Making Value Matter in a Metrics Melee: Creative Arts and Design Higher Education's Dilemmas (insights from a Devolved Nation)

This paper offers reflective insights concerning the evolving governance milieu in which creative arts and design in higher education (CADHE) sits - drawn from a collaborative project (running 2017-19) which involved representation from seven creative discipline higher education environments in Scotland. The project was designed to look at how CADHE in a devolved context might move forward with articulating its impact in a manner that captures the value of the educational provision as much as the quality. To do this, the project tried to interrogate together, both the potential value of CADHE as implied in multiple policy arenas in Scotland and the evaluation of CADHE in terms of the enhancement of educational provision. Specifically, the project explored how mechanisms relating to both are affecting the way CADHE is being and could be valued and the dilemmas that this creates in a governance environment increasingly drawing on metrics to make funding decisions. A driver for the work of this project was the recognition of the growing influence of metrics in these spaces now in both higher education and the creative and cultural ecology. Another, was the likelihood of a future in which metrics play an even greater and more influential role