BEYOND AUDIT CULTURE: A RHIZOMATIC APPROACH TO EVALUATING CULTURAL IMPACT

Abstract

The dominance of audit culture in cultural policy has led to evaluating socio-cultural centres primarily through quantifiable metrics, obscuring their relational and process-based forms of impact. This study critically examines conventional assessment frameworks and proposes Rhizomatic Impact Evaluation, an anthropologically informed, qualitative approach inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome. Drawing on ethnographic research with the European Network of Cultural Centres (ENCC), including interviews, surveys, and participatory workshops, I show how practitioners strategically navigate and resist imposed evaluation models by developing informal, alternative assessment practices. Findings illustrate how cultural impact emerges non-linearly through community narratives, adaptive collaborations, and social transformations, dimensions largely invisible in standard reporting. Rather than advocating for a singular paradigm shift, this article offers Rhizomatic Impact Evaluation as a methodological alternative, integrating relational, participatory, and context-sensitive methodologies that can coexist with conventional metrics and align evaluation more closely with the lived complexity of socio-cultural practices.