Investing in Creativity: The “Investing Less Time in Reading” Version

By Katherine Gressel | Published: February 1st, 2012

This is a shortened version of my Arts Policy Library article on Investing in Creativity.

Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structures for U.S. Artists (2003), an Urban Institute publication authored by Maria-Rosario Jackson, Florence Kabwasa-Green, Daniel Swenson, Joaquin Herranz, Jr., Kadija Ferryman, Caron Atlas, Eric Wallner, and Carole Rosenstein, sheds light on the economic and employment situation of individual artists in the United States following the cessation of NEA funding to individual artists in 1995.  The report reflected several years of research, which included interviews with artists with arts leaders in nine cities, a national poll on attitudes towards artists, and expansion and analysis of a new NYFA Source database, in partnership with the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

Investing distinguishes itself by “providing a new and comprehensive framework for analysis and action, which views the support structure for artists in the United States as a system made up of six key dimensions of the environment in which an artist works:”

  1. Validation: The ascription of value to what artists do.
  2. Demand/markets: Society’s appetite for artists and what they do, and the markets that translate this appetite into financial compensation.
  3. Material supports: Access to the financial and physical resources artists need for their work: employment, insurance and similar benefits, awards, space, equipment, and materials.
  4. Training and professional development: Conventional and lifelong learning opportunities.
  5. Communities and networks: Inward connections to other artists and people in the cultural sector; outward connections to people not primarily in the cultural sector.
  6. Information: Data sources about artists and for artists.

This is a helpful framework for further research on artists’ conditions in any given region, and also marked a new understanding that it is not be enough to simply restore cuts to funding for artists.

Some especially salient findings and recommendations in the report are as follows:

  1. Individual artists are undervalued by society, in comparison to art itself. Artists’ societal contributions are not well understood, documented, or publicized—but if they were, it might be easier to make the case for allocating resources to individual artists.
  2. Individual artists feel overshadowed and neglected by large urban institutions, and are frequently left out of arts-based urban planning initiatives.
  3. There is a perceived inequality of opportunities for artists (such as exhibitions or awards programs) based on factors such as race/ethnicity, and art form.
  4. An artist’s career spans multiple markets and disciplines: this is especially important when assessing artists’ needs.
  5. Many artists face the economic uncertainties of irregular employment, lack of health insurance, and lack of affordable work or living space.
  6. Training in the practical side of working in the arts, and in specialized or hybrid fields like arts education/community work, is limited. Training should be expanded and diversified.
  7. Grants and awards need to be more accessible, equitable, and relevant for artists. An “information clearinghouse” with data on resources, and the capacity to support further research, would be helpful.
  8. Various arts organizations, arts councils, and artist networks are meeting some of these artists’ needs described above, but these organizations need strengthening.
  9. It is also important to cultivate stronger networks of people from both arts and non-arts fields advocating for artists’ needs.

Investing was commissioned by the Ford Foundation and supported by consortium of 37 other funders, some of whom were committed to acting upon the findings of the research. Therefore, the study is notable for having led directly to the development of several concrete initiatives to increase support for artists:

  1. A new NYFA Source online database allowing artists and other users to access customized, up-to-the-minute information on awards in all arts disciplines 24 hours a day
  2. The Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) initiative, a ten-year national initiative to improve the conditions for artists working in all disciplines. LINC funds, researches, and aggregates information about three core areas identified as key artist needs in the report: Creative Communities, Artist Space, and Health Insurance for Artists.
  3. Investing is also cited in the development of the United States Artists (USA) grant making program, which gives unrestricted $50,000 grants to artists in all disciplines.   

Investing in Creativity did raise several critical questions for me: first of all, whether it is problematic to build a case for increased support for individual artists so heavily on the idea that artists benefit society, when there was little research to back up this claim.  I also believe that Investing pinpoints many challenges in the employment system for artists, yet never suggests that an entirely new system is needed. Instead, the implication is that conditions for artists can be improved through better information-gathering, networking, and training.

Whether or not the fundamental situation for artists has changed significantly since this report’s publication, Investing at least paves the way for more dramatic changes by suggesting ways in which the existing nonprofit sector can be better equipped to meet artists’ needs.

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Arts Policy Library: Investing in Creativity

By Katherine Gressel | Published: February 1st, 2012

Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structures for U.S. Artists (2003), an Urban Institute publication authored by Maria-Rosario Jackson, Florence Kabwasa-Green, Daniel Swenson, Joaquin Herranz, Jr., Kadija Ferryman, Caron Atlas, Eric Wallner, and Carole Rosenstein, sheds light on the economic and employment situation of individual artists in the United States following the cessation of NEA funding to individual artists in 1995.  While not the first study on individual artists, it distinguishes itself by “providing a new and comprehensive framework for analysis and action, which views the support structure for artists in the United States as a system made up of six key dimensions of the environment in which an artist works.” Commissioned by the Ford Foundation and supported by consortium of 37 other funders, the study is notable for having led to the development of several concrete initiatives to increase support for artists, among them a comprehensive NYFA Source database and the Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) initiative.

SUMMARY

The report begins with the premise that artists bring value to society, but “the public often views the profession of ‘artist’ as not serious. The way artists earn a living may seem frivolous, and artists are often seen as indulging in their own passions and desires which bear no relation to the everyday experiences of most workers. This too contributes to a devaluing of the artist as a citizen with the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else.” Investing asserts that artists should receive the same consideration and benefits as any other professionals.

Background and Methodology

 Investing in Creativity reflects several years of research, including:

  • Case studies of artists in nine cities (the primary source of data), featuring interviews with more than 450 people. The cities–Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C–were selected based on their large populations of artists, as well as the interest shown in the study by funders in those cities.
  • A corresponding rural inquiry with two components: interviews with artists, arts administrators and funders operating in rural areas in California; and the convening of conferences of artists, arts administrators, funders and community leaders in rural areas in Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Maine, California, Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina.
  • Expansion and analysis of an of a comprehensive database – NYFA Source – that provides national and local information on awards and services for artists, through a partnership with the New York Foundation of the Arts.
  • A national poll of attitudes toward artists in the United States as well as site-specific polls in case study cities. This poll addressed additional issues related to demand for what artists do and how they are valued (or not) in our society.
  • Advisory meetings with artists, leaders in diverse sectors of the arts, and researchers. The study authors attended various conferences and professional meetings for artists, vetted preliminary research findings at conferences, and continually investigated research in related areas.

Investing considers geographic location the primary framework in which to assess the supports available to artists –i.e., what is available in the artist’s local community.  Recognizing that the cultural sector “doesn’t operate in a vacuum,” parts of the study also examine the arts in non-“arts” settings. For the purposes of the study, “artists” were defined as “adults who have received training in an artistic discipline/tradition, define themselves professionally as artists, and attempt to derive income from work in which they use their expert artistic vocational skills in visual, literary, performing, and media arts.”

Key Findings

One of the most important conclusions of Investing was that simply restoring cuts to government funding would not be enough to improve artists’ overall conditions. Instead, the research identified six core elements of an artist’s support structures:

  1. Validation: The ascription of value to what artists do.
  2. Demand/markets: Society’s appetite for artists and what they do, and the markets that translate this appetite into financial compensation.
  3. Material supports: Access to the financial and physical resources artists need for their work: employment, insurance and similar benefits, awards, space, equipment, and materials.
  4. Training and professional development: Conventional and lifelong learning opportunities.
  5. Communities and networks: Inward connections to other artists and people in the cultural sector; outward connections to people not primarily in the cultural sector.
  6. Information: Data sources about artists and for artists.

Investing in Creativity is broken into chapters on each of the six elements, each one describing in detail past research, current conditions, and future recommendations for each area. Rather than summarize each section individually, I will present what I see as the most salient themes in the overall findings:

Individual artists are undervalued by society, in comparison to art itself: while 96% of Americans value art in their communities and lives, only 27% value artists. This statistic is cited constantly in subsequent articles referencing this report.

Individual artists feel overshadowed and neglected by large urban institutions. Even institutions meant to serve local communities may not offer sufficient presenting or employment opportunities for local contemporary artists. Furthermore, “a general observation in all…cities was that on many fronts New York City sets the standards for critical review,” sometimes at the expense of developing a “local artistic heritage.”  The authors urge the cultivation of stronger regional support systems.

Individual artists are frequently left out of arts-based urban planning initiatives (which tend to emphasize “large institutions and the traditional artist-audience relationship”): “Our review of city and cultural plans revealed that they tend to focus on the physical infrastructure of presentation venues –often to the neglect of artists’ contributions and needs.”

Artists’ societal contributions are not well understood, documented, or publicized, partly because of the inability of busy arts administrators to engage in reflective practice around this topic.  Investing makes frequent mention of “the various ways in which artists contribute to society – as community leaders, organizers, activists, and catalysts for change, as well as creators of images, films, books, poems, songs, and dances” but acknowledges a lack of substantive data to back up these claims.   Investing implies that if artists’ social and economic contributions were better understood and documented, it would be easier to make the case for supporting individual artists in various areas—for example, why artists need affordable workspace space as much as other low-income or “at risk” populations.

There is a perceived inequality of opportunities for artists (such as exhibitions or awards programs) based on factors such as race/ethnicity, and art form. For example, “several artists of color felt that large organizations seek them out only during designated times – such as Black History Month or Cinco de Mayo,” and folk artists and artists working in new media/technologies felt that mainstream galleries do not have structures in place for exhibiting their work. The study comments that “demographic, artistic, and career-stage diversity are not well served through mainstream awards, arts criticism, and media coverage.”

An artist’s career spans multiple markets and disciplines: “Artists do their work – sometimes simultaneously, sometimes over the course of their careers – in and across various parts of the arts and other sectors.” The report compares artists’ experiences across the nonprofit, commercial, public, and informal arts sectors. For example, the nonprofit sector is more conducive to risk-taking than the public or commercial sector. The sectors also interact; for example, artists may pursue more lucrative commercial work to support their more experimental nonprofit work.  Furthermore, many artists contribute to non-arts fields like health and education, but this so-called “hybrid” work often goes unnoticed and lacks clear evaluation criteria.  

Networks are extremely important in artists’ career advancement and support. Networks are, in fact, key to obtaining almost every type of resource in the six categories. While peers and “intermediaries” such as agents were most often mentioned by interview participants, partners outside the arts community are also essential arts advocates (such as anthropologists who ascribe value to immigrant artists’ work, or local sheriffs supporting artist-in-prisons programs). Partnerships with professionals in fields like real estate development or city planning can be especially valuable to artists, since artists usually lack the knowledge and skills to advocate for themselves in those arenas.

Many artists face the economic uncertainties of irregular employment.  Some of the report’s findings on artists’ employment and material supports—that artists make little income from their creative work, juggle multiple part-time jobs to support themselves, and lack decent health insurance coverage in relation to the national average—are no surprise.  Access to affordable work and living space is one of the major struggles. Contrary to popular belief, however, there is “little evidence that artists get a ‘thrill’ from risk-taking, or that they underestimate the extremely long odds of winning the jackpot of commercial success.” Rather, “artists feel an inner drive or calling to become and remain working artists, whatever challenges they may face.”

Grants and awards need to be more accessible, equitable, and relevant for artists. The report’s section on funding aggregates data on the different types of competitive awards offered specifically to individual artists, through a partnership with the New York Foundation of the Arts’ Visual Artists Information Hotline (which was to become NYFA Source). This section contains the most comprehensive quantitative data, as summarized in the tables below:

As seen in the above charts, this analysis identified clear discrepancies in awards available to artists; for example, “the small number of awards available to artists making work that does not neatly fit into categories based primarily on Western European standards is a problem.” Awards are also unevenly distributed according to artistic discipline and geographic region.

Many artists choose not to participate in the awards process, citing the difficulty of applying, the unlikely chance of winning, or the feeling of exclusion.

Training in the practical side of working in the arts, and in specialized or hybrid fields like arts education/community work, is limited in traditional universities. Training for artists should not be limited to artistic skills alone, but should encompass business skills and specialized skills for the “hybrid” sector. Especially notable is the fact that “unlike programs in law, medicine, and business, arts training institutions often do little job-matching and placement of their graduates.”

Various arts organizations, arts councils, and artist networks are meeting some of these artists’ needs described above, but these organizations need strengthening. In each of the six categories, the report cites some examples, in different cities, of helpful organizations and resources. However, programs that serve individual artists’ needs are vulnerable to funding cuts. Furthermore, sometimes organizations offer professional development for artists outside the scope of their regular programming, in a way that is not sustainable.

Investing in Creativity concludes with several “priorities for action”:

  • Encourage better public understanding of who artists are, what they do, and how they contribute to society. This involves moving beyond an “art for art’s sake” argument for individual artist support.
  • Strengthen artist-focused organizations that are already addressing the critical functions and deficiencies the study has identified.
  • Establish broad-based networks of stakeholders at national, regional and local levels and convene those who are already working to improve artists’ support structures.
  • Create an information clearinghouse that brings together existing research and data and can capture new information. Partner with university departments and policy research organizations doing similar research in all the fields identified as important.
  • Strengthen the capacity of artists to advocate on their own behalf for the many crucial aspects of their support structure.
  • Cultivate existing and potential diverse markets for what artists do and make—especially hybrid markets.
  • Encourage changes in artists’ training and professional development to better address the realities of the markets in which they operate.
  • Strengthen the awards and grants system by making the application process less cumbersome and more responsive to different artists’ needs.

The report ends on a hopeful tone, suggesting that its findings will “help to illuminate the condition of artists as well as promote the creation of a more comprehensive and robust environment making possible their contributions to society.”

 

ANALYSIS

Investing in Creativity provides a comprehensive summary of previous research on artists, new findings, and current gaps in our knowledge. It also suggests new ways to approach researching individual artists. Investing is thorough because of its research not only on what artists think, but on how artists are perceived by others. Because it was a multi-city study, encompassing not just diverse urban communities but rural regions, Investing has the capacity to highlight similarities and distinctions between different regions, and identify nationwide trends.  As I will discuss shortly, Investing also led to the development of some concrete initiatives to help artists.

Despite these strengths, one of my main critiques of Investing is its failure to provide more detail on how the research was carried out. For example, while the report describes “fieldwork through more than 450 extended interviews with artists, arts administrators, arts funders, critics and media representatives, and selected persons outside the cultural sector, and in 17 focus group discussions around the country,” it does not provide any information on the selection of these groups. Similarly, the report lacks detail on how the national poll on attitudes about artists was distributed, and who actually filled it out (and whether the respondents can be considered a representative sample). At the least, appendices in the report showing the poll and focus group questions would have been helpful.  Instead, the figures and charts from NYFA Source data are the most comprehensive quantitative information provided.

The framework for understanding and meeting artists’ needs is arguably the most helpful result of this study, as well as its emphasis on the overlapping spheres in which artists function. For example, recognizing that artists may work in more than one arts (or non-arts) sector is the first step for training artists in more viable career paths, or for building the types of services and networks that are appropriate for artists’ varied careers. The framework itself can be used in any geographic region in the future, to assess ability to attract and retain artists, and to identify opportunities for improvement.

The suggested action steps for arts organizations in the report are rather general, though the authors claim that they are not aiming to make a comprehensive set of recommendations. As I will explore in the “Implications” section, most of these suggestions have to do with strengthening access to opportunities for artists through better networking, cross-sector partnerships, information-sharing, and training, rather than radically altering the system of artist funding and employment.

The report was designed for its findings to be disseminated and funneled into concrete actions through continued partnerships with the funders and arts leaders in the different geographic regions of study. In this respect, it was remarkably successful, perhaps one of the most successful arts research initiatives in history. Three outcomes in particular—the expansion of the NYFA Source artist opportunities database from the New York Foundation for the Arts; the creation of the ten-year grantmaking and research initiative Leveraging Investments in Creativity; and the birth of the United States Artists grantmaking program—show a study whose impacts are still being felt long after its original publication.

Expansion of NYFA Source

According to NYFA’s website, NYFA Source originated as a phone service, the Visual Artist Information Hotline, founded in 1990. When this hotline caught the attention of the Urban Institute in 2000 during its research for Investing, UI collaborated with Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Arts Management and Technology to create the new NYFA Source online database. According to the NYFA Source website:

The new database was conceived with several new features in mind. First, it was expanded to include programs serving artists working in all disciplines. Second, it was built as an online database allowing artists and other users to access customized, up-to-the-minute information 24 hours a day. And finally, it was built to enable funders and researchers to acquire information about patterns and trends in artists’ support…Today, NYFA continues to research and update information in NYFA Source…Additionally, as part of NYFA Source’s ongoing development, UI will regularly produce analytical reports about the patterns of support represented in the database. These reports will enable the arts field to monitor trends over time.

NYFA.org, which includes NYFA Source, is an essential resource for artists and organizations today, with information about more than 8,000 opportunities and resources available to artists in all disciplines. NYFA.org, much more than just an online awards database, is now functioning as what the report’s authors might consider an “information clearinghouse” convening a “broad based network of stakeholders.” As its website suggests, NYFA Source is also used for research purposes, to allow the continued monitoring of opportunities available to artists. According to Investing’s  principal investigator Maria-Rosario Jackson, the Urban Institute did a follow-up assessment of NYFA Source in 2009, which verified its continued suitability for research.

Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC)

Investing led directly to the creation of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC), a ten-year national initiative to improve the conditions for artists working in all disciplines. LINC funds, researches, and aggregates information about three core areas identified as key artist needs in the report: Creative Communities, Artist Space, and Health Insurance for Artists.  According to Jackson, many of Investing’s 30+ funders, in particular the Ford Foundation, were committed in advance to “doing something about the results of this study,” though they left this open, based on what the study would reveal.

Reports/findings published since Investing, available on LINC’s website, illuminate examples of Investing’s recommendations put into practice. Most notably, the 2010 publication “14 Stories” summarizes the impact of LINC’s Creative Communities program in fourteen different cities.  The programs, run by local arts nonprofits usually in partnership with non-arts agencies, are all providing a broad range of services for artists, strengthening training, networking, and material support opportunities.

One example is Cleveland’s CPAC – the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. In a region striving to retain a vibrant artist community in the face of economic depression and unemployment, CPAC used its $190,000 LINC grant to found Artrepreneur, which sought to “treat artists like entrepreneurs.” In partnership with COSE, the Council of Small Enterprises, Artrepreneur morphed into the COSE Arts Network.  “Over the course of three years, nearly 500 artists have either joined COSE outright or been reclassified as artists within the existing membership.”  In exchange for annual dues, COSE helps artists access things like discounted health insurance, business and marketing workshops, and networking events.

LINC also conducts periodic research in target areas. One main area is health care; in 2009 LINC commissioned Helicon Collaborative to design and conduct an online survey of artists, administered through 40 different artist service organizations across the United States. Another study was conducted in 2010, forecasting the potential impact of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) on artists. Both studies also incorporated general data on artists’ employment. The findings in this report imply that artists’ overall insurance and work conditions have not changed substantially since Investing’s publication in 2003.  For example, “artists who earn from 21%-80% of their income from their artwork are those most likely to earn under $20,000 a year…and are likely to have inadequate health care.” The report goes on to describe changes that could occur under PPACA and the crucial role of arts service organizations in equipping artists with information and assistance.

Whether or not artists’ conditions have fundamentally changed as a result of LINC’s work, it is commendable that Investing resulted in a structure for continually updating research in core areas, especially as new federal policies have arisen. Unfortunately, LINC’s 10-year run is slated to end in 2013, so this banner will need to be taken up by someone else if it is to continue beyond next year.

United States Artists Grants

Investing in Creativity highlighted the importance of large, unrestricted grants: “Many respondents told of the life-changing impact of a large fellowship and, more generally, of the relief from constant fund raising that a large grant provides…As well as remarking on the value of large grants, many respondents made the related point that they value grants of long duration, because they provide some relief from the uncertainty of having to continually piece together a living. Specifically, respondents indicated that they want multi-year funding.” This particular element of Investing is cited in the development of the United States Artists (USA) grant making program, which gives unrestricted $50,000 grants to artists in all disciplines.

IMPLICATIONS

Despite the commendable efforts and increased awareness that resulted this study, the report itself raised a few important questions for me:

Is it problematic to build a case for increased research and support for individual artists so heavily on the idea that artists benefit society? 

Investing claims at its outset to be more focused on “artists’ contributions to society” than previous studies (and makes the broad recommendation that such contributions need to be better understood), but the report doesn’t offer many ideas for how to conduct such research—most of its statements about artists’ contributions seem to be assumptions or generalizations. The study is much stronger in its analysis of the working conditions, material supports and training available to artists.  Though the purpose of Investing was not to develop a methodology for studying artists’ societal impact, is it dangerous to put so much emphasis on investing resources in an area that may not be easily researchable? There is a sort of chicken or egg dilemma in this report: the researchers seem to be relying on the “value of artists to society” argument to justify putting time and money into researching how to serve artists better—including researching the very question of why artists should be valued.

As an example: the chapter about artist space states, “In response to the question of why artists should get special treatment [around affordable space] when others are dealing with similar issues, for example, the case often rests on the assertion that artists are somehow special and intrinsically valuable to a community. This entitlement argument does not resonate particularly well with city planners when there is no hard evidence to back it up.” The report goes on to say,

The social impact argument that artists contribute to various aspects of community improvement such as social capital and civic engagement, crime prevention, youth development, and education is potentially the most persuasive to people who are already stakeholders in a community or potential stakeholders.  But it cannot be made very strongly as yet because the contributions of artists are not well documented but rest largely on anecdotal evidence.

While the report does not offer any specific formulas for how to measure the contributions of artists, it suggests ways that the public can interact with and understand artists better, such as arts education and open studio programs.

I agree with the authors’ assessment that artists make important contributions to communities and deserve to be valued and treated as productive citizens. But I would also worry about this type of argument resulting in a bias toward supporting artists whose work has more obvious “functional” benefits, i.e. artists who teach youth, or create projects that generate a lot of tourism revenue in obvious ways.

To what extent does the report advocate for a radical overhaul of the current system?

Investing in Creativity pinpoints many challenges in the employment system for artists, yet never suggests that an entirely new system is needed. Instead, the implication is that conditions for artists can be improved through better information-gathering, networking, and training.  But should we still only be “training” artists on how to get by in an employment system that is fundamentally flawed?

Investing mentions, in passing, some past government programs that provided more stable artists’ employment. For example, many older artists interviewed for this study lamented the end of the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) of the 1970s. CETA opened up many new employment opportunities, even though “it was not an explicit arts-directed program.” I found myself wishing for more discussion of how CETA operated, and whether the United States government could institute something similar today, perhaps even a discussion of the WPA programs for artists of the Great Depression.  Investing does not seem to call for a major shift in federal policy toward artists; instead it is primarily focused on strengthening local communities.

Arguably, the advent of social media, crowdfunding, and other recent, market-driven technological developments have had more impact on the way artists do their work than the policy-driven interventions coming out of this study. The report could not have anticipated the widespread use of social media platforms among artists in the years following 2003, but at least it highlighted the importance of online information resources like NYFA Source.

Another recurring theme in the report is that while there are some good awards and service organizations available to artists (for example, Creative Capital in NYC, CellSpace in San Francisco), they are not distributed proportionately to the number of artists in need. Even if artists were better trained in accessing resources, would there be enough to go around?   For example, if the award application process were made even more accessible to artists across the board, would this just mean that more artists would apply and competition would be even steeper?

I was especially intrigued by the question, posed briefly by the report, of how artists can be better trained for sustainable employment, i.e. through university-level programs in more specialized fields like community arts—and how organizations can tailor mutually beneficial jobs towards artists. Some of the report’s most compelling personal accounts are from artists whose  “day jobs” (even those completely unrelated to the arts) are actually favorable to their creative development.  For example, teaching jobs where school administrations encourage integrating art into the classroom. Other artists find inspiration for their artwork’s content in mundane service industry jobs. This “day job” discussion has interesting implications for the field: for example, what if arts organizations designed more staff positions for artists that allow them to both work steadily in a teaching or administrative capacity, and receive things like health benefits and workspace in exchange? Should all artists be trained in more lucrative professions that can be done side by side with their artistic work? Beyond a limited number of unrestricted grantmaking initiatives, could there be other programs that pay artists to do creative studio work without a tangible end product?

Based on my own observations of artists, and current debates around artists as a creative labor force (for example, those raised by the Occupy Wall Street movement), it seems like the fundamental situation for artists has not changed significantly since this report’s publication—artists still face issues like underemployment, lack of affordable space, and the burden of grantwriting to support their non-commercial work. Nevertheless, Investing at least paves the way for more dramatic changes by suggesting ways in which the existing nonprofit sector can be better equipped to meet artists’ needs.

 

Further reading:

  1. LINC’s recommended research reports
  2. Maria-Rosario Jackson, Revisiting Selected Themes from the “Investing in Creativity” Study, The Urban Institute, 2009
  3. NEA Cultural Workforce forum, Friday, November 20, 2009 (which featured Jackson as a presenter)
  4. NYFA’s website contains up-to-date information about NYFA Source, as well as other listings helpful to artists, and recent articles about the business side of the arts that are helpful to all types of individual artists.
  5. Createquity, On the Arts and Sustainability
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Around the horn: Anyone but Mitt edition

By Ian David Moss | Published: January 30th, 2012

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – DOMESTIC

  • A professor’s quest to overturn a portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that placed certain foreign works back under copyright after they had already entered the public domain appears to have reached an end.
  • The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is thinking about trying out social impact bonds.
  • Looks like there were some shenanigans behind the construction of the High Line, NYC’s well-known elevated park. Reminiscent of James Gray’s The Yards, if anyone saw that movie.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – INTERNATIONAL

ALL ABOUT PHILANTHROPY

  • GiveWell details how charity regulations in various countries make donating to top-rated international charities more difficult than it should be.
  • The Craigslist Foundation is shutting down.
  • Most foundation leaders have trouble converting evaluation results into “meaningful insights.”

IN THE FIELD

  • More on Opera Boston’s sudden demise late last year.
  • Bye bye Detroit Children’s Museum.
  • Yikes! longtime conductor, author, and inspirational TED talker Benjamin Zander was let go by the New England Conservatory this month over a cover-up involving a videographer who was a convicted sex offender, as NEC clearly wanted no part of any Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky redux.
  • LA Opera joins those trying out the dynamic pricing route.
  • Interesting new curator time share model being pioneered by the Detroit Institute of Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
  • When the IRS dumped hundreds of thousands of organizations from the nonprofit rolls last year, people hardly batted an eye – mostly because they assumed those organizations (who had failed to file required forms for three years in a row) were either no longer active or not accomplishing any good if they were. Yet my cultural asset mapping work has suggested that at least some of those organizations who had their tax-exempt status stripped were real and continuing to provide public programs. Thomas A. Kelley provides one such example in this account of an African American community center that is fighting to get its nonprofit status back.
  • Jerome Weeks notes the difficulty that Dallas-area arts organizations are having with recruiting top leadership talent, and correctly follows the breadcrumbs to the lack of attractive opportunities for earlier-stage arts professionals:

    Jose Bowen says one reason the pickings remain thin is that the starting jobs for arts management graduates generally don’t pay well. And the punishing costs of college don’t help, either. Bowen is dean of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts. It’s one of the few that offers a double master’s degree in arts management – in the arts and business administration.

    Bowen: “Our students graduate and are immediately faced with a choice. Come work for Goldman and make more money or go work for a nonprofit and make less money. And when you have loans, right out of school? That’s a hard choice to make.”

    It’s really very simple, people. If senior leaders with demonstrated records of accomplishment don’t want the job, it’s time to consider either senior leaders without demonstrated records of accomplishment, or junior leaders who haven’t had a chance to demonstrate accomplishment yet. If arts professionals below the leadership ranks are never given an opportunity to take initiative, manage people, or own projects in their roles, they’re never going to be in a position to fill those positions effectively, after the person who did so for so long is gone. And that’s assuming they stick around on low salaries waiting for their big break. Something to think about.

BIG IDEAS

  • I’ve been wondering for a while about the effect on the bottom line that election season must have for struggling traditional media companies – especially in the wake of the Citizens United decision. Well, Dave Copeland takes that thought further and notes how well-positioned online audience gatekeepers – such as Google – are to benefit from campaign ads.
  • ArtsJournal hosted one of its blog debates last week called Lead or Follow, featuring Diane Ragsdale, Michael Kaiser, and others.  Doug McLennan continues to experiment with the form of these fora, and though I don’t think he’s quite nailed the perfect formula yet, the process is fascinating to watch. As background to this conversation, the Wallace Foundation published 54 stories of audience engagement arising from its Wallace Excellence Awards grant program from the previous decade, as well as four more in-depth case studies on its own site.
  • Is your brain constantly bloated because it’s trying to take in too much information? Maybe you should go on an information diet! Beth Kanter reviews what looks to be an important book for folks like me who are constantly trying to drink from the fire hose.

RESEARCH CORNER

  • Add a feather to Randy Cohen’s cap: the Americans for the Arts researcher’s National Arts Index project has inspired an imitator across the pond, the UK Arts Index. (h/t Mark Robinson)
  • Kickstarter is out with its annual project stats. Kickstarter projects attracted nearly $100 million in pledges in 2011! Also of note, the number of high-volume donors (people who contribute to hundreds of projects a year and presumably seek them out as a kind of hobby) is growing.
  • Nonprofit Finance Fund is conducting its fourth annual survey of nonprofits, analyzing how they are responding to and recovering from the financial crisis. The survey is anonymous and takes 10-15 minutes to fill out, and they’re looking for as many respondents as possible. They are taking responses through February 15 and you can participate here.
  • Look out, American Red Cross! GiveWell is on the warpath to get you to release your evaluation of your own organization’s relief efforts in Haiti.

ETC.

  • We haven’t had any silly links in Around the Horn for a while. Well, that’s about to change…
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Occupy and the Arts: Curating by Consensus in Lower Manhattan

By Katherine Gressel | Published: January 25th, 2012

In late September 2011, I started following Occupy Wall Street’s (OWS’s) Arts and Culture committee with the goal of understanding, and critiquing, its organizational structures for a Createquity article. However, I soon found that the same way the movement as a whole resists neatly following one set of demands (though its anti-corporate greed and income disparity message has always been clear), its Arts and Culture activities resist falling into one organizational model—or at least the systems are constantly evolving. This is especially the case now, well into the movement’s post-physical occupation phase. At first I thought this might present barriers to participation for artists, or to arts administrators and curators seeking to donate their organizational skills. Yet I eventually came to believe this looseness could be one of the Arts & Culture movement’s strengths—or at the very least, it has opened up a fertile space for debate about an alternative, “Occupied Art World.”

An early sign in Zuccotti Park, September 2011

The early days: Occupation as Art and “Curating by Consensus”

The OWS movement’s inception resulted from a poster call to action by the alternative media organization Adbusters, and as many other writers have noted, arts and culture were nearly inseparable from the core actions of the movement as the encampment at Zuccotti Park grew. Early on, critics like Martha Schwendener in the Village Voice were quick to describe the park occupation itself as “a kind of art object: a living installation or social sculpture,” blurring the lines between art and life. Richard Kim in The Nation described in detail the symbiotic relationship of an Arts and Culture (A&C) working group to various life-sustaining activities in a “culture rich” Liberty Plaza during the occupation’s heyday. A&C subgroups like the Puppetry Guild added a critical visible dimension to rallies and marches, including bringing OWS to the Halloween Parade. Powerful graphic images have helped spread OWS’s message over the social media airwaves.

A Facebook post by the OWS-sympathetic arts nonprofit Creative Time in late-September first brought me (and a group of other intrigued artists/curators) down to Zuccotti Park for an organized discussion about how outside artists can get involved in the movement.  This was my first introduction to the now-famous “people’s mic,” as all members of an expanding group echoed and amplified each individual participant’s brainstorms for art actions, then finally tried to reach consensus about a name for a unique art happening (at the time, the group settled on “Occupennial,” with its tone of art world satire). At this meeting, I recognized that truly joining and understanding this movement would take patience—but at the same time, there was something very liberating about this group of both established artists and curators and unknown recent college graduates where no one revealed their job title, tried assert their superiority, or asked for anyone else’s credentials.

The weeks that followed certainly brought some growing pains of what I initially perceived to be a “curating by consensus” model for art production. At another early outdoor meeting of the “Occupennial” committee, new passersby kept joining the circle and re-raising questions such as whether established “art world” professionals should be actively recruited for OWS art shows (see more on this in Art Fag City).  Group participants questioned whether there was even a need for the group to exist, making any type of planning difficult. This early tension over whether arts and culture should be treated separately from other movement-oriented activity later reappeared in a more recent Nation article: “a certain suspicion regarding art as a specialized realm is encoded into the DNA of OWS.”  Ultimately, rather than put on its own art event, Occupennial instead evolved into Occupy with Art, an online clearinghouse for all OWS-related art activities that also helps organize select occupation-sympathetic projects.

All official OWS groups resist hierarchical leadership in favor of the consensus-based, “horizontal” decision-making model of the NYC General Assembly (GA) (for more detail on this, see Hyperallergic’s October 20 post explaining the A&C meeting process). I have attended meetings where artists’ ideas were blocked by only a few group members, or discussed for over an hour with no agreement. Early on, I also found myself wondering if OWS could provide a viable model for the arts—or if it was in fact hampering artistic freedom and artistic quality.

Occupying Artistic Practice

However, when I decided to participate in the movement as an independent artist while the park occupation was still going strong, I found the opposite to be true. While there is a proposal vetting process within OWS for artists seeking financial and volunteer support for their projects, individual artists and artist groups do not need to go before A&C at all in order to do their own projects that align with the movement. I went to Zuccotti Park on several occasions to create plein-air drawings and paintings, before and during the November 15 park eviction. I was surprised and pleased to find myself welcomed, both by the then-occupiers of the park, and members of A&C. The latter “curated” some of the paintings first into an exhibition at Printed Matter, then into a printed book about the occupation, and shared them widely via social media, bringing the type of instant visibility and relevance that is rarely found these days in more established arts circles.

Storefront Installation of OWS art at Printed Matter

Hyperallergic published an essay by another Zuccotti occupation live painter, Karen Kaapcke, who wrote:

My work has changed — I am not quite sure how yet. I always paint from life, but the pre-verbal need to document something so important has brought me closer to what it might mean to be a painter. The other day, I sat in my studio thinking about “visual meaning,” about how to paint something essential. I knew this thought came from learning and responding to Occupy Wall Street.

Whatever its organizational strengths and shortfalls may be, the movement is full of similar stories from individual artists, as well as arts managers and curators, who have expanded both their visibility and artistic practice through the movement. James Rose, another painter who has been to many A&C group meetings and events and made numerous charcoal drawings of the park, explained, “Though I never realized it at the time, when I fist moved to New York City, I was always painting the 99%–i.e., ordinary people on subways. With OWS, I have a platform to stand on, a network.  People take my work seriously. Before that, there was an invisible wall I couldn’t get through. OWS knocked that wall down. It clarified how to get my voice out there…I don’t know of many arts nonprofits that are making headlines every day.”

For others, participation perhaps has more to do with uniting art with collectivism and political engagement. At a November discussion panel, recent college graduate and active A&C member Imani Brown said of first joining the group: “The atmosphere of openness and community was immediately apparent and incredibly addictive.” Another artist participant states: “The process doesn’t lend itself well to art production. It’s more like a process of examining our underlying social values.  Focusing on the important questions [raised by the movement] opens up a space of freedom—i.e., to focus on political process, a formerly marginalized space of discourse.”

Rachel Schragis, "The Declaration of the Occupation of NYC" created for the Occupy Wall Street movement

Some artists have created work in direct partnership with OWS’s General Assembly; Rachel Schragis’s Declaration of the Occupation of NYC, now one of the most iconic images of the movement, was formulated through weeks of consensus-building– a laborious process that some artists might consider stifling to their creativity. But for artists like Schragis interested in collaborative or socially-relevant practice, OWS provides opportunities to explore new territory. This has been a space indeed ripe for artistic experimentation, maybe because there are no “rules” yet for what makes a quality “occupation” art project, or who should have the power to decide.

Painted overlooking Zuccotti Park on the day of the eviction, November 15, 2011

A Post-Occupation Art Occupation

In these post-Zuccotti days, the A&C group, like the rest of the movement, is in flux, and it continues to resist the structures of a traditional arts nonprofit. Regular meetings still occur at 60 Wall Street, of the main A&C group and constantly multiplying affinity groups. A&C was offered office space from the supportive arts blog Hyperallergic back in November, and, from what I last heard, is still determining how best to utilize it. A&C still organizes centralized actions and supports sympathetic movements (such as an upcoming Occupy Town Squares event), and numerous museums and other nonprofits are seeking to archive, present, and discourse with OWS art. Yet according to several members, the official A&C group serves more as a networking body through which new artists introduce proposals and get acquainted with the movement. Most concrete actions are now being carried out by the much smaller affinity groups and guilds, which have more consistent membership.

Some of the most recent projects seem to reinforce questions facing the movement as a whole: whether or not a physical occupation is needed for continued momentum, whether clear demands are needed, and the extent to which the movement should focus its energies on things like national politics, or courting organized labor (as Occupy with Art blogger Ismael Hossein Zadeh suggests).

To quote critic and curator Nato Thompson on the “dysfunction” of the general assembly structure, “At this point it is known that if anyone wants to get anything done, they should just do it and skip the basic organizing meetings. Or join one of the smaller groups…Without that coalescing together, the movement loses its uniqueness and historic specificity. With the loss of the squares, the movement runs the risk of becoming what it once was: A thousand different causes organizing on their issues and only remotely coming into contact with each other.”

Are the artistic activities of OWS evolving into disconnected, mainly symbolic individual efforts, albeit sympathetic and perhaps helpful to a wide range of related issues?  Certain direct art actions have continued to focus on Zuccotti—for example, a January 14 event that adapted Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree project to the park and included a two-minute “die in” of people simultaneously laying still on the cold ground.  This event and others have continued to draw well-known artists and press coverage. But the crowd that came to Zuccotti for the Ono event was relatively small, certainly in comparison to those of the massive marches of the early movement. At the same time, there are efforts to form stronger ties between the different arts and culture activities in NYC and those in other cities: a recent “InterOccupy Arts” arts and culture conference call involving leaders of different groups, a “Wall Street to Main Street” event bringing OWS-related art to storefronts in Catskill, NY, and various internet-based projects.

"Die-in" at Zuccotti Park, January 14, 2012

Occupying Arts Policy

One place where the OWS arts and culture movement seems not to have lost momentum is in its critique of the art world. In the first days after the eviction, at a November 19 “Occupy Wall Street: Imagining the Future” presentation/discussion at Third Ward, Imani Brown described the group’s new mission as both “actual art-making for the movement” and “actual change within the art world” which has also “been extremely corrupted.”

Martha Schwendener was one of the earliest to pick up on the fact that OWS could also be an opportunity to re-invigorate a critique of arts institutions that was long ago co-opted by those very institutions—and to create highly visible and relevant art in a completely alternative space:

The critiques offered by the OWS General Assembly overlap heavily with the art world: corporate domination of museums; art-school debt; a 1 percent system (less, really) of funding and canonization. The ’70s and ’80s saw an accelerated process of art being absorbed into institutions, and artists tried to resist it. But Institutional Critique, as it came to be called, only reinforced the fact that “liberal” institutions can absorb just about anything, including “critique.”

As shown by the testimonies of individual artists, working outside the structures of the mainstream art world could in itself be a form of institutional critique, or at least a liberating process.

So what implications, if any, do these disparate actions, working groups, and critiques have for the larger arts field?

Some obvious questions have been asked by the sometimes controversial  “Occupy Museums” group (whose targets include the Museum of Natural History, Lincoln Center, and the labor union-unfriendly Sotheby’s in addition to visual art museums) and the Arts & Labor group: for example, whether large arts institutions should be admonished based on the concentration of “1%” robber barons on their boards. A December Occupy Museums protest at Lincoln Center calling attention to major donors Bloomberg LLP and Tea Party sympathizer David Koch drew sympathetic speeches from musicians Lou Reed, Phillip Glass, and Laurie Anderson. A recent January 13 occupation and General Assembly meeting at the Museum of Modern Art’s Target First Friday free public hours questioned the ethics of MoMA board members serving simultaneously on Sotheby’s board, and of corporations sponsoring free museum admission.

Arts & Labor is also pointing out the hard truths that a myriad of well-meaning artist service organizations haven’t really been able to address. Says Arts & Labor member Erin Sickler in an Art21 interview, “I have visited hundreds of artists’ studios and heard about their often-precarious economic situations. I have seen art writers, administrators, and other curators struggle to stay afloat on measly salaries with no benefits or health care. Arts & Labor is trying to break the silence around these issues…seeking to build broader solidarity with workers in other creative fields as well as other workers.”

These groups do come close to making some concrete demands: for example, after the MoMA occupation, a letter was circulated to MoMA staff offering to donate the large banner unveiled in the protest to its permanent collection, in exchange for an end to the lockout of Sotheby’s art handlers union, and for honoring the request that “Target Free Fridays” are never publicized by MoMA without citing the Artist Workers Coalition whose protests led to free museum days in the early 1970′s.  I have not seen as many ideas for a complete overhaul of the current economic system, a system that includes steep museum admission fees, unpaid internships, and largely un-unionized art workers.

Amid these debates about high art school debt and low or nonexistent salaries, artists, curators, and administrators alike continue to donate countless hours to OWS, sometimes at the expense of steady income. Unlike the unpaid internships in arts nonprofits, for most of these people, OWS doesn’t seem to be a resume builder—some remain anonymous by choice, not wanting future employers to learn of their political activism. Artists, including myself, tend to go un-credited for their work in OWS exhibitions and publications, and almost always un-compensated.

To me, this is testament to the unique intrinsic benefits artists have gained from participating in the movement. Maybe it has to do with the other important components of artistic support artists get from Occupy—a massive social network, mass exposure and instant validation, copious donated art supplies and labor–which may not be possible in traditional arts institutions steeped in competitive application processes for limited space, funding and exhibition spots, not to mention the administrative burden of foundation and government funding and old modes of art criticism and curating. A heavily-involved A&C and Occupy With Art committee member also recently reminded me of the fact that 501(c)(3) organizations are sometimes uncomfortable with endorsing political activism.   As the movement itself becomes increasingly disconnected from its once highly visible public square, it will merit watching whether OWS still offers artists the same type of exposure and community, and whether the lines between art and activism continue to blur to the same extent.

Art history is replete with examples of “alternative spaces” and alternative models, but is this something new altogether: something bigger, farther-reaching, and possible only in an age of social media, DIY digital expression and crowdsourced fundraising? Can this new grassroots movement sustain itself, or will it simply get absorbed into larger institutions’ political art archives?  Four months after it first formed, a sizable group is still working around the clock to answer the above questions, and still making art in the process.  Much like the original occupiers at Zuccotti Park, they don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

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Cool jobs of the month

By Ian David Moss | Published: January 22nd, 2012

Connectivity Director, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Basic Job Function: Ignite the “explosive engagement” between theatre artists and the community that powers Woolly’s mission statement—by working to expand the Woolly family, deepen the audience experience in our theatre, and link our productions to the civic discourse that happens every day in the nation’s capital.

Specific Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Identify local stakeholders, institutions, and events that may resonate with each individual play
  • Facilitate discussions between artists, staff, Board, and audience members to develop a shared vision for:
    • An “entry point” for each play (“What is the conversation this play wants to have with our audience and community?”)
    • A “designed audience” for each play (“Who needs to be in the audience to bring energy and meaning to that conversation?”)
    • A “total audience experience” for each play (“What can we do to accent, extend, and deepen the experience of each audience member?”)

No deadline provided.

Freelance Writer, The Art Newspaper

The Art Newspaper is looking for a experienced arts news journalist, based in New York City, to contribute—on a contract freelance basis—to our art market and news pages and website, as well as analysis/special focuses.

We are looking for an arts news journalist with an established track record to contribute approximately 3,000 words each month to the paper and website, following agreed commissions and deadlines. As this is a freelance post, you will be free to work from your own home/office and arrange your own hours, but you will be expected to attend editorial meetings in our New York office at least twice a month.

Deadline: tomorrow! January 23, 2012.

Internship, Animating Democracy, Americans for the Arts

As a program of Americans for the Arts, Animating Democracy brings national visibility to arts for change work. By demonstrating the public value of creative work that contributes to social change and fostering synergy across arts and other fields and sectors, we work to make the arts an integral and effective part of solutions to the challenges of communities and toward ensuring a healthy democracy.

Animating Democracy is seeking motivated individuals to work on an array of projects related to our IMPACT and Arts & Social Change Mapping Initiatives. Through research, communications, and outreach focused on driving database development, resource cultivation, and program promotion, interns will expand their knowledge of the field while contributing ideas and content that supports the Animating Democracy mission.

Positions are available immediately for winter/spring as well as summer and fall 2012 for qualified individuals.  Most do not require working in the Americans for the Arts office and can be arranged as virtual internships.  A modest stipend is offered.

No deadline provided.

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Writing Fellowship Deadline EXTENDED to 11:59pm tonight

By Ian David Moss | Published: January 17th, 2012

After a couple of requests, I’m extending the Createquity Writing Fellowship deadline by 12 hours. If you were thinking about it but thought you missed your chance, now’s your shot! Full application information and instructions here.

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Around the horn: Santorum edition

By Ian David Moss | Published: January 14th, 2012

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – DOMESTIC

  • Fractured Atlas officially comes out against the PROTECT-IP Act, also known as SOPA. The same week, the Senate and House remove the most controversial provision. Coincidence? I think not.
  • The state of Connecticut is rebooting its arts agency giving strategy under new leader Kip Bergstrom.
  • The mayor of Boston is “asking” local museums and other large nonprofits to pay the city 25% of the property tax they would otherwise owe if they were for-profit institutions, leading to a bill in the seven figures for some organizations. I’m a little torn on this one; it’s well-documented that cities who have nonprofit mega-institutions occupying prime real estate lose out on some pretty crucial tax revenue (New Haven, where I went to school for six years, was one example). On the other hand, so long as this isn’t a universal practice, it will put Boston nonprofit museums, universities and hospitals at a competitive disadvantage compared to similar institutions in other cities.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – INTERNATIONAL

  • The Danish Royal Theatre is cutting 100 jobs, including five leadership positions. What’s amazing is that’s only 10% of their staff.
  • In last week’s post on corporate vs. government influence on the arts, I made a throwaway comment about preferring to accept subsidy from BP rather than Hu Jintao. The reason is this article by the outgoing Chinese president, which states that China is in an “ideological struggle” with the West and must invest to protect its “cultural security” by doing things like limit the number of prime-time shows on television and require people on microblogging sites (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter) to register using their real names. Yes, China is pouring billions into extravagant shows of cultural force in cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou, but it comes with a price beyond the yuan.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

  • Peter Hutchinson is resigning as head of the Bush Foundation.
  • After being rejected by at least six different candidates, the New York Philharmonic finally has a new chief executive: Matthew VanBesien.

IN THE FIELD

  • Wow. Nina Simon. In just over half a year as head of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, she’s brought the organization from barely being able to make payroll to having a $100,000 cash reserve, increased attendance 57%, and landed a glowing front-page article in the region’s daily about the museum’s sudden renaissance. Oh, and she’s 30. If she doesn’t make Barry’s List in 2012, I will eat my hat. (By the way, said front-page article has an adorable proud-face moment in the comments from her dad!) Speaking of Nina, she  finally weighs in on the controversy involving the Barnes Foundation museum in Philadelphia, and makes a persuasive–and rather unexpected–argument in defense of the critics’ point of view.
  • The Oregon Symphony has dropped its $17,000 membership in the League of Symphony Orchestras, and its executive director unloads on the League along the way: “Institutionally we are so tightly staffed that we couldn’t find the time to fill in some of the League’s massive surveys in the past few years – and to be honest, we didn’t find the data particularly useful when the results were released…No one else on staff has been to a conference in years – except (former orchestra spokesman) Carl Herko, who like me went one year at his own expense.” Ouch.
  • Michael Kaiser is looking for arts management success stories for a new national learning tour. Michael, I have a museum in Santa Cruz to suggest…

NEW (AD)VENTURES

RESEARCH CORNER

  • Interesting experiment testing violinists’ ability to pick out an ultra-valuable Stradivarius or Guarneri violin from its modern counterpart. The violinists were blindfolded while they played the instrument, and asked to guess after they were done. Tellingly, they more often got it wrong than right – reminiscent of the results of fine wine taste tests. Despite no obvious red flags in the study design, however, a professional violinist commentator isn’t buying it.
  • A researcher uses the marital patterns of movie stars to test whether couples inherently prefer to mate with people of similar educational backgrounds. It turns out that they (seemingly) do, leading to an unexpected but important insight on the role of marriage and love relationships in promoting and sustaining income inequality.
  • Derek Thompson offers an economic analysis of movie theater tickets with an assist from academics Barak Orbach and Liran Einav.
  • Bad news: a recent study looks at the unemployment rates of recent college graduates, and architecture students and arts majors are clear outliers on the economic suffering end of the scale, with 13.9% and 11.1% unemployment respectively. Humanities students are third. The phenomenon exists for those with graduate degrees as well; arts and architecture students are unemployed at a rate of 6-8%, versus rates of less than 4.5% for all other disciplines.

THE WIDER WORLD

  • I do an end-of-year wrap up of stories from 2011, but two commentators are looking ahead to predictions for 2012: Mark Robinson (who was apparently dared into it by Clare Cooper of Mission Models Money) and Brian Newman. And here’s a round-up of 2011′s top stories from the broader nonprofit sector by Nonprofit Law Blog.
  • Nice perspective from Phil Buchanan on the historical basis for many of the hot new trends in philanthropy.
  • This gigantic list of 2012 nonprofit and social change conferences is a fantastic resource.
  • This article does a great job of summing up why Google+ creeps me the F out. I find myself trusting Google less and less these days (not that Facebook is any better, but at least it doesn’t have access to six years’ worth of my personal emails and search history).
  • Did you know that a developer in the United Arab Emirates has created a huge set of man-made private islands designed to look like the world? And that as of now only one of them is inhabited?
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Two journal opportunities of note

By Ian David Moss | Published: January 11th, 2012

First: a brand-new journal focusing on entrepreneurship in the arts, co-founded by Linda Essig of the Creative Infrastructure blog and Arizona State University’s p.a.v.e. program, and Gary Beckman, a professor at North Carolina State. I’m honored to serve on the editorial board for this new initiative, along with blogosphere favorites Andrew Taylor, Diane Ragsdale, and others. Here’s the announcement from Linda:

Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts (ISSN 2164-7747), the first ever peer-reviewed research journal in the field of arts entrepreneurship, will be published twice yearly beginning July 2012 in an online format.

The mission of Artivate is to disseminate new thinking and perspectives on arts entrepreneurship theory, practice, and pedagogy.  The editors, Linda Essig, director of Arizona State University’s p.a.v.e program in arts entrepreneurship, and Gary Beckman of North Carolina State University’s program in entrepreneurial studies in the arts, are committed to publishing research-based articles and case studies of interest to scholars, artists, and students in the areas of entrepreneurship theory as applied to the arts; arts entrepreneurship education; arts management; arts and creative industries; public policy and the arts; the arts in community and economic development; nonprofit leadership; social entrepreneurship in or using the arts; evaluation and assessment; and public practice in the arts.  Artivate’s diverse international editorial board includes Andrew Taylor (UW-Madison), Margaret Wyszomirski (OSU), Bill Gartner (Clemson), Lynn Book (Wake Forest), Christina Hong (Queensland University of Technology) , Ian David Moss (Fractured Atlas), Diane Ragsdale (Erasmus University), Paul van Zuilenberg (University of the Free State), Gordon Shockley (ASU) and others.

Artivate has a call for submissions with a deadline of February 15. More details available here.

*

Second: old friend Edward Clapp, of 20UNDER40 fame, is co-editing a special issue of Harvard Educational Review focusing on arts in education. This is the first time in nearly 20 years that HER has published a special issue on this topic. So, you know, no pressure or anything. Anyway, here’s an excerpt from that announcement:

The Harvard Educational Review (HER) is planning an upcoming Special Issue themed Expanding our Vision for the Arts in Education. This Special Issue intends to push beyond traditional understandings of arts teaching and learning to consider how education in and through the arts best suits the sophisticated demands of today’s students within the complex social and political landscapes that they inhabit.

Expanding our Vision for the Arts in Education will bring together the voices of practitioners, researchers, and youth who engage in innovative arts learning. In so doing, this issue will provide a launch-pad for ideas that will push the boundaries of what arts education looks like (or may look like) in our current educational ecosystem. Specifically, HER invites authors to submit proposals for manuscripts that address the ways in which high quality arts learning experiences of various forms can be successfully implemented to drive the learning and engagement of 21st century young people and adults in schools, through after-school programs, in formal and informal learning environments, and online in the digital world.

HER is in search of submissions that focus on the arts in education through a variety of lenses. Amongst these lenses are:

  • The lens of emerging arts mediums/disciplines—that considers how new and emerging arts mediums/disciplines (e.g.: digital art, media art, Hip Hop, film, video, digital animation, etc.), which may have long histories themselves, are just now beginning to extend the boundaries of the traditional arts education cannon;
  • The lens of traditional arts mediums/disciplines—that considers how traditional arts mediums/disciplines (e.g.: visual art, music, theatre, dance, and creative writing) can be applied in educational settings to directly address the needs of 21st century young people and adults;
  • The lens of web 2.0—that considers the relationship between arts education and open-source technology, gaming, social networking sites, and other aspects of online culture that influence student learning and youth development;
  • The lenses of mind-brain-education and Universal Design for Learning—that consider the arts as a vehicle uniquely capable of facilitating the cognitive and social development of learners whose individual differences are inadequately capitalized upon in traditional curriculum, and whose neurophysiology is evolving alongside the expansion of digital technology;
  • The lens of globalization—that considers how arts education can be employed to create dialogue in our increasingly more diversified, cross-cultural, and politicized world;
  • The lens of community empowerment and cultural organizing—that considers how arts education may be employed in a world challenged by unprecedented population growth, barriers to social mobility, and unequal distributions of power and wealth.

HER is looking for an unusual mix of content for this one: scholarly journal articles (up to 9000 words), an intriguing category of “cross-generational dialogues,” reflective essays from practitioners, and digital media content. Proposals are due February 3.

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Apply for the Spring 2012 Createquity Writing Fellowship

By Ian David Moss | Published: January 8th, 2012

Createquity is now accepting applications for the Spring 2012 Createquity Writing Fellowship! Full details below the jump, but the short version is that this is an opportunity to get your writing in front of some pretty serious people in the arts and beyond, all while receiving mentorship, research assistance, and guidance on your writing from me. Think of it as your very own virtual graduate class in arts policy. This will be the third Createquity Writing Fellowship term (the second is still ongoing; check out Katherine Gressel’s public art evaluation mega-treatise published just yesterday), and it’s an intense but fun (and mind-expanding) adventure for participants. For a testimonial, try Jennifer Kessler’s reflection on her Createquity Writing Fellowship experience here.

The structure and process for the Spring 2012 Fellowship is much the same as in past editions; the main difference is that, in an effort to track better with the academic schedule, I’m shortening the fellowship term from five to four and a half months. Read on for further details and application instructions.

Read More »

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Public Art and the Challenge of Evaluation

By Katherine Gressel | Published: January 7th, 2012

Steve Powers, "Look Look Look," Part of the "A Love Letter for You" project, commissioned by the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, 2009-2010. http://www.aloveletterforyou.com

In the Fall/Winter 2011 issue of Public Art Review, Jack Becker writes, “There is a dearth of research efforts focusing on public art and its impact. The evidence is mostly anecdotal. Some attempts have focused specifically on economic impact, but this doesn’t tell the whole story, or even the most important stories.”

Becker’s statement gets at some of the main challenges in measuring the “impact” of a work of public art—a task which more often than not provokes grumbling from public art administrators. When asked how they know their work is successful, most organizations and artists that create art in the public realm are quick to cite things like people’s positive comments, or the fact that the artwork doesn’t get covered with graffiti or cause controversy.

We are much less likely to hear about systematic data gathered over a long time period—largely due to the seemingly complex, time-consuming, or futile nature of such a task. Unlike museums or performance spaces, public art traditionally doesn’t sell tickets, or attract “audiences” who can easily be counted, surveyed, or educated. A public artwork’s role in economic revitalization is difficult to separate from that of its overall surroundings. And as Becker suggests, economic indicators of success may leave out important factors like the intrinsic benefits of experiencing art in one’s everyday life.

However, public art administrators generally agree that some type of evaluation is key in not only making a case for support from funders, but in building a successful program. In the words of Chicago Public Art Group (CPAG) executive director Jon Pounds, evaluations can at the very least “help artists strengthen their skills…and address any problems that come up in programming.”  Is there a reliable framework that can be the basis of all good public art evaluation? And what are some simple yet effective evaluation methods that most organizations can implement?

This article will explore some of the main challenges with public art evaluation, and then provide an overview of what has been done in this area so far with varying degrees of success. It builds upon my 2007 Columbia University Teachers College Arts Administration thesis, And Then What…? Measuring the Audience Impact of Community-Based Public Art. That study specifically dealt with the issue of measuring audience response to permanent community-based public art, and included interviews with a wide range of public artists and administrators.

This article will discuss evaluation more broadly—moving beyond audience response—and incorporate more recent interviews with leaders in the public art field.  My goal was not to generate quantitative data on what people are doing in the field as a whole with evaluation (according to Liesel Fenner, director of Americans for the Arts’s Public Art Network, such data is not yet available, though it is a goal). Instead, I have reviewed recent literature on public art assessment, and interviewed a range of different types of organizations, from government-run “percent for art” and transit programs to grassroots community-based art organizations in New York City (where I am based) and other parts of the United States.  I sought to find out whether evaluation is considered important, how much time is devoted to it, and the details of particularly innovative efforts.

The challenge of defining what we are actually evaluating

The term “public art” once referred to monumental sculptures celebrating religious or political leaders.  It evolved during the mid-twentieth century to include art meant to speak for the “people” or advance social and political movements, as in the Mexican and WPA murals of the 1930s, or the early community murals of the 1960s-1970s civil rights movements. Today, “public art” can describe anything from ephemeral, participatory performances to illegal street art to internet-based projects.  The intended results of various types of public art, and our capacity to measure them, are very different.

In the social science field, evaluation typically involves setting clear goals, or expected outcomes, connected to the main activities of a program or project. It also involves defining indicators that the outcomes have been met. This exercise often takes the form of a “theory of change.” Since there are so many types of public art, it is exceedingly difficult to develop one single “theory of change” for the whole field, but it may be helpful to use a recent definition of public art from the UK-based public art think tank Ixia: “A process of engaging artists’ ideas in the public realm.” This definition implies that public art will always occupy some kind of “public realm”–whether it is a physical place or otherwise-defined community—and require an “engagement” with the public that may or may not result in a tangible artwork as end result. This process and the reactions of the public must be evaluated along with whatever artistic product may come out of it.

The challenge of building a common framework for evaluation

In 2004, Ixia commissioned OPENspace, the research center for inclusive access to outdoor environments based at the Edinburgh College of Art and Heriot-Watt University, to research ways of evaluating public art, ultimately resulting in a comprehensive 2010 report, “Public Art: A Guide to Evaluation” (see a helpful summary by Americans for the Arts).  The guide’s emphasis and content was shaped by feedback from Ixia’s Evaluation Seminars and fieldwork conducted by Ixia and consultants who have used its Evaluation Toolkit. Ixia provides the most comprehensive resources on evaluation that I have encountered, with two main evaluation tools, the evaluation matrix and the personal project analysis. These are helpful as a starting point for evaluating any project or program.

The matrix’s goal is to “capture a range of values that may need to be taken into account when considering the desirable or possible outcomes of engaging artists in the public realm.” It is meant to be filled out by various stakeholders during a project-planning stage, as well as at the midpoint and conclusion of a project.

Ixia’s “personal project analysis” is “a tool for process delivery that aims to assess how a project’s delivery is being put into practice.”  I will not analyze it in detail here, except to say that something similar should also ideally be part of any organization’s evaluation plan, as it allows for assessing how well the project is being carried out.

Personal Project Analysis from Ixia's "Public Art: A Guide to Evaluation"

Matrix from Ixia's "Public Art: A Guide to Evaluation"

Ixia’s matrix identifies four main categories of values:

  1. Artistic Values [visual/aesthetic enjoyment, design quality, social activation, innovation/risk, host participation, challenge/critical debate]
  1. Social Values [community development, poverty and social inclusion, health and well being, crime and safety, interpersonal development, travel/access, and skills acquisition]
  1. Environmental Values [vegetation and wildlife, physical environment improvement, conservation, pollution and waste management-air, water and ground quality, and climate change and energy],
  1. Economic Values [marketing/place identity, regeneration, tourism, economic investment and output, resource use and recycling, education, employment, project management/sustainability, and value for money].

The matrix accounts for the fact that each public artwork’s values and desired outcomes will be different depending on the nature of the presenting organization, site, and audience.

It is unclear how widely these tools have been adopted in the UK since their publication, and I did not encounter anyone in the U.S. using them. Yet many organizations are employing a similar process of engaging various stakeholders during the project-planning phase to determine goals specific to each project, which relate to the categories in Ixia’s matrix.  For example, most professionals I interviewed cited some type of “artistic” goals for the work. Some organizations prioritize presenting the highest quality art in public spaces, in which case the realization of an artist’s vision is top priority (representatives of New York City’s Percent for Art program described “Skilled craftsmanship” and “clarity of artistic vision” as key success factors, for example).

By contrast, organizations that include a youth education or community justice component may rank “social” or “economic” values higher. Groundswell Community Mural Project, an NYC-based nonprofit that creates mural projects with youth, asks all organizations that host mural projects (which may include schools, government agencies, and community-based organizations) in pre-surveys to choose their top desired project outcomes from a range of choices, as well as identify project-specific issues. Groundswell does have a well-developed theory of change behind all its projects, relating to the organization’s core mission to “beautify neighborhoods, engage youth in societal and personal transformation, and give expression to ideas and perspectives that are underrepresented in the public dialog.” However, some project-specific outcomes may be more environmental—for example, partnerships with the Trust for Public Land to integrate murals into new school playgrounds–while some relate to “crime and safety,” as in an ongoing partnership with the NYC Department of Transportation to install murals and signs at dangerous traffic intersections that educate the public about traffic safety.

 

Groundswell Community Mural Project, signs from "Traffic Safety Program," a partnership between Groundswell, the Department of Transportation's Safety Education program, and several NYC public elemenary schools. Lead artists Yana Dimitrova, Chris Soria, and Nicole Schulman worked with students to create these signs installed at locations identified as most in need of traffic signage.

Groundswell is just one example of many public art organizations that set goals at the outset of each individual project, based on each project’s particular site and community.  While individual organizations may effectively evaluate their own projects this way, crafting a common theory of change for all public art may be an unrealistic expectation.

The challenge of reliable indicators and data collection

The Ixia report discusses the process by which indicators of public art’s ability to produce desired outcomes may be identified, with the following questions:

  1. Is it realistic to expect a public art project to influence the outcomes you are measuring?
  2. Is it likely that you can differentiate the impact of the public art project and processes from other influences, e.g., other local investment?
  3. Is it possible to conduct meaningful data on what matters in relation to the chosen indicators?

For example, in studies seeking to measure any kind of change, good data collection should always include a baseline—i.e., economic conditions or attitudes of people BEFORE the public art entered the picture. Data collection methods ideally should also be reliable, unbiased, and easily replicated.

The “Guide to Evaluation” does not go into detail about any concrete indicators of public art’s “impact.” Therefore, the matrix seems to be most useful as a guide to goal-setting. As the Americans for the Arts summary of this report points out, “Ixia directs users to [UK-based] government performance indicators as a baseline source, but that is where the discussion ends.”

Liesel Fenner of Americans for the Arts’s Public Art Network mentioned in an email to me that while PAN hopes to develop a comprehensive list of indicators in the future, which can be shared among public art presenters nationally, “developing quantitative indicators is the main obstacle.”

According to my interviews with both on-the-ground administrators and public art researchers, many busy arts administrators find the type of data collection recommended in Ixia’s guide difficult, costly and time-consuming. It can be a challenge to get artistic staff to buy into even basic evaluation; says one community arts administrator, “artists are paid for a their leadership in developing and delivering a strong project. Many artists don’t see as much value in evaluation because, in part, it comes in addition to the difficult work that they just accomplished.”   It is also uncommon to spend precious training resources on something like quantitative evaluation techniques.

Some are of the opinion that even if significant time were spent on justifying public art’s existence by “proving” its practical usefulness, this would still be a losing battle that could lead to the withdrawal of support for public art, the production of bad art that panders merely to public needs, or both. One seasoned public art administrator asked me: “Is architecture evaluated this way? The same way public buildings need to exist, public art needs to exist. It’s people looking to weaken public art who are trying to ask these questions about its impact.”

The challenge of evaluating long-term, permanent installations

Glenn Weiss, former director of the Times Square Alliance Public Art Program and current director of Arts League Houston, posits that economic impact studies are “most possible with highly publicized, short-term projects like the Gates or large public art festivals.”   Indeed, the New York City Mayor’s office published a detailed report on “an estimated $254 million in economic activity” that resulted from The Gates, a large installation in Central Park by internationally acclaimed artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, based on data like increased park attendance and business at nearby hotels, restaurants, etc.  However, most public art projects, even temporary ones, are not as monumental or heavily promoted as The Gates, making it difficult to prove that people come to a neighborhood, or frequent its businesses, primarily to see the public art.

Visitors crowd Chriso and Jeanne-Claude's "The Gates" (2005) in Central Park. Photo by Eric Carvin.

Weiss also believes that temporary festivals are generally easier to evaluate quantitatively than long-term public art projects. For example, during a finite event or installation, staff members can keep a count of attendees (some of the temporary public art projects I have encountered in my research, such as the FIGMENT annual participatory art festival on Governors Island and in various other U.S. cities, use attendance counts as a measure).

The few comprehensive studies connecting long-term, permanent public art to economic and community-wide impacts, conducted by research consultants and funded by specific grants, have led to somewhat inconclusive results. For example, An Assessment of Community Impact of the Philadelphia Department of Recreation Mural Arts Program (2002), led by Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert of University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP), cites the assumed community-wide benefits of murals outlined in MAP’s mission statement at the time of the study:

The creation of a mural can have social benefits for entire communities…Murals bring neighbors together in new ways and often galvanize them to undertake other community improvements, such as neighborhood clean-ups, community gardening, or organizing a town watch. Murals become focal points and symbols of community pride and inspiring reminders of the cooperation and dedication that made their creation possible.

Yet when asked to “use the best data available to document the impact that murals have had over the past decade on Philadelphia’s communities,” Stern and Seifert found that

this is a much more difficult task than one might imagine. First, there are significant conceptual problems involved in thinking through exactly how murals might have an impact on neighborhoods. Second, the quality of data available to test hypotheses concerning murals is limited. Finally, there are a number of methodological problems involved in using the right comparisons in assessing the potential impact of murals. For example, how far from a mural might we expect to see an impact? How long after a mural is painted might it take to see an effect and how long might that effect last?…Ultimately, this report concludes that these issues remain a significant impediment to understanding the role of murals.

By comparing data on murals to existing neighborhood quality of life data, Stern and Seifert considered murals’ connection to factors like community economic investment and indicators of more general neighborhood change (such as reduced litter or crime, or residents’ investment in other community organizing activities). The study also measured levels of community investment and involvement in murals. However, the scarce data available on these factors, according to the authors, are difficult to connect directly to public art in a cause and effect relationship. Stern and Seifert’s strongest finding was that murals may build “social capital,” or “networks of relationships” that can promote  “individual and group well-being,” because of all the events surrounding mural production in which people can participate. It was more difficult to show a consistent relationship between murals and other theorized outcomes, such as ability to “inspire” passersby or serve as “amenities” for neighborhoods. The study recommends that “more systematic information on their physical characteristics and sites—‘before and after’—would provide a basis for identifying murals that become an amenity.”

A more recent 2009 report on Philadelphia’s commercial corridors by Econoconsult also demonstrated “some indication of a positive correlation” between the presence of murals and shopping corridor success. Murals are described here as “effective and cost efficient ways of replacing eyesores with symbols of care.” However, the report also adds the disclaimer that a positive correlation is not necessarily proof of the murals’ role as the primary cause of a neighborhood’s appeal.

So what can we assess most easily, and how?

My research revealed that quantitative data on short-term inputs and outputs of public art programs is frequently cited (sometimes inappropriately) as evidence of a program’s success in things like reports or funding proposals—for example, number of new projects completed in one year, number of youth or community partners served, or number of mural tour participants. However, in this article I am not really focusing on this type of reporting, as it does not address how public art impacts communities over time.

The good news is that there are several examples of indicators that are more easily measurable in certain types of public art situations, including permanent installations. These include:

  • Testimonies on the educational and social impact of collaborative public art projects, from youth and community participants and artists alike
  • Qualitative audience responses to public art, including whether or not the art provokes any type of discussion, debate, or controversy
  • How a public artwork is treated over time by a community, including whether it gets vandalized, and whether the community takes the initiative to repair or maintain it
  • Press coverage
  • The “use” of a public artwork by its hosts, e.g. in educational programs or marketing campaigns
  • Levels of audience engagement with public art via internet sites and other types of educational programming

Below I will summarize some helpful methods by which data is collected around all these indicators.

Mining the Press

Archiving press coverage of public art projects online is a common practice among organizations, as is presenting pithy press clippings and quotes in funding proposals and marketing materials as a means of demonstrating a project’s success. For researchers, studying articles (and increasingly, blog posts) on past projects can also provide rich documentation of artworks’ immediate effects, as well as points of comparisons. For example, the “comments” sections of online articles and blogs can generate interesting, often unsolicited feedback, albeit from a nonrandom sample.

One possible outcome of public art projects is controversy, which is not always considered a bad thing, despite now-infamous examples of projects like Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc being removed. For example, Sofia Maldonado’s 42nd Street Mural, presented in March 2010 by the Times Square Alliance, provoked extensive coverage on news programs and blogs. The mural’s un-idealized images of Latin American and Caribbean women based on the artist’s own heritage led some women’s and cultural advocacy organizations to call for its removal. The Alliance opted to leave the mural up, and has cited this project as evidence of the Alliance’s commitment to artists’ freedom of expression. The debates led Maldonado to reflect, “as an art piece it has accomplished its purpose: to establish a dialogue among its spectators.”

Sofia Maldonado, "42nd Street Mural," 2010, Commissioned by the Times Square Alliance Public Art Program.

Site visits and “public art watch” 

As an attempt to promote more sustained observation of completed works over time, public art historian Harriet Senie assigns her students in college and graduate level courses a final term paper project every semester that contains a

“public art watch”…For the duration of a semester, on different days of the week, at different times, students observe, eavesdrop, and engage the audience for a specific work of public art. Based on a questionnaire developed in class and modified for individual circumstances, they inquire about personal reactions to this work and to public art in general” (quoted in Sculpture Magazine).

Senie’s students also observe things like people’s interactions with an artwork, such as how often they stop and look up at it, take pictures in front of it, or use it as a meeting place.

Senie maintains that “Although far from ‘scientific,’ the information is based on direct observation over time—precisely what is in short supply for reviewers working on a deadline.” This approach towards challenging college students to think critically about public art has also been implemented in public art courses at NYU and Pratt Institute, and the aggregate results of student research over time are summarized in one of Senie’s longer publications.

I have not encountered any other organizations able to integrate this type of research into their regular operations; however, there may be opportunities to integrate direct observation into routine site visits to completed permanent public artworks.

In the NYC Percent for Art program, and its Public Art for Public Schools (PAPS) wing that commissions permanent art for new and renovated school buildings, staff members are expected to undertake periodic visits “to monitor the condition of artworks that have been commissioned,” according to PAPS director Tania Duvergne. Such “maintenance checks” can provide opportunities to survey building inhabitants or local residents about their opinions and use of the artworks.

Duvergne uses these “condition report” visits as opportunities to further her agency’s mission to “bridge connections between what teachers are already doing in their classrooms and their physical environments.” At each site, she tries to interview custodians, teachers, principals and students about whether the art is well treated, whether they know anything about the artwork (and are using the online resources available to them), and whether they want more information. Duvergne notes that many teachers use the public art in their teaching in some way, even if they do not know a lot about the artwork. While observing a public artwork during a site visit every few years is nowhere near as extensive and sustained observation as Senie’s class assignment, perhaps a similar survey and observation could be undertaken with a wide range of students and staff members over the course of a day.

Project participant and resident surveys

Organizations that create community-based public art usually have specific desired social, educational, or behavioral outcomes in project participants. Mural organizations Groundswell and Chicago Public Art Group describe thorough evaluation processes in which mural artists, youth, community partners and parents are all surveyed and sometimes interviewed before, during and after projects. Groundswell’s community partner post-project survey, for example, asks partners to rank their level of agreement about whether certain community-wide outcomes have been met, such as whether the mural increases the organization’s visibility, increases awareness of an identified issue, and improves community attitudes towards young people.

Groundswell’s theory of change (most recently honed in 2010 through focus groups with youth participants and community partners) articulates various clear desired outputs and outcomes for both youth and community partner organizations. This includes the development of “twenty-first century” life skills in teen mural participants. To measure this impact specifically, Groundswell has made it a priority to continue to track youth participants after they graduate, turn 21, and reach other checkpoints, according to Executive Director Amy Sananman. Groundswell recently hired an outside researcher to build a comprehensive database (using the free program SalesForce), in which participant data and survey results, and data on completed murals (such as whether any were graffitied, how many times they appeared in news articles, etc.) can be entered and compared to generate reports.

In 2006, Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program conducted a community impact study using audience response questionnaires as a starting point.  Then- special projects manager Lindsey Rosenberg employed college students, through partnerships with local universities, to conduct door-to-door surveys of all residents living within a mile radius of four murals. The murals differed by theme, neighborhood, and level of community involvement. The interns orally administered a multiple-choice questionnaire with questions ranging from general opinions of the murals to level of participation in making the murals to perceptions of changes in the neighborhood as a result of the murals.  They then inputted the surveys into a computer database specifically created for this study by outside consultants. The database not only calculated percentages of each response to murals, but tracked correlations between these responses and census demographic data, including income level and home ownership.

This research project was different from prior MAP community impact studies in that it assumed that “what people perceive to be the impact of a mural is in itself valuable,” as much as external evidence of change.

In 2007, MAP shared some preliminary results of this endeavor with me to aid my thesis research. At the time the research seemed to generate some useful data on which murals were appreciated most in which neighborhoods, and the correlation between appreciation and community participation in the projects. However, since then I have not been able to gather any further information on this study, or find any published results. I did hear from MAP at the time of the study that only 25% of people who were approached actually took the surveys, indicating just one problematic aspect of conducting such research on a regular basis. The database was also costly.

Most recently, MAP is partnering (page 160) with the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health & Mental Retardation Services (DBH/MRS), community psychologists from Yale, and almost a dozen local community agencies and funders with core support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, on “a multi-level, mixed methods comparative outcome trial known as the Porch Light Initiative. The Porch Light Initiative examines the impact of mural making as public art on individual and community recovery, healing, and transformation and utilizes a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework.” Unfortunately, MAP declined my requests for more information on this new study.

Interviewing youth and community members can of course only generate observations and opinions, but Groundswell at least is also taking the step of also tracking what happens to participants after they complete a mural project. I am still not clear how to prove that any impacts on participants are a direct result of public art projects. Yet surveying project participants and community members about their feelings about a program or project, and how they think they were impacted by it, is one of the most do-able types of research (apart from the challenges of getting people to fill out surveys).

Community-based “proxies”

Groundswell director Amy Sananman has described some success in utilizing community partners as “proxies” for reporting on a mural’s local impact, effectively outsourcing some of the burden of data collection to other organizations. For example, the director of a nonprofit whose storefront has a Groundswell mural could report back to Groundswell on the extent to which local residents take care of the mural, how often people comment on it, etc.

PAPS, CPAG, and ArtBridge, an organization that commissions artwork for vinyl construction barrier banners, have described similar ideas for partnerships. ArtBridge hopes to implement a more formal process in which the owners of stores where its banners are installed can document changes like increased business due to public art. PAPS director Tania Duvergne also cites examples of “successful projects” in which public schools, on their own, designed art gallery displays or teaching curricula around their public art pieces, and shared this with PAPS on site visits.

There might be a danger in depending on community partner organization representatives to speak for the whole “community” or to provide reliable, accurate data. But if cooperative partners can be identified and regular reporting scheduled using consistent measurement tools, the burden of reporting on specific neighborhoods is lessened for the public art organization.

“Smart” Technology

Groundswell, ArtBridge, and MAP are all starting to utilize the new QR code smartphone application, which uses QR codes to direct public art site visitors to websites with more information about the art. Groundswell experimented this past summer with adding QR codes to a series of posters designed by its Voices Her’d Visionaries program to be hung in public schools to educate teens about healthy relationships.  Groundswell can then track how many hits the website gets through the QR app. In general, web activity on public art sites is an easy quantitative measure of public interest.

Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program has a “report damage” section on its website, where anyone who notices a mural in need of repair can alert MAP online. This is also a potential source for quantitative evidence of how many people notice and feel invested in murals.

Use of Interpretive Programming

Public art organizations are increasingly designing interpretive programming around completed artwork, from outdoor guided tours to curated “virtual” artwork displays. NYC’s Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Arts for Transit program provides downloadable podcasts about completed artworks on its website; other organizations include phone numbers to call for guided tours at public art sites themselves (as in many museum exhibits). Both in-person and virtual/phone tours can provide rich opportunities to track usage, collect informal feedback from participants, and solicit feedback via surveys. ArtBridge recently initiated its WALK program giving tours of its outdoor banner installations. After each tour, ArtBridge emails a link to a brief questionnaire to all tour participants, and offers a prize as an incentive for taking the survey.

A Philadelphia Mural Arts Program guided tour.

Concluding remarks: What next for evaluation?

While systematic, reliable quantitative analysis of public art’s impact at the neighborhood level remains challenging and undervalued in the field, new technologies as well as effective partnerships are making it increasingly feasible for public art organizations to assess factors such as audience engagement, benefits to participants, and community stewardship of completed public art works. The Ixia “Guide to Evaluation” offers a useful roadmap for approaching the evaluation of any type of public art project. At the same time, we should not forget the ability of art to affect people in ways that may seem intangible or even immeasurable, or, as Glenn Weiss puts it, “become part of a memory of a community, part of how a community sees itself.”

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