At Culture Counts, our mission is to empower the sectors we work with to realise, communicate, and grow their unique impact and value.
Through working with hundreds of arts and cultural organisations, we see first-hand the dedication, commitment and sheer hard work required to deliver arts events and programs. We see the impacts that creative practices can have in everyday life because we provide the tools for measuring them.
While it is not yet possible to measure the extent of impact the current pandemic will have on our lives, it is clear that the effect will be significant. At Culture Counts we have three main priorities:
- Extend Culture Counts access and support: Effective today, we will extend the duration of every annual Culture Counts subscription by three months, free of charge. This is to help organisations that have cancelled or postponed events, or are considering doing so. We want to help you maintain your ability to measure impact – because this will be vital evidence for future fundraising.
- Cultural impact insights: We are accelerating our data science program to extract critical insights from the Culture Counts big dataset. We have been helping arts and cultural organisations to collect impact data for eight years, the result of which is an Australian data set that today contains 11,737,680 data points. In cooperation with sector partners, we will use this data to understand the value our industry creates within the broader community and will publish regular insights from this analysis in formats that will be easily useable by arts and cultural organisations to tell your value and impact stories.
- Facilitate sector innovation: We will advocate directly to governments and other funders to continue the flow of funding and give the sector the evidence it needs to secure ongoing support. Arts and culture is a major driver of innovation capacity within our communities. Innovation is the process by which we evolve by adapting to new circumstances. The sector can take a leading role in how our communities adapt to a post-pandemic world.
We will be announcing new initiatives and resources over the coming weeks to help the sector to survive and prosper into the future. To the arts and cultural community – you are not alone – we encourage you to reach out to us. Together, as a community, we can continue to support, learn and grow together.
Michael Chappell, CEO, Culture Counts
For the latest updates on COVID-19:
- View the World Health Organisation website >
- View the Australian Government website >
For wellbeing:
- Visit Beyond Blue Looking after your mental health during the Coronavirus outbreak >
- Call Lifeline on 13 11 14
