Ms Lynn Scarff:

I can also speak to the key performance indicators. We have been focused for so long on quantitative evaluation so the type of key performance indicators we are now looking at are much more qualitative in their basis. By their nature, these are more difficult to record. There has been some quite significant research done in a number of countries around health and well-being and its connection to depth of engagement in culture and how communities reach that culture. There are opportunities in how we evaluate our programmes and look, in particular, at methods of informal and non-formal learning and where our cultural institutions fit in that ecosystem. There may be young people who might find the formal learning structures of their school not necessarily as inspirational as a visit to their local museum. There is a question of thinking about those cultural institutions and our cultural ecosystem as somewhere we can measure the different elements. We are not just thinking about the number of primary schools coming in but rather follow-up studies on a long-term basis taking in the impact of a visit or workshop on a primary school group, for example, through the pupils' education. As Ms O'Kelly rightly points out, that kind of work takes resources because it is a little more long-term in nature but it allows us to start measuring our impact in a much more holistic way.

A focus on funding that kind of research to develop key performance indicators that speak to that depth of engagement is where we need to be.