How to value arts and culture? Not with numbers alone, because so much of what counts cannot be meaningfully counted… Three Flinders academics have pooled their expertise to consider this important debate and offer solutions that work.

There is no doubt that people and organisations receiving public money need to demonstrate public value, but two decades of cultural economists searching for an algorithm have only confirmed that human judgement cannot be removed from the equation. There needs to be a better way; a balance between words and numbers.

What Matters: Talking Value in Australian Culture is a forthcoming book by Dr Tully Barnett , Professor Julian Meyrick and Professor Robert Phiddian. It examines the current processes for assessing and reporting on culture and the detrimental impacts these can have if they assume that numbers are necessarily objective – and narratives merely subjective.

In the book – due for release in August but available to pre-order through Monash Publishing – the authors argue that it’s time to find a better way to value Australian culture, and put forward their practical solutions.

It ties in with the Flinders Linkage Project grant announced on 18 June, where the authors together with Professor Richard Maltby are leading a project that will transform how artists and cultural organisations communicate the value of their activities to government.

Professor Phiddian says that existing methods of reporting to government are flawed and do not reflect the real value of cultural activity. “We’re hoping to model a better way, and a better relationship than this,” he says.