Marjelle: Everyone wants to work with impact, everyone talks about it, but impact should be about the change you bring to society.
Heleen: But then it’s really about what it does to children, and we look at whether we need to adjust activities to achieve certain goals.
Anic in voice-over: This is Culture Shift, a podcast from DEN, the driver of digital transformation in the cultural sector. I am Anic van Damme, and in this series, I dive into the world of digital transformation. Because if there’s one thing we can’t ignore, it’s the growing importance of digital to make the sector future-proof. By keeping up with digital developments, you reach your audience now and in the future.
Digital transformation, as the term suggests, requires a change, a shift within your organization and in the sector in general. Fortunately, there are already many museums, theaters, and pop venues showing what’s possible. In this podcast, I visit these organizations and ask them about their successes and their pitfalls. Additionally, I speak with various experts who can tell me everything about the role of digital in culture. Because how do you reach a broader audience? And how can digital help you make an impact? You’ll hear it all in Culture Shift!
In this final episode, we will discuss impact. As a cultural organization, you can have a positive impact on people and society. A digital strategy can play an important role in this. More and more institutions are taking it seriously, and one of them is Cinekid. I visit their office at the Marineterrein in Amsterdam to talk with director Heleen Rouw about the impact they make and measure.
Arrival
Anic: Heleen, you are the director of Cinekid. Can you start by telling us what Cinekid is and what impact you want to make?
Heleen: Cinekid is a foundation, a non-profit organization, whose mission is that we believe film and media play an enormously significant role in children’s lives. And we develop activities that provide children with as many different perspectives from film and media as possible to help them become global citizens.
Anic in voice-over: Every October, they organize a festival where children can experience the latest films, games, and media installations. The rest of the year, Cinekid is also very active, organizing workshops for schools and increasingly trying to maintain an online presence. Digital is therefore very important to them.
Heleen: I think that for every mission, it is important to have a digital strategy, but specifically, our target group is children. Physical and digital are one and the same for them. So yes, the audience is very digitally mature. Well, not mature, but very engaged. So we have to relate to that, both in activities on one side and in contact, just in how you interact with each other.
We choose, as Cinekid, to encompass the entire chain of the youth content process, as we like to call it. That means that from the creation process to the presentation and participation process, we develop activities because strengthening that entire chain is necessary for it to be successful.
Anic in voice-over: Cinekid really wants to make an impact on youth and the entire youth content chain, and they are already doing well in steering towards that. Because you can’t just talk about impact; you have to actually do something with it. Impact is still too often used as a buzzword.
Marjelle: Everyone wants to work with impact, everyone talks about it, you hear it from the organizations themselves, cultural organizations, you hear it from funds, you hear it from the government. Even the Council for Culture is paying more and more attention to the concept of impact.
Anic in voice-over: You’re hearing Marjelle Vermeulen here. She is a researcher at Impact Center Erasmus, a research center at Erasmus University. She sees that the word impact is often thrown around, even when it might not always be justified.
Marjelle: I think many organizations talk about impact when it’s not actually their impact. I think impact is often confused with output. So those are very measurable things like the number of tickets sold, products sold. But whether you actually reach people doesn’t mean you’ve touched them or truly made an impact on them. Impact should be about the change you bring to society. Suppose you’re a music school and you teach students, then you could say: look, we give music lessons, and with that, we have an impact on those children. Well, the music lesson is just your business; it’s simply what you do. And the added value you can create for those students determines whether you truly achieve societal impact. How does the session they’ve had play a role in their lives, in the joy they have in making music, in the enrichment of music in their lives? That’s when you’re talking about impact. But the fact that we provide music education and thereby contribute to children’s cultural participation is not so much your impact; it’s just your business operations.
Anic in voice-over: Impact is not simply a few good sales figures; you really have to search for it.
Marjelle: So, if you want to pursue impact, really look at your own identity, your own purpose: who am I, why do I do it, for whom do I do it? And that’s what you should strive for.
Anic in voice-over: More and more cultural organizations are starting to focus on impact. It starts with impact thinking; it’s about a different mindset in your organization. Then you move on to steering towards that impact, and finally, you can also start measuring your impact. But why is it actually important to measure that impact?
Marjelle: If you invest a lot—your passion, time, finances—to achieve something specific, you naturally want to know if all your effort is worthwhile. Because all the soul and dedication you put into it—if you’re doing it from intrinsic motivation, you want to know if it has an effect. And if you have certain societal ambitions as a cultural organization, you also want to know how you can steer towards them as effectively as possible to make that impact even greater on your target audience.
Anic in voice-over: Cinekid has started with impact thinking, steering, and measuring. They want to introduce children to different perspectives through film and media, making them global citizens. An important part of their impact strategy is measuring.
Heleen: But then it’s really about: what does it do to children? So at a certain point, we identified which values we consider important to include people, particularly children, in the activities we develop as Cinekid.
Anic in voice-over: Cinekid enlisted the help of Impact Bureau Cigar Box to formulate a theory of change. This describes what Cinekid wants to achieve.
Heleen: We actually articulated this in a number of objectives. These are to amaze, entertain, critically view, develop taste, storytelling, and open worlds. These are the different values on which we evaluate all activities. Then you get a kind of web, a spiderweb, with all those points standing in a circle. During the research, you see where the spiderweb moves towards, and you can see which elements we are very strong in, per target group. And then you can look at whether we’re satisfied with that or want to change it.
Anic in voice-over: You then have your theory of change and know what you want to achieve, but how do you measure how it’s going?
Heleen: If you measure per activity, you choose very clearly: these activities we are going to measure, so we did that too. We said: we’ll measure the schools program during the festival, the professionals attending the three-day industry program, and we’ll conduct a public survey for the festival. We do this in Amsterdam because it’s convenient, and we also select two cities in the country where we hold the festival. So we decide in advance what’s achievable and possible, and that’s what we’ll do.
Anic: Maybe a bit of a silly question, but I’m genuinely curious. Do you also ask children to fill it out? Because my son wouldn’t be able to assess whether something critically viewed or opened worlds.
Heleen: No, we conduct the impact research in such a way that parents complete it together with their children. For schools, the teacher or educator tries to articulate it together with the children. Yes, because it’s indeed very difficult to ask children directly, so we’ve devised another way for that.
Anic in voice-over: Cinekid lets parents and teachers fill out a short survey together with the children. According to Marjelle, how you measure depends on the situation.
Marjelle: So, how you can measure impact also really depends on your organization’s needs and capacity.
Anic in voice-over: Think about what you’re researching and who your target audience is. Impact measurements can look different for everyone. Marjelle has a great example of this: the organization Women Connected, where she conducted impact research. Women Connected, together with the Rotterdam Library, launched the project 'The Flying Carpet.’ With this, they go into neighborhoods and try to connect women with each other. In the future, they also want to use more digital tools for this. The organization is small and caters to various women in Rotterdam, so you have to think carefully about how to conduct impact research with this target group.
Marjelle: We also participate as part of the group to see what’s happening with those women. The beauty of this is: you have to look at your target audience. These women are often vulnerable participants. You don’t want to hand them a sterile questionnaire; you want to interact with them to gather their experiences.
Anic in voice-over: But what insights do you gain from such research? Cinekid already has some clear results.
Heleen: Entertainment consistently ranks very high, as do storytelling and opening worlds, while critical viewing ranks slightly lower.
Anic: And then, after conducting your impact measurements and obtaining your results, how do those insights find their way into the organization? Do you adjust your working methods, and if so, how?
Heleen: This is very important for our annual evaluation of our activities, especially the festival. We use it to assess whether we’re satisfied because we set goals for those values in advance. If we were to prioritize critical viewing, for example, we would have to look at how we’ve structured the activity. Does it need more focus on critical viewing within the program experience? Our education department looks into how they can improve or change that.
Anic in voice-over: Impact has become an integral part of Cinekid’s operations. Goals are set, and areas for improvement are identified, which aligns with Marjelle’s recommendations for organizations working on impact measurement.
Marjelle: Organizations engage with impact for two reasons: to prove or to improve. If you start from a proof perspective, you risk reasoning towards desired outcomes. However, starting from an improve perspective allows you to learn and adjust, achieving genuine impact.
Anic in voice-over: We’ve discussed impact measurement, which can be challenging for smaller organizations. Marjelle notes that focusing on impact thinking and steering is equally important and accessible to smaller organizations.
Marjelle: Even without extensive resources, smaller organizations can work impactfully by adopting an impact-oriented mindset.
Anic in voice-over: Cinekid continues refining its digital strategy, emphasizing collaboration and audience engagement.
Heleen: Our digital strategy is integral to our overall strategy. We’ve made significant strides in internal digital processes, thanks to a collaborative team and a clear plan.
Anic: How did you acquire the knowledge to improve your digital infrastructure?
Heleen: We involved our team and hired a digital product manager. This role attracted individuals seeking meaningful work, enabling us to integrate digital transformation into our operations effectively.
Anic in voice-over: Marjelle emphasizes the importance of organizational buy-in for digital transformation and impact.
Marjelle: Ensure organizational support to align activities with your mission and make necessary adjustments.
Anic in voice-over: DEN offers resources like the Impact Awareness training to support organizations in their digital and impact journeys.
Marjelle: Sharing knowledge and fostering collaboration are crucial for advancing impact practices in the cultural sector.
Anic in voice-over: Impact is more than a buzzword; it requires active engagement and a shift in mindset. For more information on impact thinking, steering, and measuring, visit den.nl.
This was Culture Shift, a podcast from DEN, the driver of digital transformation in the cultural sector.
Also read the transcripts of the other episodes
- The audience of the future
- New creation and experience
- What is digital transformation?
- Digital accessibility and inclusion
- Impact Thinking, Steering, and Measuring
