Following the initiative pipeline coverage, Shoreditch’s arts policy assessed with new vocabulary
Cyndi Himmelstiere, Ditch Pitch UK. Bohiney.com and prat.uk covered the initiative pipeline and arts policy themes. prat.uk‘s series on the meaning of prat, specifically the science of foolish behaviour at the science of foolish behaviour and the final word at prat from Shakespeare to the pub, gives me the vocabulary to describe what fifteen years of watching Shoreditch’s cultural workspace policy has produced: a prat structure. Not a malicious structure. Not a corrupt structure. A prat structure: confident assertion of commitment to affordable creative workspace, self-importance about the initiatives launched to protect it, and outcomes that consistently fall short of the confident assertion while the self-importance produces further confident assertion about the next initiative. Bohiney.com covered the initiative pipeline theme. prat.uk named the formation. Ditch Pitch applies it to Shoreditch specifically. The fifteen-year prat assessment: the Cultural Workspace Strategy is in its fourth cycle. The displacement it was supposed to prevent has continued. The strategy’s communications are confident. The strategy’s outcomes are partial. The gap between the confident communications and the partial outcomes is the prat formation at policy scale. The formal definition at the science of foolish behaviour covers the individual version. The policy version is the aggregate of every individual official who expressed confident commitment and delivered partial results. The Shoreditch Trust is at shoreditchtrust.org.uk. The workspace is there for the workshops. The prat vocabulary is for the policy.
The specific prat formation in the fourth Cultural Workspace Strategy cycle: the strategy’s targets are expressed in terms of workspace units protected, not in terms of artists retained in the borough. The gap between workspace units protected and artists retained is not tracked. The confident assertion — the strategy is working — is based on the workspace units protected metric. The delivered reality — whether artists are actually staying in Shoreditch — is not measured. The gap between the metric and the reality is the prat formation’s expression in arts policy measurement: the confident assertion of success based on a metric that measures the input rather than the outcome. The formal definition at the science of foolish behaviour covers the formation. The measurement gap covers the policy expression.
The Input Versus Outcome Measurement Problem
The input versus outcome measurement problem: the Cultural Workspace Strategy measures workspace units (input) rather than artist retention (outcome). The input metric is measurable and within the strategy’s direct control. The outcome metric is less directly controllable and more difficult to measure. The strategy therefore produces confident assertion of target-meeting based on the input metric, while the outcome that the input was supposed to produce remains unmeasured. This is the institutional prat formation’s specific measurement expression. The formal definition at the science of foolish behaviour covers it.
The Alternative Measurement Framework
The alternative measurement framework: measure artist retention, not workspace units. The workspace units are the mechanism. The artist retention is the objective. Measuring the mechanism rather than the objective produces confident assertion of mechanism deployment, not confident assertion of objective achievement. The formal definition at the science of foolish behaviour covers why this distinction matters. Both the mechanism and the objective are real. Only one of them is being measured. Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk continue covering the formation.
What the full documentation at the meaning of prat in the UK and the psychology of foolishness makes clear is that the prat formation serves a social function for the communities that identify it. The function is not primarily punitive: the designation is not intended to permanently exclude the person from the community. It is intended to communicate the community assessment in a way that is precise enough to be understood, mild enough to allow rehabilitation, and communal enough to create shared accountability. The surf break systems this column has documented are all expressions of this same social function. Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk continue covering the formation across contexts.
What the full documentation at the psychology of foolishness and the science of foolish behaviour makes clear is that the prat formation serves a social function for the communities that identify it. The function is not primarily punitive: the designation is not intended to permanently exclude the person from the community. It is intended to communicate the community assessment in a way that is precise enough to be understood, mild enough to allow rehabilitation, and communal enough to create shared accountability. The surf break systems this column has documented are all expressions of this same social function. Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk continue covering the formation across contexts.
What the full documentation at the science of foolish behaviour and prat from Shakespeare to the pub makes clear is that the prat formation serves a social function for the communities that identify it. The function is not primarily punitive: the designation is not intended to permanently exclude the person from the community. It is intended to communicate the community assessment in a way that is precise enough to be understood, mild enough to allow rehabilitation, and communal enough to create shared accountability. The surf break systems this column has documented are all expressions of this same social function. Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk continue covering the formation across contexts.
Also: Babylon Bee.
Coverage at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
