Regarding a phrase that the world of culture repeats about itself with a conviction that is rarely examined: art transforms lives, culture is a driver of social change, and mediation includes, unites, and repairs. I have said it myself. It is, in other words, in the mission of the foundation I chair. And precisely for that reason, someone from within should dare to ask aloud what truth there is in it, rather than repeating it until it sounds like truth through sheer repetition.
The question is neither rhetorical nor comfortable: does cultural mediation transform anything, or does it primarily tell itself that it transforms?
There exists a broad body of research—the review that the World Health Organization published in 2019 tracked hundreds of publications and thousands of studies—that documents real effects of artistic participation on health, well-being, mood, connections, and the sense of belonging. Singing in a group, participating in a workshop, entering a museum with someone who knows how to guide the gaze: none of that is empty rhetoric. It leaves a mark on individuals, and sometimes it leaves a measurable mark.
It is one thing to assert that culture improves the well-being of those who participate, and quite another to claim that it transforms entire communities, reduces structural exclusion, or produces lasting political change. That leap—from documented individual effect to proclaimed social transformation—is where the evidence thins and the discourse expands. And it is precisely there that the cultural sector tends to settle, as it is the register that opens doors to those who provide funding.
Since the foundational work of the nineties that sought to measure the social impact of artistic participation, various researchers have been warning of the same thing: attributing social change causally to a cultural programme is devilishly difficult; evaluations rely too heavily on self-reporting, positive feelings, and short timeframes; and 'social impact' has frequently become the rhetoric with which the sector legitimises itself before governments and sponsors. One measures what can be counted, one counts what is convenient, and the narrative ends up preceding the facts.
Acknowledging this is not to demolish anything. It is the opposite. A sector that promises what it cannot guarantee ends up paying for it in two ways, and both are serious.
The first is one of credibility. Every time culture attributes to itself powers it does not possess, it provides ammunition to those who wish to cut its funding as soon as results fail to appear. An inflated promise does not protect art: it leaves it exposed.
The second point is deeper and matters more to me. When we say that art, on its own, includes or unites or repairs, we offload onto a workshop or an exhibition a responsibility that belongs to others: to housing, to employment, to the school, to public policy. Over-promising from within culture is, inadvertently, a form of alibi for those who hold the structural levers to avoid moving them. If art fixes it, why bother with the rest? That is a trap into which an honest foundation should not fall, regardless of the fact that the language of impact is what secures funding.
So, what does cultural mediation do if it is not what we claim it does? It does something more modest and more truthful: it opens up conditions. It creates the occasion for an encounter that would not have existed, a connection, an access, a moment of well-being, a conversation that reorganises—even if only slightly—the field of what someone considers possible. It is not the sufficient cause of any transformation; it is the condition that makes it slightly more probable. A device of possibility, not a machine of change. Whether that step from possibility to transformation occurs depends on resources, continuity, institutions, and political will that far exceed what any cultural programme controls.
Opening a crack in the possible is exactly what culture knows how to do, and almost nothing else does it quite the same way. It does not need to disguise itself as social policy to have value. On the contrary: it defends itself better when it tells the truth about its reach—when it promises what it can deliver and names with honesty what it cannot. Recognising the limit does not weaken the promise. It is the only thing that makes it credible.
On the open conversation
This text opens my sub-series Art and Society, which examines, head-on and from within the sector itself, what culture can and cannot do for society; here, the distance between the effect that cultural mediation documents and the transformation it proclaims. If anyone wishes to intervene from the perspective of cultural programme evaluation, the sociology of culture, or cultural policy, the notebook remains open.
Sources
Fancourt, Daisy and Saoirse Finn. What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe, Health Evidence Network synthesis report 67, 2019.
Belfiore, Eleonora and Oliver Bennett. The Social Impact of the Arts: An Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Matarasso, François. Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts. Comedia, 1997.
Merli, Paola. “Evaluating the social impact of participation in arts activities”. International Journal of Cultural Policy 8, no. 1 (2002): 107-118.
Galloway, Susan. “Theory-based evaluation and the social impact of the arts”. Cultural Trends 18, no. 2 (2009): 125-148.