Creative industries in the United States: programme and policy evaluation in cultural affairs

Abstract

In policy fields such as public health, policing, and pollution abatement, evaluation of the effectiveness of programs and policies is commonplace: What are the goals sought? What means have been tried to achieve them? Which alternatives prove to be most cost effective in pursuit of goals? But evaluation of programs in the cultural and creative industries is presently much less extensive than in these other areas of policy. In part this might be the result of long-standing lack of clarity on the goals of cultural policy; it is still not entirely clear that arts councils, or Cabinet offices dedicated to digital culture and media, “know what they are doing” in this respect.