ABSTRACT
There is a mismatch between ambition and reality in the evaluation practices applied to Australian arts activity. This chapter addresses how the pre-eminence of evaluation in cultural policy and the public sector more broadly masks the gaming and dishonesty that attends it both in the production of data and its reception by government. The task of evaluation in the arts and cultural sector is highly valued in some quarters and vigorously disputed in others. Funding agencies and philanthropists put a high value on funded arts organisations and activities providing detailed evidence of their social, cultural or economic impact. Numerous evaluation platforms and systems have been developed to address this need. Others roundly dispute the entire enterprise of ‘datafied modes of analysis’. The current era, far from producing robust evidence of the putative impacts of funded cultural activities, shows funding agencies caught in a cycle of expensive but, finally, disingenuous reporting. This tendency hampers the potential for genuine critical reflection to act as a catalyst for adaptation within the creative sector. After discussing the issues that negatively affect the sector’s ability to successfully adopt quality metrics, the chapter looks at the possible futures that will develop from the inevitability of its adoption.
