One of CLOA founding principles was to work closely with Government on behalf of culture, tourism and sport public sector services, principally with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport; we aim to strengthen connections with the Department.
Areas that we have worked on together include the overall strategy for the sector’s improvement agenda, and from that the Culture and Sport Improvement Tool (CSIT), the Outcomes Framework for Culture and Sport, the Culture and Sport evidence programme CASE and specific issues such as free swimming. We also respond to key consultations on behalf of the membership.
Taking Part
The Taking Part survey is a continuous face to face household survey of adults aged 16 and over and children aged 5 to 15 years old in England. It has run since 2005 and is the main evidence source for DCMS and its sectors.
The latest statistics are for adults engaging with cultural activities between October 2017 and September 2018. During this period, 77.9% adults engaged with the arts at least once, 72.4% visited a heritage site, 50.6% visited a museum or gallery, 32.7% visited a library and 3.1% an archive. Since the start of the 2017/18 survey, questions have been introduced on the barriers individuals face in attending or participating in arts and culture; the top three reasons given for arts, heritage, museums and galleries were lack of interest, lack of time or a health problem or disability. Whereas for libraries, the main reason given by non-users was that they had no need for these services, followed by a lack of time and the services available did not meet their needs. Read more here.
CASE
CASE is the DCMS Culture and Sport evidence programme, which aims to strengthen understanding of how best to deliver culture and sporting opportunities of the highest quality to the widest audience generating the best outcomes for society. The data can be used to support the case for investing in culture and sport. The key resources are:
- The CASE database – over 8,500 research studies in an online, searchable database
- CASE Local Profiles and Insights datasets– all the key culture and sport data, local and historical, in one place
- CASE Local Asset Mapping toolkit– the essential guide for mapping your local culture and sport assets
- Drivers, Impacts and Value research – breakthrough research and evidence on engagement in culture and sport specifically examining educational benefits of engagement for young people, and ways of generating economic values to inform policy appraisal for culture or sport interventions
There are a number of related blogs that give examples of how CASE can be used to evidence of the impacts of engagement in sport and culture here.