The cultural sector (arts, heritage and library agencies) receives increasing demands to articulate and evaluate outcomes of its work. These demands are challenging because of pervasive conceptions that the intangible nature of cultural activities makes them inherently unmeasurable, while their ‘intrinsic’ properties render them essentially valuable. This article addresses this challenge in positing a schema of measurable cultural outcomes of cultural engagement developed through literature analysis and an iterative Delphi-style stakeholder consultation. The outcomes are as follows: creativity stimulated; aesthetic enrichment experienced; knowledge, ideas or insight gained; diversity of cultural expression appreciated; and sense of belonging to cultural heritage deepened.

Contemporary public policy increasingly emphasises a focus on outcomes, the difference that occurs in the lives of citizens from policy and activity of government. Other contemporary imperatives for effective planning include: recognition of the values of the community whom plans serve, direction towards goals and objectives, utilisation of evidence, articulation of theories of change that underpin planning and responsiveness to evaluation. This article reports a desk‐based research project to assess how local government planning documents meet these imperatives. Two documents are examined for 67 councils across Australia: the major strategic document, council plan or other‐named document and the cultural development plan (CDP) or other‐named document that directs staff and investment aimed at cultural enrichment of the LGA. Findings indicate that the majority of councils’ documents appeared only concordant with one or two of these planning imperatives. No plan addressed more than three. Overall, council plans and cultural development plans did not clearly indicate their responsiveness to values of their communities, nor include objectives that formed measurable steps towards goals or formally refer to the use of evidence in decision‐making. No plans included theories of change to underpin decision‐making. This analysis indicates clear areas of improvement for planning for local governance.

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