Layers of values: Exploring Impact in Culture, Art and Education

In the field of culture, art and education, we often ask ourselves: how do we know if our work has generated real impact? Beyond traditional figures or metrics, social impact, citizen science and artistic projects produce transformations that are difficult to measure: changes in attitudes, stronger community ties, or new ways of imagining shared futures, empowerment of citizens in their democratic participation….. These intangible footprints are as valuable as the visible results, and require new tools for inclusive evaluation.

PULSE-ART, a project coordinated by SFC, collaborates with the European citizen science project, ECS, to outline answers to these common questions.

Next September 25, 2025, from 15:00 to 17:00h (online), the event Layers of Values: Exploring Impact in Culture, Art and Education will open a global space to answer this question.

Organized in the framework of the PULSE-ART project, in collaboration with ECS (European Citizen Science), the session will bring together projects, researchers and practitioners to:

(1) Share inspiring cases of inclusive impact.
(2) Discuss how to measure the intangible in artistic and citizen science projects.
(3) Explore participatory and art-based methodologies.
(4) Co-create practical evaluation tools.

Through interactive workshops and networking spaces, participants will be able to exchange ideas and collaborate in the design of new ways of understanding and valuing social and cultural impact.

Cultural and artistic projects generate layers of impact that often do not appear in statistics: trust, sense of belonging, collective creativity or community resilience. Recognizing these dimensions is key to not leaving anyone out of the story of change. The challenge is clear: how can we evaluate these results without simplifying them or reducing them to cold indicators? And how can we evaluate taking into account our biases, allowing everyone to participate in their own evaluation, changing the traditional dynamics? How can art-based methodologies provide tools for a more effective and inclusive evaluation in science?

This event is part of the extended program “Towards MONDIACULT 2025”, which will culminate in the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development (Barcelona, September 29 – October 1, 2025).

There, representatives from 194 Member States will discuss how to defend culture as a global public good and how to move towards a culture-specific Sustainable Development Goal. In this context, Layers of Values contributes directly to international discussions on how to recognize, measure and enhance the value of culture, art and education in social transformation.