This paper offers an account of a social impact evaluation carried out for Turner Contemporary, a leading contemporary art gallery located in Margate, South-East England. The evaluation used the Social Return on Investment methodology (SROI), and accounts for the social value created by the gallery over the period 2015-2016. Although SROI has become increasingly popular as an evaluation tool, this is one of the few examples of SROI being used to understand the social impact of a contemporary visual arts gallery.

Given that social value has no ‘price’, the SROI method determines the monetary value of social outcomes by using financial proxies. In this way SROI principles set out to measure the social value created relative to the value of the resources invested. This gives a common measurement to assess the return on investment created by organisations and activities. The SROI methodology recognises that using monetary value does not capture the whole value that is created, and SROI reports are a blend of qualitative and quantitative evaluation. However, SROI remains a controversial method in the arts and culture sector and, as well as discussing the findings of the research, this paper also discusses the arguments for and against the method.

Dr Andrew Jackson is director of the COaST research group at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK. COaST comprises researchers, academics and practitioners who have a shared interest in evaluation methods for the arts and cultural sectors. He has led the evaluation of several key arts and culture projects in the UK.