INTRODUCTION. FROM INVISIBLE TO VISIBLE: CHALLENGES IN ASSESSINGTHE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT IN CREATIVE AND CULTURAL INDUSTRIES IN LATVIA: INTRODUCING THE SPECIAL ISSUE

In the context of public investment into culture and arts, an ever-present issue is that of impact measurement. The issue of impacts is often oversimplified, because of the need to express non-linear processes in linear, monetary terms (especially for policy purposes). On the one hand, there is a growing demand for evidence-based policy evaluation in this field [Evans 2005]. On the other hand, researchers have started a broader debate regarding intrinsic versus instrumental impacts of culture [Seaman 2020] leading to the debate on cultural value [Belfiore 2020]. Researchers also acknowledge that there is a lot of bad or unverifiable evidence of impact in cultural policy documents [Belfiore 2022], or they warn about hyperinstrumentalisation of cultural policy, where claims about the value of culture are irrelevant to political actors [Hadley and Grey 2017].