Monica Barone

Didn't I get the compelling topic, benchmarking. In a world that seems increasingly obsessed by what we can see, touch, weigh and buy, many people are concerned that the intangible things that hold us, our families and our communities together, are disappearing. In a public sector that is increasingly being asked to define and defend its role in the support and development of communities, the risk we face is that only those activities and services which we can measure and repeat will survive. The American pollster, Daniel Yanklevitch said:

The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is okay as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be measured or give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial. The third step is to presume what can't be measured isn't really important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that which can't be measured really doesn't exist and this, is suicide.

After almost 14 years as a practising artist, much of it in community arts, I joined local government, I'm new to it, I love it. So many of the ideas and values of the community arts movement that captured my imagination are, thanks to the vision and tenacity of planners before me, are expressed in cultural policies and programs at the local government level.

But the public sector is changing. Governments at all levels have set out to contain the scope and cost of government services. In the face of this a major reform process is taking place. The process, aimed at making the public sector more efficient and accountable, includes subjecting government services, in some measure, to the marketplace. It is achieved through processes such as competitive tendering which requires government services to compete with other community or private providers of the same service for the contract to deliver that service.

There is, and no doubt will continue to be much debate about the social impact of community services being provided by the private sector. In a nutshell, the issue is that a government service belongs to the community and one can expect, even though this doesn't always happen, that it must act in the public interest and must be answerable to the public. A private company, though it too has social responsibilities and must act within the laws that protect the individual and the natural environment, is ultimately responsible to its shareholders.

The challenge facing local government is to successfully undergo these changes. The challenge for community cultural development in this context is how to reconcile a way of thinking about and working with communities that by its very nature encourages an awareness of the rights and responsibilities of the community in the attainment of the public good, with a reform process that is seeking to contain the scope of the instrumentalities that serve the public.

This paper is about that challenge but it is not about surrendering to it and seeing it as inevitable or negative. It is about taking on the challenge that this change presents and subjecting it to a rigorous process, one that acknowledges that all the things that are difficult to measure or can't be measured and asks, "How do we keep them in the picture because they really are important?" It is about a process that remembers that it is one of the roles of the arts to keep us in touch with what we value and it is only in a society that is bereft of the arts that we start to forget and can be easily led to believe that the things we can't measure really don't exist and that really is suicide. Before we can measure we have to define. In the current context we have to be more rigorous than ever in articulating clearly who we are, what we do and what the value of our activities is.

Community cultural development and cultural programs at a local government level are inextricably linked. Many ideas that formed the basis of local government cultural activity can be traced to the social upheavals of the sixties when many professional and amateur arts practitioners became intensely interested in the role that the arts can play on social change. Of course, this was not unheard of before this time, however, at this time and as a consequence of this interest, what was known as the community arts movement emerged.

The Australian community arts movement, as I was introduced to it, was influenced largely by developments in the UK and to a lesser extent by popular arts movements in Asia. Its concern was, broadly speaking, the role that cultural democracy plays in the achievement of a more socially just society.

In Australia, one of the significant influences was the policy of multiculturalism. Between 1966 and 1972 Australia developed a new universal immigration policy. The new policy no longer allowed national origin, race, religion or culture to be officially taken into account when selecting migrants. As a consequence of this, Australians began to develop the policy of multiculturalism, the essence of which is represented in the following definition: Multiculturalism recognises the ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity of Australian society and actively pursues the equity of opportunity for all Australians to participate in the life of the nation and the right to maintain ethnic and cultural heritages within the law and the political framework.

Although there were other significant influences on the community arts movement, the principles of multiculturalism, that is the conceptual link between equity and cultural pluralism had a great impact on the nature of community cultural development in Australia. Although the community arts movement in no way confined itself to the cultural rights of ethnic communities, it played a central role in advancing the idea that in the pursuit of equity, cultural rights are an essential ingredient. It argued effectively that no social policy could be complete without a cultural component.

In short, community cultural development became the name for cultural programs and products that unashamedly linked the arts to broader community outcomes. In doing so, cultural projects or programs were not seen as an end in themselves. They were seen as part of the process for achieving broader outcomes like access and equity, social justice and participation. It was this thinking that influenced the development of cultural planning at a local government level.

At Warringah Council a comprehensive cultural planning process was undertaken by my predecessor Merrin Morrison. It resulted in a solid cultural policy that focused the program as part of the process of achieving quality of life outcomes by contributing to the advancement of things like multiculturalism, civic identity, better urban design and heritage as well as economic development though cultural tourism and cultural industry development.

As well as policy development Merrin had implemented a number of projects that familiarised the organisation with the process of working with artists in public art, urban design and other community projects. These projects saw the value of the cultural policy and plan expressed in the way the project was delivered by including things like, for example, community participation as part of the process and in the final product which saw things like, for example, community histories represented in the content.

Essentially, an integrated and holistic cultural plan was established, one that very much recognised cultural rights and community participation as a means to achieving quality of life outcomes like equity and social justice.

Currently, Warringah Council is preparing to begin the process of contracting service provisions. In preparation, the organisation has been restructured into what is known as the purchaser and provider model. The purchaser part of the organisation is responsible for determining community need and purchasing services that will meet that need. The provider side, whether at the end of this process they be internal or external, provides the specified service.

As a cultural planner on the purchaser side of the organisation, it is my job to articulate exactly what the community wants. This includes the broader outcomes like, for example, a safe community as well as specific services and facilities by which this will be achieved. It is my role to be certain that there is a policy justification for the delivery of these services, what we will deliver for the next three to five years through the development of a strategy and prepare a contract or series of contracts that specify to service providers exactly what we are looking to purchase.

To put it another way, my job is to take Warringah Council's cultural plan and record in fine detail exactly what is to be done, how, by when and for how much. In doing so, an essential part of this process is to develop methods of evaluating that what was planned for and will be subsequently contracted, has been achieved. In anticipation of this the National Local Government Association and the Australia Council initiated the National Demonstration Benchmarking for Community Cultural Development Project. Seven councils from around Australia are participating in this project and Warringah Council is one.

The benchmarking project began by agreeing that the overriding outcome we sought to achieve was quality of life. We then developed a series of indicators that together aimed to demonstrate the contribution that the cultural programs make to the maintenance or achievement of quality of life.

I began this paper with a quote, I'll repeat it:

The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. That is okay as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be measured or give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial. The third step is to presume what can't be measured isn't really important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

Involvement in the benchmarking project has certainly helped me to understand what this quote means because the process of developing quantifiable, repeatable measures identified the areas of our cultural program that could be easily defined, measured and specified and those that were at risk of being left off. What became apparent as a consequence of participating in this project was that it was not so difficult to develop indicators for programs that at the outset produced a tangible cultural project.

For example, if you prepare a contract that specifies three festivals, you can easily measure that you've got three, you just count them. If it says each festival should be targeted to a specific age group, you can check this too by looking at the content of the festival program and at the audience that it reaches. You can even measure things like enjoyment and safety by asking the participants, "Did you enjoy it and did you feel safe?" and given this you can calculate its cost.

What was more difficult was the development of indicators for cultural components of larger projects, for example, an activity like a theatre project as part of a labour market program. It is one thing to separate and evaluate the cultural component from the overall program, but determining just how much the achievement of the broader community outcome, which might be lower unemployment, is directly attributable to the cultural component is another.

Put simply, what tends to happen in undertaking this process is that you start to settle on the activities that you can measure. You start to specify for the things that are familiar, that you can predict and repeat. You start to disregard and eventually forget the things that you find difficult to define and measure.

The issue, of course, is that cultural planning at a local government level, influenced as it has been by the community arts movement, has been concerned with a holistic approach to community and cultural development, but the process that it is being subjected to is mechanistic and reductionist. It favours that which you can see, touch, weigh and buy. Basically, it favours product but product, even if it does include community arts product is not all that community cultural development can offer because community cultural development is about social change and social change cannot always have a predetermined outcome.

For this reason we found it difficult to incorporate some important aspects of community cultural development into the benchmarking process. This was because as cultural planners facing the changes affecting many local governments, we were largely concerned with developing the tools which would enable us to prepare the contracts for the delivery of cultural services. It meant that we were beginning to leave out some of the things that community cultural development processes can offer and that is projects that contribute to the processes by which communities grow and change.

The reason that I am drawn to the arts is because they help me to experience things about my life that I can't always articulate. The reason I am drawn to community arts is that the processes it engages help me to experience this in an embodied communion with my fellow human beings. The experiences I am talking about are subjective and intangible and the stuff that in the end makes the difference between a group of people and a community, and they are essential because only a true community, that is one that experiences this communion, can sustain a democracy.

In local government, a structural solution is to incorporate some community cultural development activities into the part of the organisation that is responsible for policy and planning because it is this part of the organisation that is responsible for understanding and meeting changing community needs.

The changes facing community cultural development at a local government level will not succeed if the contribution community cultural development can make is confined to service delivery and reduced to tangible products. What community cultural development has to offer should also be experienced by the people charged with the responsibility of developing the policies and plans that determine what is delivered. If we do not engage in these processes and join our communities in these processes, then we will start to forget and think that the things that can't be measured really don't exist.

The best way that I can explain what I mean to you, is to tell you about an experience I had when I first came to Warringah. I recount it because it is an example of a cultural process that in itself produced no tangible cultural outcome. The vision of Warringah Council is about quality of life in a unique bush and beach environment.

When I started at Warringah I really didn't know what that meant but not long after I'd started I went along to a workshop at Long Reef headland. Long Reef headland is part of Warringah's eight kilometre coastal walk and the project that we were doing this workshop about was about the landscaping and public art design of that part of the walk. So we all turned up to this workshop and the artists gave us a little chat about what they were doing and then they said, "Okay, now, what I want you to do is, you know, like get this folder and some coloured pencils and some crayons and we're going to go out onto the rock platform and we want you to draw some pictures and, you know, think of some - you know, just think about what you're experiencing out there and record that and then we're going to come back and talk about it."

I found all that just a little bit vague and a little bit difficult to get into but I dutifully got my folder and I got my crayons and my colouring-in pencils and I walked out onto the rock platform and I just, like, really couldn't get into it and I was starting to straightaway feel inhibited, "I don't draw pictures, I don't know how to do that and what do they want anyway?" and this sort of thing. So I walked back and I sat on a rock on the beach and I thought, "Okay, well, I'm not getting into this but I have a responsibility to try and get into it, so what will I do?"

My background is in the theatre so I thought, "Well, what I'll do is I'll apply some of the skills that I have as a theatre worker instead and if I was doing a theatre workshop out here the first thing I would ask participants to do is to facilitate the participants thinking about, you know, what they were experiencing, how they were feeling in the place." So I sat there and started to observe my body in that place, as you do in the theatre workshop and what I found was that my breath was really shallow and that I was actually very tense and then when I thought about it, when I looked out, I really couldn't see what I was looking at, you know, like it was there but I didn't really see it.

Then I thought, "All right, well, what I have to do is start to breathe deeply and just relax," and so I did, I breathed deeply and I just kind of relaxed. Then something happened. What happened was that suddenly I was just filled with this enormous sense of remorse and sadness and when I let myself think about what that feeling was, the sorts of things that were rushing around in my head were, you know, like, "I've just made this move to Sydney and I've got this really fantastic job, but gee whiz, it's such a hard job and I don't know if I'm ever going to make it. I'm so busy and I'm working such long hours and here I live in this beautiful place but I never get to spend any time here and I don't have any time, I don't have any time in my life and today is the day, this is the day of my daughter's first festival at her school and I'm not there because I'm at work and it's Sunday," and all of those sorts of things started to - you know, that sort of feeling.

But then when I kind of relaxed into that and realised that that's what was making me feel sad, I did start to relax and I did walk out onto the rock platform and as a consequence of actually having relaxed and acknowledged what I was feeling, suddenly I did start to see what was there. That massive brown rock suddenly had an incredible range of colours in it and I stood and I looked into a rock pool for just ages and finally saw what was really in it.

I really started to experience it and I started to realise that this was what having time was about, it was about the opportunity to slow down and reflect on these sorts of things and I realised that that's maybe what that vision statement of Warringah Council meant, quality of life in a bush and beach environment, that there was a relationship between how we feel and that environment that was very significant to people from Warringah which is why it had become the vision statement. So of course it was an embodied experience and I'd used a theatre process to get into it.

I went back and we talked at that workshop and what it has meant to me as a worker there is that now when I talk to urban designers or I talk to public artists and whatever, I'm able to say to them, "This is kind of the experience that we're talking about here." When we talked about the walkway at Long Reef I was able to say, "If we could facilitate that experience, if the design actually facilitated that tension that you have coming from that busy highway and then you arrive and then the way that it's designed and the way that the walk takes you and the things that you pass, help you to breathe more deeply, to actually experience the environment, then the design would be helping us to achieve that vision."

It was one of the most significant experiences I had since I started working for Warringah Council. It was essential to my understanding of my work but I think I would find it very hard to specify it in a contract and to develop a measurable and repeatable indicator to evaluate it because it was an intangible cultural process that led to a change but I know it really did exist. Thank you.

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