nascent objectives.
It is notable that practically all of the new university galleries replicate
the quintessential white cube exhibition space – a space that connotes
curatorial authority and aesthetic currency. In these terms, they appear to

6
Lynda Morris, “The International Provincial (Or Why Every Art School Needs a
Dealer)”, paper delivered at Research and the Artist: Considering the Role of the
Art School, a one-day symposium organised by The Laboratory at Ruskin School
of Drawing and Fine Art, 28th May 1999.
The Renaissance of University Galleries? 33

add to the status of the institution and provide an environment in which


creative research can be confidently exhibited. There is, however, little
formal evidence that a university gallery is recognised as a research centre
which initiates and drives research, generating partnerships, exhibitions,
conferences and publications that move and change the way people think.
One notable exception is the John Hansard Gallery at the University of
Southampton, which through its Director, Stephen Foster, conceives the
gallery programme as a research venture with the coherence and discipline
that this entails. The programme explores the legacy of conceptual art. It
shows work from the 1960s and 1970s by conceptual artists for whom the
making of objects either was secondary, non-existent or relational to a
particular audience. Many of these artists and their works are now shown
posthumously, which means remaking or re-enacting their work in the
context of historical evaluation and reinterpretation. The programme
includes artists, such as, John Latham, Gina Pane, Charlotte Pozenenske,
Andy Warhol and Robert Smithson. The gallery also commissions and
acquires new work by living artists, often from a younger generation, to
discover and articulate the influence of the original generation upon new
conceptual artists. It is an exemplary model of managing the balance
between academic research whilst contributing to new understandings of
past and current contemporary art, as well as developing those artists’
careers which are regarded as significant to the art world sector. In 2008
four of these exhibitions were returned as academic research “outputs” to
the RAE (the predecessor of the REF) and were assigned as world-leading
research status.7
Historically the Arts Council and the creative arts university sector
have worked alongside one another, but in recent years, following the
central government Spending Review,8 there has been a national initiative
to forge an even closer relationship. This has at times been met with
scepticism, as public services shrink and university galleries find
themselves the only source of cultural engagement in their town (and
sometimes in their wider region). However, such initiatives do have some
real benefits via the convergence resources, sharing of ideas, joint-funding
and, above all, the provision of a “quality” experience for audiences and
participants, and the Arts Council England’s plan 2011-15 includes

7
Roger Palmer, International Waters (2001); Gina Pane, Works: 1964 - 1990
(2001-02); Joan Jonas, Lines in the Sand/The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things
(2004-05) and John Latham, Time Base and The Universe (2006).
8
The Chancellor presented the Government Spending Review on 20th October
2010, which fixes spending budgets for each Government department up to 2014-
15.
34 Chapter Two

“Uniting the Cultural Sector”9 (see also the Arts Council England’s Great
Art and Culture for Everyone: 10-Year Strategic Framework 2010-2020).
The university gallery now finds itself at the nexus of different public
funding bodies (Arts Council England, HEFCE, municipal and central
government) concerned with public engagement, impact, research,
innovation and knowledge exchange.
The REF is a process of expert review of a substantial period of research
activity.10 Expert review is the paramount measure of the significance of
academic research; however it has yet to be fully implemented consistently
across the university gallery sector. Normally, a review of programme and
activities of each university gallery is incorporated into an annual
university report providing, at best, a regional snapshot of the gallery’s
activities rather than contributing to a sustained national evaluation. The
process for measuring impact in the REF2014 and REF2019 is an
opportunity and potential mechanism that might provide a national picture
of the influence of the university gallery sector on the cultural landscape of
Britain. We propose the process of measuring impact within the REF
offers scope for the development of a network of peers to review curatorial
outputs, and to take an expert longitudinal view of the significance of
gallery programmes, both within and beyond academia, providing
“professional evaluation of exhibitions, performances and other outputs”.11
The validation that this expert review imparts has the potential to increase
the significance of the gallery exhibition programme.
Equally, it is possible to conceive of future REF panels as a cross-
sector forum for providing mentoring and professional development
within the visual arts. Whether connected through interest, proximity or
context, this peer-review network could provide an opportunity for staff
working in university galleries to interrogate ideas, share best practice and
discuss issues requiring expert support. Furthermore, it would provide a
focus for cultural leadership and advocacy, in itself contributing to the
developing influence and impact of the sector. Since most universities
reside outside of London, these galleries offer an extraordinary
opportunity to provide a cultural leadership network across the UK and
even extending further afield to link with overseas universities. Indeed, it
is possible to envisage this as an international network – a true
“International Provincial”.

9
DCMS, The Arts Council Plan 2011-15 (London: TSO, 2011), 5.
10
See http://www.ref.ac.uk/
11
HEFCE, REF2014: Panel Criteria and Working Methods (London: TSO, 2012),
148.
The Renaissance of University Galleries? 35

Although the new investment in many university galleries – especially


those traditionally associated with art schools – may have its origins in the
maximisation of the research environment and impact for the REF2014,
forthcoming REF outcomes (due January 2015) and the subsequent
REF2019 could help to review and refocus the wider gallery sector across
the UK.
We propose that the next step for the development of these art school
galleries might be to seize the opportunity – as a distinctive, academic
body – to become a rigorous peer-review network, providing cultural
leadership across the UK, able to articulate and demonstrate the sector’s
significance relative to the already accepted research excellence of STEM
(science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects. This will enable the
sector to contribute a framework of longitudinal metrics to the self-
assessment processes of galleries outside of the university sector. The
distinctive expertise and creative thinking within university galleries needs
to be shared and interrogated. It has been said that every art school needs a
dealer, but we believe that what every art school gallery needs is “critical
friends”; a strong, research- led network of peers to create a sustained and
influential Renaissance.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
We returned home slowly, after my father had given me
the most minute directions for finding the secret passage,
and I had repeated them after him so as to imprint them on
my memory, for I dared not write down even the least hint
of them lest the paper should fall into the hands of our
enemies.

I told my father that I would look into the chapel, and


be sure that I understood what he had said.

"No one will think anything of it," I added. "I am always


wandering about the place, and I often go to the chapel and
sit in the old stalls."

"Very well, child. I trust thy discretion. Only come in


before it is dark, lest the poor mother should be needlessly
alarmed. And one thing more, my Vevette: let not a hint
escape thee to the Sablots; not that I would not trust the
father and mother with any secret, but I confess I mistrust
Lucille after what you have told us about her."

"You don't think she would betray us?" I asked, startled.

"I cannot tell. If she has indeed been tampered with,


she may not be able to help herself. At all events, the fewer
people are in a secret the better."

When we returned to the tower I slipped away and


entered the old chapel. It was of considerable extent—quite
a church, in fact, though I suppose no service had been said
there for perhaps a hundred years. The altar of wonderfully
carved oak was still in its place, though all its ornaments
and images had been removed or destroyed. The altarpiece
which was painted on the wall still remained, and though
faded and stained was still beautiful.
My father once told me that it had been painted by
some great Spanish artist. The Virgin and her Babe were
the central figures. She had a sad, grieved expression in her
dark eyes, and I had a fancy that she was mourning over
the use that had been made of her name. Certainly I think
that gentle, lowly woman could hardly be happy in heaven
itself if she knew how she was treated here on earth.

The chancel was surrounded by a row of carved niches


or stalls with seats in them. I counted them from the left
hand side of the altar, and putting my hand under the seat
of the fourth I found and slightly pressed the button my
father had told me of. It moved in my fingers, but I dared
not open it.

"I suppose it was by this secret way that they brought


the wife of the white chevalier when they buried her alive in
the vault below," I thought.

And then, as a sound behind me made me turn with a


thrill, I almost expected to see the poor murdered lady's
ghost arise before me.

But it was only one of our numerous family of cats


which had chosen this place for her young progeny.

If I had seen the ghost, however, I do not believe I


should have blanched: I was too highly wrought up by
enthusiasm and the kind of nervous excitement which has
always served me in place of courage. I ascended the
rickety stairs into the music loft, touched the yellow keys of
the useless organ, and leaning over the ledge, tried to think
how the place must have looked when it was full of kneeling
worshippers. Then, being warned by the deepening shadows
of the lateness of the hour, I went into the house to my
supper.
CHAPTER V.
GUESTS AT THE TOUR.

I SAT in my mother's room that night till it was nearly


twelve o'clock, and then, wrapping myself in the long black
cloak which is, or was, worn by women of every rank in
Normandy, I stole down-stairs and across the courtyard to
the ruined chapel.

All was lonely and deserted. The servants had gone to


bed hours before; the horses were safe in their stables, and
I encountered nobody and nothing but our great English
mastiff, Hal, who sniffed at me a little doubtfully at the first,
and then stalked solemnly at my side, carrying in his mouth
a stick he had picked up—a ceremony which for some
unknown reason, he always performed when he wished to
do honor to any one. I was not sorry to have his company,
for the place was lonesome enough, and I had never in my
life been out of doors so late.

The moon, several days past the full, had risen, but was
still low in the sky, and only gave light enough to perplex
me with mysterious reflections and shadows, which seemed
to have no right reason for their existence. Owls whooped
dolefully, answering each other from side to side. The sea
roared at a distance, and now and then a sudden gust,
which did not seem to belong to any wind that was blowing,
shook the ivy and sighed through the ruined arches.

And there were other sounds about as I entered the


dark chapel—deep sighs, hollow murmurings and
whisperings, sudden rushes as of water—no one knew from
whence. My father always said that these sounds came from
the wind sighing in the deep vaults below the chapel, and
perhaps from some subterrane passage which the sea had
mined for itself at high tides. But the servants considered
them as altogether supernatural, and nothing would make
them approach the chapel after nightfall.

I believe I have said there was a door opening from the


chapel through the outer wall, but I had never seen it
opened in my time. By this door I now took my stand, Hal
sitting in solemn wonder at my side, and listened in awful
silence, holding in my hand the great key dripping with oil.

It seemed an age to me, though I do not think that


more than half an hour passed before I heard a slight noise,
and then three low taps thrice repeated on the outside of
the door. Hal roused up, growling like a lion, but my
upraised finger silenced him. Quickly, and with a firmness of
hand which surprised me, I opened the door and saw, not
the old man I expected, but a peasant in Norman dress. For
a moment my heart stood still, and then I was reassured.

"The name of the Lord is a strong tower!" said the


stranger.

"To them that fear him," I added, giving the


countersign. "Come in quickly; we must lose no time."

He entered, and I closed the door. Then dismissing old


Hal, who was very unwilling to leave me in such dubious
company, I led the way to the chancel, by means of the
little dark-lantern which I had held under my cloak. I
pressed the button with all my strength; the whole of the
stall moved aside, and showed a narrow passage in the
thickness of the wall.

"Enter, monsieur," said I; and then, giving him the


lantern to hold, I pulled back the stall and heard the bolt
drop into its place. Then taking the light again and holding
it low to the ground, I went on, and the stranger followed.
The road was rough, and he stumbled more than once, but
still we proceeded till we reached a very narrow and broken
stair, which led steeply upward till at last we came to a
heavy wooden door.

This I pushed open, and found myself in a somewhat


spacious room with some remains of mouldering furniture
and hangings. Here had been placed a small bed, a chair,
and some food, and on the hearth were the means of
lighting a little fire.

"Now we are in safety, monsieur, and can speak a little,"


said I, with an odd feeling of protection and patronage
mingled with the veneration with which I regarded my
companion. "Please sit down and rest while I light a fire. We
can have one at any time, for this chimney communicates
with my father's workshop, where he keeps a fire at all
hours."

I busied myself with lighting the fire, and had started a


cheerful blaze when I heard a deep sigh behind me, and
looking round I was just in time to break the fall of the
stranger as he sank on the floor. I was dreadfully
frightened, but I did not lose my presence of mind. I
loosened his doublet, moistened his forehead and lips with
strong waters, and when he began to revive, and not
before, I put a spoonful of wine into his mouth,
remembering what Grace had said to me once:

"Never try to make an unconscious person swallow. You


run the risk of choking him. When he begins to recover, he
will swallow by instinct."

At last, when I had begun to think that I must call my


mother at all hazards, the stranger opened his eyes and
regarded me with fixed and solemn gaze.

"Is it thou, my Angelique?" he murmured. "Hast thou at


last come to call thy father away?"

"Please take some more wine," said I, speaking as


steadily as I could, but my voice and hand both trembled.

The stranger sighed again, and then seemed to come


wholly to himself.

"I see I was bewildered," said he. "I took this


demoiselle for my own daughter, who has been in heaven
this many a year."
"I am the Demoiselle d'Antin," said I. "My father was
obliged to go away, and Mrs. Grace is ill, so he sent me to
guide you to a place of safety."

And then I brought the soup which I had warmed on the


hearth, and pouring out wine, I begged him to eat and
drink.

"And did your father and mother indeed send their only
child on so dangerous an errand?" asked the old man.
"Sure, now we shall know that they fear God indeed, since
they have not withheld their only child from him."

"Please do eat, sir," I urged; "the soup will be cold."

The old man smiled benignly. "Yes, my child, I shall do


justice to thy good cheer, never fear. I have neither eaten
nor drank for twenty-four hours. But now seek thine own
rest, little one. Late hours are not for such as thou."

"I will come hither again to-morrow," said I, when I had


arranged the bed to my liking; "but my father bid me say
he would not be able to see you before midnight. If any one
comes who knows the secret, he will give three knocks,
counting ten between. If any one else comes, take refuge in
the secret passage, and follow it past the place of entrance
till you come to stairs that lead downward to the chapel
vaults. These you can descend; but do not walk about, as
the ground is uneven, and there are deep rifts in the rocky
bottom of the vault. I will leave you the lantern, as the
moon shines in on the staircase, and I know the steps well.
Good-night, monsieur."

The minister laid his hand on my head and gave me his


blessing, and I retreated to my mother's room, which I
reached by another long passage in the walls of the gallery.
Now that the excitement was over, I was ready to drop
with fatigue and sleepiness, and most thankful I was to be
dosed with the hot broth my mother had kept ready for me,
and deposited in my own little bed.

Oh, how horribly sleepy I was when I was awaked the


next morning. But I knew I ought to be stirring as early as
usual to avoid suspicion, and I was soon up and dressed.
How many things I did that day! I ran to wait upon Grace
and my mother; I mounted to the top of the old tower to
gather the wall pellitory for some medicinal purpose or
other, and to spread out the fruit which Grace always laid
there to dry; and finally I ran down to the great spring
below the orchard to bring up a jug of water which Grace's
fevered fancy had thought would taste better than any
other.

I was coming up the hill with my jug on my head in


Norman fashion, and singing:

"Ba-ba-balancez vous done!"

When I met Lucille. She had been crying, and was very
pale.

"What is the matter, Lucille?" said I.

"The matter is that I will not endure any more to be so


treated," said she passionately. "To be scolded like a child
because I stayed out a little after sunset talking to Pierre Le
Febre, and to be told that I disturb the peace of the family.
No, I will not endure it!"

"But, Lucille, why should you talk with Pierre Le Febre?"


I asked. "You know what a wild young fellow he is, and
what bad things he has done. I don't wonder your mother
does not like it. Oh, Lucille, surely you do not care for him!"
"Of course I do not care for him," said Lucille, more
angrily still. "I do not care a rush for him. It is the being
lectured and put down and never daring to breathe, that I
hate."

"I am sure you have as much liberty as I do," said I.


"And as to lectures, I should like to have you hear how Mrs.
Grace preaches at me. Besides, I think Mother Jeanne was
rightly displeased. I am sure no girl who values her
character ought to be seen with Pierre Le Febre. Remember
poor Isabeau, Lucille."

"What, you, too!" said Lucille between her closed lips.


"Must you, too, take to lecturing me? Ah, well, we shall
see!"

We had now reached the point I mentioned before,


where the lane crossed the high road to Avranches, and our
attention was attracted by the sound of chanting. The priest
and his attendants were coming up from the village,
evidently carrying the Host to some dying person.

"Quick, Lucille, there is yet time!" said I, and I turned


aside into the thick bushes and ascended the rock I had
spoken of.

I had reached the top and hidden myself from


observation before I discovered that she was not following
me. I peeped over and saw her standing just where I had
left her.

"Quick, quick, Lucille!" I cried, but she never moved.

The procession came near. To my inexpressible horror, I


saw Lucille drop on her knees and remain in that position till
the priest came up. He stopped, asked a question or two,
and then, as it seemed, bestowing his blessing and giving
her something from his pocket, he passed on. It was not till
he was out of sight that I dared descend. I found Lucille still
standing, apparently lost in thought, and holding in her
hand a little gilded crucifix.

"What have you done, Lucille?" I cried. "You have made


an act of catholicity!"

"I know it," said she, in that hard, unfeeling tone which
is sometimes a sign of the greatest excitement. "I meant to
do it! I have had enough of the Religion, as you call it!" and
she spoke with a tone of bitter contempt. "I am going to try
what holy Mother Church can do for me."

"And leave your father and mother, never to see them


again—leave them in their old age, to break their hearts
over their child's apostasy—"

"No hard words, if you please, Mademoiselle d'Antin,"


interrupted Lucille, with a strange smile. "Suppose at my
first confession I choose to tell of contempt for the
Sacrament, and so on? As to my father and mother, they
will not care. Why did they not try to make me happy at
home? Why did they love David the best? They have never
been kind to me—never!"

"Every word you say is false!" I interrupted in my turn,


far too angry for any considerations of prudence. "Your
parents have always been good to you—far better than you
deserved. Go, then, traitor as thou art—go, and put the
crown to your baseness by betraying your friend! Sell
yourself to Satan, and then find out too late what his
service is worth. May Heaven comfort your poor father and
mother!"

And with that I walked away, but so unsteadily that I


could no longer balance my jug safely on my head. I
stopped to take it in my hands, when I heard my name
called, and in a moment, Lucille came up to me.

"Do not let us part so, Vevette," said she. "I was wrong
to speak to you as I did. Forgive me, and say good-by. We
shall perhaps never meet again."

My heart was melted by these words.

"Oh, Lucille!" I cried, throwing my arms round her. "Do


not lose a moment! There is yet time. Hasten to your
parents, and tell them what you have done. They will find a
way for you to escape."

"And so have my father sent to the galleys for


abducting a Catholic child?" said Lucille. "Or perhaps have
lighted matches tied to his fingers, or live coals laid on his
breast, to force him to confess? No, Vevette, the deed is
done, and I am not sorry—no, I am not sorry!" she
repeated firmly. "Good-by, Vevette: Kiss me once, though I
am an apostate. I shall not infect you. Comfort my mother,
if you can."

I embraced her, and took my way homeward, stupefied


with grief. I can safely say that if Lucille had been struck
dead by a thunderbolt before my eyes, the stroke would not
have been more dreadful. My mother met me at the door of
Grace's room, whither I went with my burden, hardly
knowing more what I was doing than some wounded animal
which crawls home to die.

"You are late, petite," said she.

And then, catching sight of my face, she asked me what


was the matter, repeating my name and her inquiry in the
tenderest tones, as I fell into her kind arms and laid my
head on her shoulder, unable to speak a word. Then in a
new tone of alarm, as the ever-present danger arose before
her:

"Has anything happened to your father, Vevette? Speak,


my child!"

"Speak, Mrs. Vevette!" said Grace sharply. "Don't you


see you are killing your mother?"

The crisp, imperative tones of command seemed to


awaken my stunned powers.

"No, no, not my father," I said, "but Lucille." And then I


poured out my story.

"The wretched, unhappy girl! She has sacrificed herself


in a fit of ill-temper, and is now lost to her family forever!"
said my mother.

"But can nothing be done? Can we not save her,


maman?" I asked.

"I fear not," said my mother. "The act was too public
and deliberate, and they will not lose sight of her, you may
be sure. Poor, deluded, unhappy girl! By one hasty act she
has thrown away home, friends, and, I fear, her own soul
also."

I burst into a fit of sobbing so hysterical that my


mother, alarmed, hastened to put me to bed, and
administer some quieting drops, which after a time, put me
to sleep. I did not wake till the beams of the rising sun
startled me. I opened my eyes with that wretched dull
feeling that something dreadful had happened, which we
have all experienced. Then, as the truth came to my mind, I
dropped my head again on my pillow in a fit of bitter
weeping. But my tears did not last long. I remembered our
guest in the tower, and that no one had been near him all
the day before. I sprang up, dressed myself quickly and
quietly, and slipped into my mother's room.

"Is that you, Vevette?" said maman sleepily. "Why are


you up so early?"

"I am going to visit the pastor, maman," I answered,


softly. "No one has been near him since the night before
last, and he must think it very strange. Besides, he will be
in need of fresh provisions."

"Go, then, my precious one, but be careful. The keys of


the storeroom are there on my table."

The storeroom was the peculiar domain of Mrs. Grace—


a kind of shrine where she paid secret devotional rites,
which seemed to consist in taking all the things out of the
drawers and cupboards and putting them back again. I had
never been in it more than once or twice, and it was with a
feeling almost of awe that I took the key from the outer
lock and shut myself in. What a clean, orderly, sweet-
savoring little room it was. The odor of sweet herbs or
gingerbread will even now bring the whole place vividly
before my mind.

I filled my basket with good things, not forgetting some


of Mrs. Grace's English gingerbread and saffron-cakes and a
bottle of wine. Then, as a new thought struck me, I took a
small brass jar, such as is used for that purpose in
Normandy, and stealing out I called my own cow from the
herd waiting in the courtyard, and milked my vessel full.
Just as I had finished, old Mathew appeared.

"You are early, mademoiselle," said he, smiling. "That is


well. Early sunbeams make fresh roses. I know madame will
enjoy her morning draught all the more for that it comes
from your hands."

"I like to milk," said I; "but I must not stay. Maman will
wonder where I am."

I took my basket from its hiding-place and hastened up


the stairs to the tower. Before knocking I listened a moment
at the door. The old man was up, and already engaged in
prayer. I heard the most touching petitions put up for my
father and mother and for myself. Surely all the prayers
offered for me in my childhood and youth were not thrown
away. It was for their sake that I was not left to perish in
the wilderness of this world into which I wandered.

When the voice ceased, I made the signal, and the door
was opened.

"Ah, my daughter, good-morning," said the old man,


with a benignant smile. "I began to fear some evil had
befallen you or yours. Has not your father returned?"

"No, monsieur, he said he might possibly not arrive till


to-night. I was ill last night, and not able to come to you. I
hope you have not been hungry."

And with some housewifely importance, I arranged my


provisions on the old table and poured out a tall glass full of
the rich, frothy milk.

"This is indeed refreshing," said the old pastor after a


long draught; "better than wine to an old man. Milk is for
babes, they say; and I suppose as we approach our second
childhood we crave it again. I remember, as I lay for four
days in a cave by the sea-shore, with nothing to eat but the
muscles and limpets, and no drink but the brackish water
which dripped from the rocks, I was perpetually haunted by
the remembrance of my mother's dairy, with its vessels of
brass and red earthenware overflowing with milk and
cream. But, my child, you are a bountiful provider. Will you
not awaken suspicion?"

"Oh, no, monsieur; I have taken everything from the


storeroom, where no one ever goes but maman and Mrs.
Grace, her English gentlewoman. I must leave you now, but
I will come again to-night."

I found my mother up and dressed. We had only just


finished our morning reading when Julienne appeared, with
the news that Simon and Jeanne Sablot desired to see
madame.

"I fear the good woman has had news of her daughter,"
observed Julienne. "Her eyes are swollen with weeping."

"Bring them to me at once," said my mother. "Poor


Jeanne! There is but One who can comfort her. I suppose
Lucille has gone."

It was even so. Lucille had come home and done her
share of work, as usual. She had sat up rather late, making
and doing up a new cap for her mother. In the morning she
did not appear, and Jeanne supposed she had overslept,
and did not call her. Becoming alarmed at last, she went to
her room, and found it empty. The bed had not been slept
in. All Lucille's clothes were gone, but her gold chain and
the silver dove worn by the Provençal women of the
Religion, which she had inherited from her grandmother,
were left behind. It was evident that Jeanne had no
suspicion of the truth.

"She has left this writing," said she, producing a note,


"though she knew that I could not read it. She has been
talking more than once of late with that reprobate Pierre Le
Febre. Doubtless she has gone away with him, and we can
have no remedy, because he is of our enemies and we are
of the Religion. Will madame have the goodness to read the
note?"

"My poor Jeanne, the matter is not what you fear, but
quite as bad," said my mother, reading the note, her color
rising as she did so. "I fear you will never see poor Lucille
again."

The note was a short and cold farewell, saying that the
writer had become a Catholic, and was about to take refuge
with the nuns at the hospital.

"I know I have never been a favorite with you, so I


hope you will not be greatly grieved at my loss," was the
cruel conclusion. "If I had had a happier home, things might
have been different. Do not try to see me. It will only lead
to trouble. Farewell."

I will not attempt to describe the anguish of the poor


parents as the letter was finished. Simon was for going at
once to the hospital to claim his daughter, and my mother
with difficulty convinced him that such a step would be
fruitless of anything but trouble.

"I would at least know that she is there," said Simon.


"It may be that this is but a blind, after all."

"I fear not," said my mother; and she told him of the
scene I had witnessed yesterday.

Simon walked up and down the room several times.

"Let her go!" said he at last. "She has been the child of
many prayers. It may be those prayers will be heard, so
that she will not be utterly lost. Come, my wife, let us
return to our desolate home. Madame has cares and
troubles enough already."

"May God console you, my poor friends," said my


mother. "Do not give up praying for the strayed lamb. It
may be that she will be brought home to the fold at last."

I suppose no Protestant here in England in these quiet


days can have any idea of the feelings with which such an
act as Lucille's was regarded by those of the Religion at that
time. It seems even strange to myself, till I bring back by
reflection the atmosphere in which we lived. That some
should be led, through terror and torture, to deny their faith
was to be expected. Many did thus conform, so far as
outside appearances went—that is, they went to mass, even
to communion, made the sign of the cross, and bowed their
heads to the wayside images. These were looked upon with
pity by the more steadfast brethren, and always received
back into the church, on repentance and confession.

But such a step as this of Lucille's was almost unheard-


of, and it produced a great commotion in our little
Protestant community. It was not only a forsaking of the
faith of her fathers, but a deliberate going over to the side
of our treacherous oppressors—of those who made us to
serve with cruel and hard bondage, who despoiled and
tortured us, and trampled us into the very mire. And there
was no remedy. The law declared that girls were able to
become "Catholics," such was the phrase of these arrogant
oppressors, at twelve years old. Should one do so, she was
to be taken from the custody of her parents, who were
nevertheless obliged to support her. Later, matters were
even worse. Little children of five and six years old, who
could be deluded into kissing a wax doll, or looking into a
church, or bowing the head to an image, were carried off,
never to be heard of again. Often they were kidnapped
without any such ceremony.

The very pious Madame de Maintenon (whom some


folks make quite a saint of nowadays) availed herself of this
infamous law to a great extent, and many of the pupils at
her famous school of St. Cyr were of this class. Thus she
took both his children from her cousin, the Marquis de
Villette, because the poor gentleman would not yield to her
arguments, but made fun of them. *

* "Souvenirs de la Marquise de Caylus," quoted by Félise.


Any one who thinks Madame de Maintenon a pattern
would do well not to read memoirs of her own days.

As my mother had said to Simon Sablot, there was no


redress. We of the Religion had no chance of justice, even in
a merely civil suit, much more in a case like the present. It
was openly said in the courts, when a man complained of
an unrighteous judgment, "Ah, well, the remedy is in your
hands. Why do you not become Catholic?" All new converts
were permitted to put off the payment of their debts for
three years, and were exempted from many taxes which fell
heavily upon their brethren. In short, we were oppressed
and trodden down always.

There were those, however, even of our enemies, who


raised their voices against these infamous laws. Certain
bishops, especially those inclined to Jansenism, protested
against the Protestants being absolutely driven to commit
sacrilege, by coming to the mass in an unfit frame of mind.
Fénelon afterward wrote a most indignant letter to the king
on the subject.
The Bishop of Orleans absolutely refused to allow the
quartering of dragoons on his people. More than one kind
old curé or parish priest was exiled from the presbytery,
where he had spent all his days, and sent to languish in
some dreary place among the marshes or in the desolate
sands, for omitting to give notice of some heretic who had
died without the sacraments, or for warning his poor
neighbors of the approach of the dragoons.

The very Franciscans who had charge of some of those


dreadful prisons where poor women were shut up, after
trying their best to convert their charges, would relent, and,
ceasing to persecute them, would comfort them as well as
they could by reading the Psalms and praying with them,
smuggling in biscuits and fruit and other little dainties in
their snuffy old pockets, and even, it was said, introducing
now and then a Bible in the same way. *

* See the affecting story of the Tower of Constancy, told


in many authors, and well repeated in Bungener's "The
Priest and the Huguenot," vol II, a book not half
appreciated.

The Franciscans have always been the most humane of


all the regular orders. But again I am wandering a long way
from my story. However, I shall not apologize for these
digressions. They are absolutely needful to make any reader
understand what was the state of things in France at that
time.
CHAPTER VI.
THE LONELY GRANGE.

THAT evening my father came home, bringing with him


my English cousin, Andrew Corbet, whom I had never seen,
and whom he had been expecting for some days. He had
come over in the train of the English ambassador, and
therefore was to some extent a sacred person, though the
name of Englishman was not at that time considered in
Europe as it came to be afterward. Charles the Second was
but a subsidized vassal of Louis the Fourteenth, as every
one knew.

It remained for the ungracious, silent little Dutchman,


who came afterward, to raise England once more to her
proper place among the nations. I may as well say here, not
to make an unnecessary mystery, that Andrew Corbet was
my destined husband, that arrangement having been made
when we were both children. Such family arrangements
were and are still common in France, where a girl's widest
liberty is only a liberty of refusal, and a demoiselle would no
more expect to choose her husband, than to choose her
parents.

In England there has always been more opportunity for


choice—an opportunity which has so greatly increased since

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