ABSTRACT
Central to the mandate of memory institutions and publicly financed cultural initiatives is generating ‘impact’ and shaping socio-cultural change, including change in the near future. Amid the prevailing climate of neoliberal ‘qualculation’ in the cultural sector, this contribution discusses ‘social impact measurement’ as a new memory modality for cultural institutions such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs). In contrast to well-established discourse in the nonprofit sector and related research areas of nonprofit and public management, the cultural sector lacks adequate evaluation concepts, resulting in either no evaluation or narrowly numerical assessments. Drawing on the EU project POEM, this chapter proposes a concept for composing a relational approach to social impact assessment for participatory memory work (PMW). Grounded in the theoretical framework of the POEM Model 2.0, this concept serves as a heuristic for developing social impact assessment approaches for participatory memory practices. The chapter outlines how the anthropological theory of social change and methodological approaches to empirical validation can be combined with concepts from public and nonprofit management to formulate a meaningful and robust social impact measurement framework for PMW. Furthermore, the POEM Model 2.0 may have paradigmatic implications for other cultural fields as a heuristic for participatory memory practices, warranting further exploration in broader cultural contexts in the future.
