Measuring Social and Cultural Infrastructure

Social and cultural infrastructure refers to the spaces and structures that bring people together and that can strengthen the social and cultural fabric of our communities.

The British Academy’s work in this area explores how social and cultural infrastructure can be understood and utilised by policymakers, and others, to reframe policy debates and to help achieve a range of policy aims. ​

A key component of work has been an investigation into how social and cultural infrastructure can be measured, and what a measurement framework could look like.

To achieve this, the Academy commissioned the Bennett Institute to conduct a major project to better understand how to measure the role that social and cultural infrastructure plays in the fabric of our societies.

The final report, 'Measuring Social and Cultural Infrastructure', starts by considering how social and cultural infrastructure can be identified in relation to some of the characteristics associated with all kinds of infrastructure. It then explores the challenge of measuring social and cultural infrastructure, and subsequently develops a framework for measuring the critical, yet often overlooked, assets, facilities and spaces of which it is formed. 

To ensure the framework can be used by a range of stakeholders, from national policymakers to community organisations, it is designed to be flexible and to be applicable at different spatial scales. To this end, rather than prescribing a strict methodology to follow or determining what kinds of data should be used, it prompts its users to reflect on their own skills, resources, and purpose when deciding upon how and what to measure.