This month, coLAB, RCHP and I gathered to discuss measurables for the residency and my work with this community.

Historically, meant using impact in the arts sector has been illusive. which is why I want to give some time to it in this forum.

There are QUANTITATIVE metrics - number of events, number of attendees, number of bogs written, interviews conducted, participant and audience demographics. And these numerics are often requested by funders. But they hardly scratch the surface in measuring the true impact and power of the arts sector.

We know that audiences are changed through arts programming, and that this change is even greater when paired with community-engaged peer-to-peer storytelling. But, how are they different? What happens to people in their seats as they participate in theatre? What can audience feedback and impact data tell us about the experience of taking in art? How are people transformed by cultural experiences and exposure?

A project called the “Intrinsic Impact Study” developed a product to quantify the impact of theatre. The study states that you measure what you value. That statement cuts to the core of both policy and practice in the cultural sector. Indeed, collecting and understanding impact data is crucial. But what data?

The Intrinsic Impact Study is a consistent system for collecting and processing audience feedback, extending beyond the standard QUANTITATIVE data and attempting to collect and study the QUALITATIVE effects of our work with visible, concrete information.

Jim Collins, faculty member at Stanford’s school of business and founder of Management Laboratory (where he conducts research and works with leaders in the corporate and social sectors), discusses in his publication Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking is not the Answer the importance of calibrating success in social sectors without business metrics. He believes that a great organization is one that delivers superior performance and makes a distinctive impact over a long period of time. He positions social sector thinking around the question: “How effectively do we deliver on our mission and make a distinctive impact, relative to our resources?”

My company, Notch Theatre Company, takes our cue from this thinking looking at indicators such as:

• Emotional response of audience and participants

• Wide technical range (are we able to work in a variety of modes to serve our mission)

• Efficiency in delivering on the social mission

• Increased demand for service

• Is the work being copied and becoming more influential?

• Is the work reaching across generations, gender, race, socioeconomics and continually expanding its reach?

• Is the contribution to community unique enough to leave a hole should the work disappear

• Are stakeholders invested in long term success?

• Resilience (can the company deliver exceptional results over a long period of time, beyond any single leader, great idea, market cycle, or well-funded program?)

Collins believes that it doesn’t matter if you can quantify your results, as long as you are able to rigorously assemble evidence – quantitative or qualitative – to track progress. What matters is not finding the perfect indicator but developing a consistent and intelligent method of assessing output results, and then tracking trajectory with rigor.

The Civil Rights movement and Anti-Racism call of this past summer urged all of us to change the dominant cultural narrative, to interrupt the status-quo and dismantle the systemic obstacles preventing equity, diversity, accessibility and inclusion. Part of that work for us artists is to also subvert and expand our historic archives by centering culturally specific practices, by reframing what we remember about this country’s past. The erasure or justification of our racist past is what allows for the perpetuation and creation of racist policies. Our work as artists must strive to subvert and expand our historic archives by centering culturally specific practices of remembrance and by affirming, collecting, and organizing stories that are not currently remembered. Our archives are a way of organizing and centering these stories, and the ways we go about collecting them and performing them subvert traditional notions of what makes for “legitimate historic documentation.”

The true value this work doesn’t live in the non-profit industrial complex’s use of the word “impact,” nor in numbers and audience count and survey forms. Like the church I am partnered with for this residency (RCHP), it exists somewhere in a more spiritual realm. It lives in a belief in something larger than ourselves, in faith.

Much work is asked of artists to justify their existence. On a national level, our capitalist country does not share a belief in the intrinsic value of art. So we must constantly re-explain how our work contributes to and enriches our society. But how do you measure a movement of the soul? And is there a scale of achievement for healing? Have we ever officially “healed”?