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What Matters?

Talking Value in Australian Culture
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
What Matters? offers a compelling exploration into the significance of cultural objects and the metrics used to assess their value. The authors delve into how cultural assets are quantified in both financial and social terms, questioning conventional valuation methods. With a focus on science and nature, the book prompts readers to reconsider how they perceive and measure the importance of cultural heritage in contemporary society.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you're curious about how science and nature impact our understanding of the cultural landscape and decision-making processes. It delves into the intersection of scientific thought and cultural values, offering insightful discussions that could appeal to anyone interested in how data and narrative shape our world.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

Toooften, cultural leaders and policy makers want to chase the perfect metric foractivities whose real worth lies in our own personal experience. The majorproblem facing Australian culture today is demonstrating its value togovernments, the business sector, and the public in general.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Too often, cultural leaders and policymakers want to chase the perfect metric for activities whose real worth lies in our own personal experience. The major problem facing Australian culture today is demonstrating its value to governments, the business sector, and the public in general.

When did culture become a number? When did the books, paintings, poems, plays, songs, films, games, art installations, clothes, and the objects that fill our daily lives become a matter of statistical measurement? When did experience become data?

What Matters? intervenes in an important debate about the public value of culture that has become stranded between the hard heads (where the arts are just another industry) and the soft hearts (for whom they are too precious to bear dispassionate analysis).

It argues that our concept of value has been distorted and dismembered by political forces and methodological confusions, and this has a dire effect on the way we assess culture. Proceeding via concrete examples, it explores the major tensions in contemporary evaluation strategies, and puts forward practical solutions to the current metric madness.

The time is ripe to find a better way to value our culture by finding a better way to talk about it.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781925523805

Publisher: Monash University Publishing

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 01 August 2018

Country: Australia

Imprint: Monash University Publishing

Illustration: Illustrations

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Weight: 350g

Pages: 240

About the Author

Julian MeyrickΒ is a theatre director, historian and cultural policy analyst.Β He was Associate Director and Literary Adviser at Melbourne Theatre Company, 2002-07, where he established the new play development program, Hard Lines.Β Currently, he is Strategic Professor of Creative Arts at Flinders University, Artistic Counsel of the State Theatre Company of South Australia, and a member of both Currency House editorial committee and Council of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Board. He has directed more than forty award-winning theatre productions, and has written for the Conversation, Daily Review, InDaily, the Monthly and the Sydney Review of Books.Β His latest bookΒ Australian Theatre after the New WaveΒ was published by Brill last year. Dr Tully BarnettΒ is a Lecturer in English at Flinders University, and Research Fellow with the ARC Linkage project Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture. She has β€˜stuck with the trouble’ on digital humanities since multi-path novels on CD were a cool thing and publishes across cultural policy, digital humanities, and reading as a practice. She is the co-author of β€œCounting culture to death: an Australian perspective on culture counts and quality metrics” (2017) . She serves on the boards of the Australasian Association of Digital Humanities and the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres. Robert PhiddianΒ is a professor of English at Flinders University. His particular interest is political satire, from Jonathan Swift to John Clarke, and his words appear in media from academic journals and university presses toΒ Australian Book Review, theΒ ConversationΒ and radio. He was the founding director of the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres, and has been involved with the Adelaide Festival of Ideas since the event’s inception in 1999, thrice chair of the programming committee.

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