News

This week ACE published a document that sets out a vision for the Libraries of the Future. This publication is built on a number of research papers, including one that specifically centres on why young people value libraries

Advocacy and evidence

This follows its recent Advocacy Toolkit – a set of resources to help arts and cultural organisations to make their case to funders and stakeholders in the run up to the next set of spending decisions. These resources don’t necessarily focus on the value of cultural learning work, but there are some interesting statistics included - notably that Arts Council funded organisations delivered 337,797 learning sessions for young people in 2011.

The toolkit is accompanied by a report on the economic value of arts and culture, commissioned from the Centre for Economics and Business Reform. This document does include an interesting section on the impact on education – using much of the evidence that we drew on when compiling our own ImagineNation: the Case for Cultural Learning report. There is also some useful new information on the impact of the arts and culture on Higher Education.

The Cultural Olympiad

Arts Council England and the Institute of Cultural Capital at the University of Liverpool have published an evaluation of the Cultural Olympiad – again with some useful statistics showing that there were over 60,000 learning and participation opportunities delivered as part of the programme. The report concludes that ‘activities engaging young people were particularly strong across the Cultural Olympiad, and supported young people to develop their creativity, co-produce activity, engage in projects with an international profile, interact with digital technologies and develop their leadership.’