Social Capital and Social Impact

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Social Capital and Social Impact

• Kate Oakley
• Manchester, November 3rd 2006

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Drivers New Directions in Social Policy - MLA

• Explicit aim to promote engagement of sector with
  social policy issues
• Developing an evidence base of social impact
  EBP
• Advocacy and Partnership development at all
  levels
• What is the unique contribution that museums,
  libraries and archives can make?

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Evidence of social impacts - headlines

• MLAs contribute to the development of human and
  social capital
• Area based impacts regeneration or
  gentrification?
• Problems of aggregation the individual or the
  group?
• Using capital to make a difference

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Social capital key to producing a range of social
or public goods
Source IPPR (2006), adapted from Jochum et al
(2005)
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What the framework needs to do

• Capture outcomes related to individual learning
  that is in some ways socially applied/socially
  relevant
• Capture social capital formation
• Aggregate and present the evidence of both (i)
  and (ii) in a form that demonstrates to agencies
  outside the sector how museums, libraries and
  archives are contributing to a range of shared
  govt priorities related to social policy
• I.e. to use more of the language of govt while
  not getting to trapped by specific policies and
  programmes and not losing sight of the particular
  contribution that the sector can make!

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GLOs into GSOs
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Measuring social capital interactions between
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Evidencing the impact of the sector

• The framework and process can demonstrate that
  the sector has a bearing on a range of social
  outcomes in the form of
• individual and group socially applied/
  socially relevant knowledge, skills,
  understanding, values and attitudes (that
  occasionally translates into actions, behaviour
  and progression)
• social capital formation (meeting new people,
  improved access to services/resources etc)
• how museums, libraries and archives are changing
  and improving their services and responsiveness
  for users

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Limitations

• Difficulties in establishing baselines
• Impossibility of establishing causality
• Lack of control groups
• Lack of time
• So, important not to overclaim..

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Contact details

• kate_at_bop.co.uk
• kate.oakley_at_btopenworld.com