New Special Issue of "Culture Crossroads" Explores Impact Assessment in Creative Industries
A special issue of the Latvian Academy of Culture’s Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies scholarly journal Culture Crossroads has been released, dedicated to the challenges of assessing the impact of the cultural and creative sector. This issue features an especially broad geographical representation of authors and thematic scope.
The special issue is titled “How to Make It Visible? Assessing Social and Economic Impact in Creative and Cultural Industries.” Its content is based on papers presented at the session “From Invisible to Visible: Assessing the Social and Economic Impact in Creative and Cultural Industries” during the LAC conference “Culture Crossroads” held in November 2024, as well
as on scholarly articles contributed by additional authors who did not participate in the conference. The guest editors of the issue – Baiba Tjarve, Ieva Zemīte, and Liene Jākobsone – represent the Latvian Academy of Culture and the Art Academy of Latvia, thereby further strengthening the close cooperation between the two institutions.
The authors of the special issue represent the following research institutions (in order of appearance) across five countries: the Latvian Academy of Culture, the Art Academy of Latvia (Latvia), Tallinn University (Estonia), Politecnico di Milano (Italy), the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Izmir Institute of Technology (Turkey), and Rīga Stradiņš University (Latvia).
For a considerable time now, academia has been engaged in discussions on how to convincingly demonstrate the contributions of culture to society. At the same time, researchers have accumulated data and theoretical interpretations indicating that processes within the cultural and creative sector, as well as within society itself, are ambiguous and non-linear. This makes impact assessment a significant challenge and compels us to abandon the idea that a single, universally applicable method could be used to measure the economic and social contributions of the cultural and creative sector. The content of the special issue reflects this insight—it does not promise magical solutions but instead offers detailed analyses of concrete contexts and specific stakeholders.
Readers are invited to explore a range of timely topics—from rhizomatic approaches in impact assessment and tools for evaluating the economic impact of design, to participatory and adaptive approaches to social impact measurement, the cultural impact of newcomers in non-urban areas, spill-over effects of the cultural and creative sector in medicine, and methods for measuring the social impact of creative social enterprises.
All articles are available in open access here: www.culturecrossroads.lv
The preparation and publication of the special issue has been financially supported by the State Research Program project CERS (VPP‑MM‑LKRVA‑2023/1‑0001).