Cognitive maps: a sustainable tool for impact evaluation

Abstract

The objective of the research on which this paper is based is to find out what impact Liverpool 08 will have on local cultural habitus, and how the sustainability of this impact can be measured and monitored. Too often, evaluation became a box‐ticking exercise for decision makers to demonstrate transparency and to objectively prove results. However, evaluations are usually ephemeral, and do not systematically integrate inputs from the end‐receivers/consumers of public policies. Decision makers prefer quantitative indicators, that are well known, easily applied and comprehensible to a broad audience, but leave out emotional and participatory aspects. Introducing a hermeneutical approach to understand the impacts of cultural policy allows access to the emotional and qualitative experience of policy impacts on everyday cultural life. This paper suggests that cognitive mapping turned into an evaluation method promotes residents as local experts on everyday construction of cultural space, and gives them an opportunity to participate in the evaluation process. The geography of the local population’s interaction with urban space as a creative force conveys emotional attachment to particular parts of the city, determines the essential elements for cultural life and space and its comparison to the city’s legitimised cultural space shows how far the bottom‐up and the top‐down approaches match: the smaller the gap between them, the higher the sustainability of cultural policy.