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Corporate Cultural Investments Are Finding Their Place in ESG Reporting

Deloitte’s European Art Assets Observatory has created a flexible framework for measuring the economic, social, environmental and organizational value that cultural assets and art collections create.

For a long time, culture was viewed at best as an economic driver, and more narrowly as a generator of tourism. Successful culture-led development strategies around the world have since shown that its impact can be far more structural. Over the longer term, culture can help build the capabilities, networks and opportunities that support the social and economic development of not only communities but even entire countries.

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Companies have accordingly begun to invest more deliberately in culture and the arts as part of an approach to corporate sustainability no longer confined to environmental performance but increasingly concerned with the positive, rather than extractive, impact a business can generate across society. Culture and creativity have emerged as strategic levers within corporate sustainability agendas, capable of advancing sustainable development, strengthening identity, enabling innovation and fostering deeper relationships with stakeholders and local communities. Artistic and cultural assets, once considered peripheral to a company’s core activities and often little more than an expression of a founder’s personal passion, are increasingly recognized as resources that contribute to sustainable value across several interconnected dimensions, from identity and social impact to innovation capacity and reputational resilience.

The key challenge is measurement. How can a company account for the value of something whose most important effects have long been considered intangible? More specifically, how can investment in arts and culture be translated into indicators that feed into ESG strategies, impact measurement and broader corporate reporting? Deloitte, in step with several other firms, has recently developed frameworks that make cultural impact more legible through measurable indicators, offering companies a way not only to justify existing investments in arts and culture but potentially to expand them. Cultural institutions themselves, particularly where they depend on a mix of public and private support, face growing demands for accountability and could put these frameworks to good use in making their case: measuring impact across different dimensions, in a form that can be communicated, is essential not only to justify the use of resources but also to attract funding and demonstrate broader, longer-term value creation.

The first step is to identify what should be measured along with the relevant benchmarks. As Donella Meadows put it, “Indicators arise from values (we measure what we care about), and they create values (we care about what we measure).” How to do that with culture and the arts hasn’t always been clear.

UNESCO’s general framework to measure the impact of culture

One of the most important general frameworks for measuring culture’s contribution to society is UNESCO’s Thematic Indicators for Culture in the 2030 Agenda, or Culture|2030 Indicators, designed to measure and monitor culture’s contribution to the national and local implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda. The methodology assesses culture not only as a sector of activity but also through the cross-cutting contributions it makes in different SDGs and policy areas, offering a shared conceptual and methodological model that can support strategic and operational decision-making both within cultural organizations and within organizations that invest in culture.

UNESCO’s framework comprises 22 indicators across four thematic dimensions: Environment & Resilience (culture’s relationship to heritage, sustainable settlements, public space, infrastructure, climate adaptation and resilience); Prosperity & Livelihoods (culture’s contribution to GDP, employment, cultural businesses, household expenditure, trade, public finance and cultural governance); Knowledge & Skills........

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