Speakers: Dr Abigail Gilmore, Senior Lecturer in Arts Management, & Cultural Policy, The University of Manchester, Dr Kostas Arvanitis, Senior Lecturer in Museology, The University of Manchester, Alison Clark, Director Combined Arts and North, Arts Council England, Dr John Knell, Culture Counts, Dr Nick Merriman, Director of The Manchester Museum, Dr Hasan Bakhshi, Director, Creative Economy in Policy & Research, NESTA,Cimeon Ellerton, Head of Programmes, Audience Agency.

How do people judge the quality of the arts? What measures do arts organisations use to improve their performance? And how do policy makers and funders know they are investing in quality arts and cultural experiences? How can digital technologies help?

These will be the central questions in this event, which draw on the research findings of the Culture Metrics project.

Funded by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts (ACE, AHRC and NESTA), the project has been testing the value of a co-produced metric set and system of opinion-based data collection, bringing together large-scale data on how cultural organisations, their peers and the public assess the quality of work through the Culture Counts digital platform.

Participants will have the opportunity to use the Culture Metrics system to evaluate an exhibition in the Manchester Art Gallery and then discuss:

-          cultural policy implications of performance measurement and audience research via digital platforms;

-          methodological implications of aggregating and integrating data in cultural organisation structures and processes; and

-          current policy and practice context for data visualisation of audience research