Intro
In March 2010, the department launched Creating Value; An Arts and Culture Sector Policy Framework and began a new conversation with the arts and culture sector in Western Australia, national and international arts agencies, the research community and government partners about how collectively we can deliver the best possible value for all through the support of cultural and arts experiences.
Creating Value emphasised the delivery of this public value as the driving principle of the department’s work and by extension the outcomes of its investments through the Creating Value policy.
Following sector consultation in October 2011, the department developed a Public Value Measurement Framework (PVMF) to better understand and measure the public value it creates through its investments in arts and culture, and its role as a development agency for the sector. For the department, public value is the cultural, social and economic benefits created by arts and culture for the Western Australian community. The department contracted Pracsys Economics (WA) and the Intelligence Agency Ltd (UK) to undertake this ground-breaking research.
Extensive consultation and benchmarking was undertaken and in May 2012, the department released its initial report Public Value Measurement Framework: Valuing and Investing in the Arts – Towards a New Approach, exploring the concept of the PVMF, including the challenges of creating such a system. This work resulted in the development of a new logic model that placed the full range of value created by the arts in a whole of government policy context, but with clear opportunities for the artists and the public to contribute. The report outlined the recommended logic framework model, its component parts and the views of the national and international stakeholders consulted.