The Culture and Sport Evidence (CASE) programme was set up by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 2008, in collaboration with Arts Council England, English Heritage, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and Sport England.

CASE is the biggest mixed-methods culture and sport research programme ever undertaken. It provides the Arts Council and our partner organisations with the most robust evidence to date that the arts can contribute to wider social outcomes such as personal wellbeing. The research published so far comprises findings which will inform future decision-making by government and arms length bodies, including the Arts Council. Many of the findings demonstrate what we have long suspected but have not been able to prove along with some surprising results.

What has been published?

In July 2010 CASE published a suite of reports by Matrix Knowledge Group and the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre) looking at the drivers, impacts and value of engaging in culture and sport. A PowerPoint presentation outlining the main findings can be seen here.

The CASE programme has also produced reports that examine: 

  • the impact of engagement of children and young people in the arts, with a cover note by Catherine Bunting
  • the effectiveness of previous interventions designed to encourage engagement in culture and sport
  • fundraising in arts, culture, heritage and sport organisations
  • ways to support asset mapping in the culture and sport sectors
  • the social and economic impacts of investment in culture and sport
  • regional research needs in the culture and sport sectors

All of the above can be found on the CASE website.

In addition, the CASE programme has developed a number of valuable resources for local, regional and national policy-makers: 

  • a searchable database of over 5,000 research reports from around the world on the drivers, impacts and value of engagement in culture and sport
  • a model for predicting how levels of engagement in culture and sport will change with economic and demographic shifts and for estimating the likely impact of different policies to increase engagement
  • regional insights: a new and comprehensive set of culture and sport statistics at regional and local level including data on employment, investment, assets, participation, volunteering and tourism, with summary reports for each region
  • The CASE Local Culture & Heritage Profile Tool: providing local contextual data and culture and heritage data to help you think how you invest in culture and heritage locally
  • a toolkit to enable local and regional planners to map culture and sport assets within a nationally agreed framework

What this means for the Arts Council

The research published by CASE can help the Arts Council to further understand and demonstrate, among other things, what factors drive engagement in the arts and the impacts that engagement with the arts can have on the lives of people in England. After two years of work the CASE programme has been able to demonstrate the following headlines: 

  • childhood experience, education, age and socio-economic status are all important in predicting arts attendance and media consumption has a positive effect on arts attendance
  • older people from Black and minority ethnic groups are less likely to attend arts events but ethnicity has no effect on attendance by young people
  • there are direct learning impacts for young people who participate in structured arts programmes including positive increases in attainment (1-2 per cent), cognitive skills (16-19 per cent) and transferable skills (10-17 per cent )
  • there is emerging evidence of a relationship between arts attendance and wellbeing, with people's life satisfaction increasing the more they engage with the arts
  • the most effective way to increase engagement is to increase public education and promotion rather than reducing ticket prices or increasing the supply of arts programmes

The Arts Council will be using the detailed findings in the development of our work to encourage public engagement with the arts. In addition, we will be using the new Regional Insights database in our work with partners to improve local culture and sport delivery.

The CASE programme continues in 2011/12, with a major focus on business models in the culture and sport sectors.

Further information and all the publications to date are available on the CASE website: culture.gov.uk/case