Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MESOC (Measuring the Social Dimension of Culture)
Reporting period: 2021-02-01 to 2023-05-31
MESOC was a Research and Innovation Action designed to propose, test and validate an innovative and original approach to measuring the societal value and impacts of culture and cultural policies and practices, related to three crossover themes of the new European Agenda for Culture.
The global aim was to respond to the challenge posed by the H2020 Call (“To develop new perspectives and improved methodologies for capturing the wider societal value of culture, including but also beyond its economic impact”). To do so, MESOC adapted and further developed a method for “transition based” impact assessment derived from a previous UNESCO Chair publication, building a Structural Model of the Societal Dimension of Culture, as defined by one of the strategic objectives of the European Agenda for Culture.
The key innovative outputs of the project have been a collection of Free and Open Access tools (named the AU Culture Platform, the MESOC Handbook and Online Guidelines, and the SICCRED interactive tool) to be used by both researchers and practitioners (the latter including both policy makers and cultural operators from all over the EU) to assess and measure the societal value and impacts of cultural policies and practices at Micro, Meso and Macro levels, respectively. The tools are complemented by a Repository of academic and grey literature documents describing the societal impacts of culture at urban level, a Business Intelligence tool (the MESOC Toolkit), and a generative AI tool (the MESOC Serapeum) performing semantic analyses of the contents of the Repository, which is open to the possibility of receiving additional contents from interested users.
Intense awareness raising and dissemination activities have supported the project and raised awareness of its results at the European, national and local levels, leading to the delivery of:
- A range of publications (conference papers, academic articles, reports, abstracts, videos, etc.) presenting the intermediate and final results of research activities conducted in the context of MESOC. A Special Issue of City, Territory and Architecture in SpringerOpen, on the theme of "Cities in transition: exploring the role of urban cultural policies" represents one of the main outputs of MESOC in terms of scientific dissemination of the project’s results.
- Online and offline workshops, meetings and conference presentations, which enabled MESOC partners and other key stakeholders working on the societal impact of culture to explore and discuss the themes addressed by the project and to make progress on its results. Additional information on the organized events can be found at https://www.mesoc-project.eu/events.
The global aim was to respond to the challenge posed by the H2020 Call (“To develop new perspectives and improved methodologies for capturing the wider societal value of culture, including but also beyond its economic impact”). To do so, MESOC adapted and further developed a method for “transition based” impact assessment derived from a previous UNESCO Chair publication, building a Structural Model of the Societal Dimension of Culture, as defined by one of the strategic objectives of the European Agenda for Culture.
The key innovative outputs of the project have been a collection of Free and Open Access tools (named the AU Culture Platform, the MESOC Handbook and Online Guidelines, and the SICCRED interactive tool) to be used by both researchers and practitioners (the latter including both policy makers and cultural operators from all over the EU) to assess and measure the societal value and impacts of cultural policies and practices at Micro, Meso and Macro levels, respectively. The tools are complemented by a Repository of academic and grey literature documents describing the societal impacts of culture at urban level, a Business Intelligence tool (the MESOC Toolkit), and a generative AI tool (the MESOC Serapeum) performing semantic analyses of the contents of the Repository, which is open to the possibility of receiving additional contents from interested users.
Intense awareness raising and dissemination activities have supported the project and raised awareness of its results at the European, national and local levels, leading to the delivery of:
- A range of publications (conference papers, academic articles, reports, abstracts, videos, etc.) presenting the intermediate and final results of research activities conducted in the context of MESOC. A Special Issue of City, Territory and Architecture in SpringerOpen, on the theme of "Cities in transition: exploring the role of urban cultural policies" represents one of the main outputs of MESOC in terms of scientific dissemination of the project’s results.
- Online and offline workshops, meetings and conference presentations, which enabled MESOC partners and other key stakeholders working on the societal impact of culture to explore and discuss the themes addressed by the project and to make progress on its results. Additional information on the organized events can be found at https://www.mesoc-project.eu/events.
An initial phase of desk research led to the creation of an online directory of relevant documents (about 1000) dealing with the societal impacts of culture. After this initial step, two concurrent research directions were followed in parallel: one “bottom up” (through keyword-based and semantic analyses of cultural impacts based on the contents of gathered documents, using the Natural Language Processing techniques developed by the University of Rijeka) and the other “top down” (leveraging expert knowledge of the project partners and External Advisory Board). Both approaches were then validated by a Delphi consultation exercise.
This exercise, coordinated by the University of Barcelona, involved several experts in the field of the social impact of culture from all over the world. Across three stages of consultation and debate, including online surveys and online and offline workshops, the exercise helped explore, validate and reach consensus on the enabling conditions, as well as transition variables and proxies that may be observed and measure the transformative results of cultural policies and practices.
As a result of that exercise, a list of methodological guidelines for the assessment of the social impact of culture were prepared, for possible use by public sector officials, cultural operators, and professionals willing to set up the most favorable conditions for cultural activities to achieve societal impacts.
The initial collection of documents describing the societal impacts of culture was complemented by the production of case studies, coordinated by Politecnico di Milano, in the context of the City Pilots. These were implemented in Athens, Barcelona, Cluj-Napoca, Ghent, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Jerez de la Frontera, Lublin, Milan, Rijeka, Turku, and Valencia. In collaboration with local cultural stakeholders, the societal impact areas addressed by the project were examined and discussed and the model approach proposed by MESOC was validated.
This exercise, coordinated by the University of Barcelona, involved several experts in the field of the social impact of culture from all over the world. Across three stages of consultation and debate, including online surveys and online and offline workshops, the exercise helped explore, validate and reach consensus on the enabling conditions, as well as transition variables and proxies that may be observed and measure the transformative results of cultural policies and practices.
As a result of that exercise, a list of methodological guidelines for the assessment of the social impact of culture were prepared, for possible use by public sector officials, cultural operators, and professionals willing to set up the most favorable conditions for cultural activities to achieve societal impacts.
The initial collection of documents describing the societal impacts of culture was complemented by the production of case studies, coordinated by Politecnico di Milano, in the context of the City Pilots. These were implemented in Athens, Barcelona, Cluj-Napoca, Ghent, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Jerez de la Frontera, Lublin, Milan, Rijeka, Turku, and Valencia. In collaboration with local cultural stakeholders, the societal impact areas addressed by the project were examined and discussed and the model approach proposed by MESOC was validated.
The insights gained within the City pilots were broadened in scope by additional inputs and pieces of evidence, gathered by the University of Valencia, including by the use of the AU Culture platform, a web and mobile application utilised to collect first-hand information on cultural event impacts on consumers (e.g. visitors to exhibitions, attendees of theatre plays) right at the point of experience. The platform was successfully tested in multiple cities and by a number of cultural institutions (inside and outside Spain) and can be reused by any third party interested in assessing the impact of cultural events and initiatives beyond the mere figures of attendance.
Other achievements include an AI-based model using official statistics to measure the effect of a given increase in the employment of Cultural and Creative Sectors on several socioeconomic variables at regional level (SICCRED); the so-called MESOC Toolkit, which consists in a geo-referenced visualization tool and a semantic search engine helping to map and analyze the societal impacts of cultural policies and practices described in academic papers and grey (policy) literature texts; the MESOC Serapeum, being a collection of AI tools offered to researchers and policy analysts interested in exploring the societal impacts of culture using the “transition-focused” impact assessment approach proposed by the project; and an extended literature search and gap analysis of national cultural statistics at EU level under the perspective of gender equality.
This evidence has materialized into a set of recommendations for key statistical and policy research institutions, such as UNESCO, OECD, JRC and EUROSTAT.
The MESOC research partners unified the results collected in these parallel research pathways under the umbrella of the Convergent Model, which presents an explanation (or ‘theory of change’) of how cultural activities, projects and programmes may generate transformations at the individual, community and societal levels, in terms of health and well-being, people’s engagement and participation, and urban and territorial renovation. The Convergent Model can be applied at the macro (i.e. regional), meso (i.e. city, policy, programme, sector), or micro (i.e. individuals, institutions, cultural centres, projects, activities) levels.
Other achievements include an AI-based model using official statistics to measure the effect of a given increase in the employment of Cultural and Creative Sectors on several socioeconomic variables at regional level (SICCRED); the so-called MESOC Toolkit, which consists in a geo-referenced visualization tool and a semantic search engine helping to map and analyze the societal impacts of cultural policies and practices described in academic papers and grey (policy) literature texts; the MESOC Serapeum, being a collection of AI tools offered to researchers and policy analysts interested in exploring the societal impacts of culture using the “transition-focused” impact assessment approach proposed by the project; and an extended literature search and gap analysis of national cultural statistics at EU level under the perspective of gender equality.
This evidence has materialized into a set of recommendations for key statistical and policy research institutions, such as UNESCO, OECD, JRC and EUROSTAT.
The MESOC research partners unified the results collected in these parallel research pathways under the umbrella of the Convergent Model, which presents an explanation (or ‘theory of change’) of how cultural activities, projects and programmes may generate transformations at the individual, community and societal levels, in terms of health and well-being, people’s engagement and participation, and urban and territorial renovation. The Convergent Model can be applied at the macro (i.e. regional), meso (i.e. city, policy, programme, sector), or micro (i.e. individuals, institutions, cultural centres, projects, activities) levels.