Attendance at Cultural Events

Attending cultural events provides opportunities for social interaction, exposure to different art forms, education and exposure to cultural, historical, geographical, sociological, or political ideas, and a sense of community. 

Cultural attendance in Understanding Society includes attending a film at a cinema or other venue, an exhibition or collection of art, photography, sculpture or a craft exhibition, an event which included video or electronic art, an event connected with books or writing, street arts or a public art display or installation, a carnival or cultural specific festival, a circus, a play/drama, pantomime or musical, an opera/operetta, a classical music performance, a rock, pop or jazz performance, a ballet, or a contemporary or culturally significant dance performance. 

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WWD5

Attendance at Cultural Events

Community
What we do

Key Value

A monetised social value of 3,100

Monetised social value of a 1 person ‘attending at cultural events’ once/twice per year

The study by Wang, Mak, and Fancourt (2020) explored the relationship between arts engagement, mental health, and life satisfaction. The results are particularly strong in showing the effect of attending cultural events on overall life satisfaction, even with less frequent attendance.  

So, engaging in cultural activities can contribute to positive mental well-being and enhance overall life satisfaction. 

This study used data from Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), which provides high-quality longitudinal panel data comprising stratified and clustered data. Life satisfaction was measured using a single question “overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?”. Responses range from 1 (completely unsatisfied) to 7 (completely satisfied). The first column in the table below represents the coefficients obtained from the study. The second column shows the coefficients converted into WELLBYs (the 0-10 life satisfaction scale). The third column displays the corresponding WELLBY value. 

Therefore, the change in life satisfaction associated with attending cultural events once/twice per year is worth 0.204 WELLBYs, or 0.204*£13,000 = £2,650. 

  Coefficient   Converted Coefficients  WELLBY VALUE (coefficient *£13,000 and rounded) 
Never/almost never (ref.)  0.000  0.000  £0 
Once/twice per year  0.13  0.204  £2,650 (inflation adjusted and rounded £3100) 
Once per month  0.11  0.172  £2,200 
Once per week or more  0.17  0.267  £3,500 (inflation adjusted and rounded £4100) 
Notes: Monetary figures in bold are those where the coefficient was significant at p < 0.01. 

 

We adjusted the value for inflation. The adjusted value and rounded value is £3,100 for attending cultural events once/twice per year .  

Our approach to inflation adjustments is explained on our Methodology page HERE

 

Bronze

Effort

Accuracy

Monetised value:

Multiply the proportion of your participants you expect to attend cultural events by £3,100

 

APPLYING THE WELLBY VALUE: If you can’t ask people directly about their attendance at cultural events, because you’re unable to survey them, or this is a plan for a future project, then you can use this value as a proxy for increased frequency of attendance at cultural events 

NOTE: If it is a regular attendance please use the value for attending cultural events once per week or more.  It is £4,100 per person per year.

Example 

You plan a summer events series over June-July-August that promotes cultural events such as art exhibitions, music concerts, and theatre performances. You want to calculate the social value generated by your programs. You anticipate 20 people will take part, and you anticipate some (say 10 out of 20) will continue taking part for a reasonable amount of time. (It’s important to be realistic about how many of your target group will continue with the programme; it’s unlikely all of them will). Therefore, you estimate 103,100 = £31,000 monetised social value.

Silver

Effort

Accuracy

Monetised value:

Consider what frequencies of attendance at cultural events you might shift people from and to. Therefore you can calculate an estimate of the overall shift, by applying the appropriate WELLBY values.   

Consider what frequencies of attendance at cultural events you might shift people from and to. Therefore you can calculate an estimate of the overall shift, by applying the appropriate WELLBY values.

Example 

You run a programme that promotes cultural events such as art exhibitions, music concerts, and theatre performances. Realistically not all participants are completely inactive to start with. You estimate half your participants are never attend at cultural events, but half are attend once/twice per year. You anticipate 25 people will take part, and you anticipate some  will continue taking part every week for a reasonable amount of time. The rest will come intermittently, and some might not continue at all. You’re not sure of this split, so you estimate half in the remaining two groups. Let’s assume  

20% (5 people) of the participants move from “Never” to “once per week or more”, (value: 5*£4,100) 

20% (5 people) of the participants move from “Never” to “once/twice per year” (value= 5*£3,100) 

20% (5 people) of participants move from “once/twice per year” to “once per week or more”. (value=5*£1000) 

 

  Pre-intervention 

(Estimated %) 

Post-intervention 

 (Estimated %) 

Change 

(I-C) 

Value (to be applied)  Value of change  
Never/almost never / once a year or less  50%  10%  -40%  0    £0 
Once/twice per year  50%  50%  0  £3,100    £0 
Once per week or more  0%  40%  40%  £4,100    £41,000 
Total value of programme:   £41,000 

Gold

Effort

Accuracy

Monetised value:

Monetised social value: Measure actual amounts of difference that the attendance at cultural events makes to people’s lives. 

To apply these WELLBY values you should use the same question and ask it in the same way as was asked in the original research. The question should be asked in exactly this way:  

“In the last 12 months, have you been to any of these events?” 

A film at a cinema or other venue, Exhibition or collection of art, photography, sculpture or a craft exhibition, Event which included video or electronic art, Event connected with books or writing, Street arts or a public art display or installation, Carnival or cultural specific festival, Circus, Play/drama, pantomime or musical, an opera/operetta, Classical music performance, Rock, pop or jazz performance, Ballet, Contemporary dance performance, or African people’s dance or South Asian and Chinese dance, None of these. 

“Thinking about this event {if one event mentioned at previous question} / all these events {if more than one event mentioned at previous question}, how often in the last 12 months have you been to events such as this? Remember only include events attended in your own time or for the purposes of voluntary work.” [Never, once/twice per year, once per month, at least once a week] 

For more information please visit Gold: Surveys and measurements of actual results.

Support in developing your Gold survey approach is available through the Measure Up partners, so please do reach out to Impact, State of Life or PRD.  

Gold+

Effort

Accuracy

Monetised value:

Monetised social value: Adjust your measurement based on comparison to your control group, and discounting any other causality factors that may have had an impact on their overall wellbeing

At the Gold+ level, you are building on your Gold value calculation by assessing the value against the counterfactual, or ‘what would have happened anyway’.  

To do this you should identify a control group suitable to assess in line with your intervention, in order to more accurately attribute any changes to your intervention. 

You could also consider any other discount or causality elements linked to your job creation activity.  

Support in developing your Gold+ counterfactual, causality and discount approach is available through the Measure Up partners, so please do reach out to Impact, State of Life or PRD.

Value Type: Activity What's this?
UN SDG Categories:
  • 4. Quality Education
  • 10 Reduced Inequalities
  • 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
What's this?
PN06/20 Categories:
    • MAC 1.2 Supporting people and community recovery
    • MAC 8.1 Collaborate in codesign and delivery
    • MAC 8.2 Influence to support strong, integrated communities
    • Policy Outcome 1: Help local communities to manage and recover from the impact of COVID-19
    • Policy Outcome 8: Improve community integration
    • Theme 1: Covid-19 Recovery
    • Theme 5: Wellbeing
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Evidence

Measure Up focuses on empowering you to numerically measure the impact you’re having. We recommend that numeric reports are backed up with stories and other types of evidence to help illustrate, in human terms, the impact that’s being made on individuals.

We recommend seeking consent from one or more participants in your intervention to collect and tell their story. This should include a little background on the participant, a summing up of life before the intervention, the human impact of the intervention, and the longer term (if known) impact on the person’s life outside of, and after, the intervention.

Providing photographs, audio recordings, video interviews or even artifacts from the intervention (for example, writing, paintings, music, etc from creative interventions) can add more colour, and convey the emotional impact of interventions more directly.

In some cases it’s appropriate to anonymise or abbreviate the personal information of case study participants. No story should be published or shared without the recorded consent of the individual(s) it concerns. Individuals continue to own the rights to their stories and if they request you stop sharing the story or making it available online you should do so promptly and without need for justification.

More help

We want to empower anyone to perform and improve their impact measurement – without needing a degree in economics.

If you need any more help, or just someone to do the legwork for you we can help signpost you to software, training and consultancy to help you get to grips with the impact you’re having.

Data Sources