Unravelling cultural value

Unravelling cultural value has long been attempted from a number of perspectives but it remains substantially unresolved. The discussion is about accountability with proponents disagreeing on whether this means stewardship of the public and trustee purse or fundamental aesthetic values. There are many reasons for this lack of agreement and thus the cultural value debates remain vibrant and healthy. However, it is also a truism that cultural related literature has been slow to recognise that cultural value serves different masters: the audience, organisational interface, the organisation, and government control. In past debates, value measurement has had a government control focus using neo classical economics and accounting to define and measure the cultural industry. Artists and other cultural stakeholders in society have critiqued such measurement as inappropriate. This paper seeks to unify these two dimensions by providing a synergistic definition of cultural value, which is pertinent to cultural organisations, and offers a model of entrepreneurial cultural value balance for the audience, cultural organisations and government.