“The Blue Marble,” by flickr user Chris Jupin

Every December since 2009, Createquity has compiled the Top Ten Arts Policy Stories of the Year, ranking the impact of key issues from a global perspective. With the end of this year coinciding with the last rays of Createquity’s sunset, we didn’t want to leave our loyal readers hanging – and so we’ve decided to do our traditional roundup looking back not just on 2017, but on the whole ten years that Createquity has been around!

It turns out that a lot can change in a decade. While selecting which stories are “most important” inherently involves some editorial guesswork, we have tried to use some semblance of a formal methodology, incorporating criteria like how many people were affected by a given story, how deeply, for how long, and how much of that impact was specific to the arts? Below is our selection of the Top Ten Arts Stories of the Decade, compiled by members of our editorial team with individual authorship indicated at the end of each item.

1. New tech and media swallow the world whole

When Apple founder Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, he touted three key innovations: its blending of an iPod media player with a smartphone; its widescreen, multi-touch interface; and its internet friendliness. All three proved pivotal in the subsequent decade’s tech revolution. Apple’s iOS quickly stoked competition from Google’s Android OS to put the “internet in every pocket” of global citizens (now in 2 billion+ and counting), in turn catalyzing the hothouse growth of industries including audiobooks and podcasts and electronic games (while helping kill off others such as compact cameras). The proliferation of social media platforms – including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Tumblr, and Instagram – transformed networking and distribution patterns for creative professionals and their audiences, dramatically reshaping how we access and filter information in our daily lives.

All the while, internet service providers have been keeping pace with phone and app makers in their quest to continually increase broadband speed and access. The result? A media-streaming revolution that has sparked its own race for consumer dollars between corporate giants including Netflix, Apple, Disney, 21st Century Fox, AT&T (via Amazon – wait – make that Time Warner) and Sony, each trying to outmaneuver each other in both content creation and consumer distribution. Depending on your view, the Peak TV phenomenon is a boon for watchers, an ominous power-grab, or a societal antidote to the arts themselves. But then, television is so 20th century. Enter the new tech art forms: virtual reality and augmented reality are competing among global users to enhance everything from ballet performances to gaming on the go.

All the above innovations are underscored by the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence itself. As machines show creative capabilities to rival those of humans, AI projects are demonstrating mastery of tasks ranging from besting champs at complex games to self-driving cars; from creating lip-syncing videos to teaching salsa lessons. Advances in AI now enable Google’s Translate service to crank out translations in literature that are almost indistinguishable from those of humans. The excitement of these developments is tempered by growing fears of rampant automation and machines displacing artists, even taking over the world.

Regardless of how it turns out, the ubiquity and scope of Silicon Valley’s wonders qualify as the single most impactful arts story of the past decade. Discourse on the intersection between technology and the arts has often tended toward the trite (remember how QR codes were supposed to revolutionize…something?), but we see the relationship as something far deeper and more fundamental to the human experience every day. For good or ill, the disruptions of New Tech – and the mysteries of where they are headed – remain on a path of constant acceleration. –Jack Crager

2. China rises as a global power in arts and entertainment  

In 2006, the Asia Times Online published an article lamenting that China, despite its ballooning economy, lacked influence in the cultural sphere. Today – thanks to that ballooning – the story is quite different: in fine art, film, gaming and even music, China has arrived. The country holds steady at third place worldwide in the global art market (behind the United States and the United Kingdom) with an 18% share. The surge in art collecting by mainland Chinese was first noted in 2011, and now that China has eclipsed the United States in its number of billionaires, the trend will surely continue upward, especially as younger collectors begin to take on the (art) world. In July 2016, the Taikang life insurance company (run by the founder of Guardian, China’s first government-run auction house) became Sotheby’s largest shareholder, augmenting China’s influence in this sphere. We’re not just talking the realm of the super-rich: Beijing’s National Museum was ranked the world’s most-visited museum in 2016. In fine art, trends have tacked toward consumption of imported works, but elsewhere China shows major gains in production of original content. On the silver screen, Ernst & Young’s 2012 predictions that China would be the world’s biggest film industry by 2020 seem to be manifesting ahead of schedule. In November, Chinese box office revenue surpassed $7.5 billion, and a nationalist, homegrown film – not a Hollywood export – fueled it: Wolf Warrior 2 is the second-highest grossing movie of all time in a single market (behind 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and we can expect to see more of the same, given China’s plans for a new $2 billion film studio in Chongqing and its recent history of buying up big players such as Dick Clark Productions and Legendary Entertainment. On smaller screens, in 2017 China overtook the U.S. as “gamer capital of the world,” with global revenues hitting $100 billion, thanks largely to smartphones. Especially notable is that 93% of all money spent by Chinese gamers go to titles developed by Chinese-based companies. Even China’s music market, which historically has been small, is showing robust growth in the world of streaming, and Western labels are looking to China as a new potential market. The Cultural Development Action Plan for 2016-2020, part of the Belt and Road initiative announced in 2013, was released earlier this year, providing further direction to these increased cultural opportunities.

So far China and the Trump administration have not been fast friends. Yet for U.S. companies, the allure of a untapped market is hard to resist: Nintendo, Google, Apple and Hollywood each have already made concessions to Chinese interests as they vie for a piece of the pie. Some in Congress are concerned, and for good reason: China ranks 176 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index, and its airtight Great Firewall includes bans on most social media networks and news sites that reflect a negative image of the country. (Createquity has previously covered China’s repressive tactics including virtual borders, film regulations, and cultural censorship of television and the arts.) China is a country of 1.4 billion people – more than four times the population of the U.S. and twice that of Europe – and, yes, there is (a lot of) money to be made. But at what cost?

The implications of China’s growth will be felt first by China itself – we can expect a type of lost generation as it all comes to a head, especially considering that 40% of this socialist society currently lives on $5.50 a day. The implications for the rest of us will follow: the impact of China as a global force in entertainment will affect business models, jobs, language, tolerance for human rights – even creativity itself – in ways we cannot yet imagine. –Clara Inés Schuhmacher

3. Democracies around the world curb freedom of expression

Events of the last decade have demonstrated that free expression for artists and media is a critical indicator of the strength (and struggles) of a country’s democracy. In recent years we’ve seen an upward trend in the suppression of artistic freedom of expression throughout the world, with ostensibly democratic governments headed by authoritarian leaders attempting to exert tighter control of the media and use their roles as financial supporters of the arts to control the creation and content of various art forms, all as part of a broader strategy to consolidate and maintain power. Under the increasingly iron-fisted rule of President Vladimir Putin, Russia has forged a track record of suppressing free expression, including targeting cultural dissidents through state-run television. These trends will likely continue should Putin “win” his election as president for a fourth term extending to 2024, as is widely expected. Meanwhile in Turkey, a failed coup resulted in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan shutting down 29 publishing houses and ramping up his jailing of journalists who are critical of the government. Erdoğan’s reaction to the coup continues an alarming trend toward authoritarian rule since his rise to national power in 2003 – further amplified last spring by his (contested) narrow victory in a national referendum granting the president new, sweeping powers.

Although Russia and Turkey are the clearest examples of democracies going down the drain over the past ten years, several other countries are veering gradually or rapidly in the same direction. In Hungary, the government has continued to place tighter restrictions on the media since right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s election in 2010. The Hungarian Academy of Art (MMA) became a state institution in 2011, exerting control over governmental support of the arts and other state-run cultural institutions. In 2016, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed new media laws giving his government the authority to appoint the heads of public television and radio (which has been met with various forms of resistance); the government has also tried to control the dominant narrative around historical events through its support of museums. Venezuela’s political and economic unrest has resulted in President Nicolas Maduro canceling a government-sponsored tour of the National Youth Orchestra conducted by Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Gustavo Dudamel, a native Venezuelan musician trained through the country’s renowned El Sistema program. Dudamel had recently become more critical of the government’s repressive tactics, including the shooting of young Venezuelan violist Armando Cañizales. In Israel, Miri Regev continues to use her role as the Minister of Culture and Sports to support artists who demonstrate loyalty to her nationalist message (though she’s discovering the limits to the power of her office). Even in the U.S., the election of Donald Trump has triggered concerns that the president would use the office to intimidate political opponents, including artists and journalists, just after the previous two administrations amassed unprecedented powers to spy on American citizens. The lesson? Democracy is more fragile than we thought, and the voices of creators are crucial to keeping it intact. –Ruth Mercado-Zizzo

4. Artists and audiences get caught up in terrorism’s wake

During the past decade the global impact of terrorism by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or Dae’esh ‘داعش’) – as well as other groups including Boko Haram, TAK, Ansar Dine, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda, plus numerous far-right and lone-wolf actors – reverberated throughout the arts community, which has endured attacks on tangible cultural heritage, on free speech, and on artists and their fans. The destruction of antiquities has been particularly extensive and in many cases absolute, with 2015 being an especially tragic year for heritage crimes from Mosul Museum to Sabratha, Nimrud, Hatra, Palmyra, and beyond. The problem is complex and it extends beyond destruction: a 2015 report found that ISIS was taking 20% or more of the revenue (that’s hundreds of millions in USD) from the systematic resale of blood antiquities on the black market in the Western art trade (although some believe this is an overestimation.) The impact on Syria recalls similar attacks on cultural heritage in Iraq, Yemen, and Mali; in the later, a perpetrator pled guilty and was for the first time ever sentenced by the International Criminal Court for war crimes against cultural heritage. ISIS has even incorporated Hollywood-style screenwriting and cinematographic techniques to augment its recruitment tools. In response, it turns out that the world cares very much about its shared heritage: archaeologists are racing to digitize the Middle East’s historical sites before they are destroyed, and in 2016, France and the United Arab Emirates announced a $100 million Cultural Heritage protection fund. Most recently, CBS ordered the television series “Blood and Treasure” on the subject for summer 2019.

But terrorists’ crusades against free speech have extended well beyond archeological sites, directly targeting the lives of creators and their audiences. Aggressions have included the assassination of a Somalian comedian in 2012, the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in February 2015, and the 2016 murder of Amjad Sabri, one of Pakistan’s most famous and respected musicians. But it is the attacks on large groups people – enjoying themselves in cultural spaces – that have most shattered our sense of reality. The past few years have seen cultural venues joining sports stadiums, churches and mosques, open-air markets and transportation hubs as regular targets for terrorist attacks and other mass shootings around the world. Years of seemingly relentless attacks have taken place at the Shingar Cinema in India, a British cultural council in Afghanistan, the Century Aurora movie theater in Colorado, La Bataclan music hall in Paris, National Bardo Museum in Tunis, Pulse nightclub in Orlando, an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, and sadly more.

The world has responded in a couple of ways. One reaction has been to hunker down: train staff in crisis response, step up police presence at major museums, purchase Terrorism Risk Insurance, and hold international conferences on culture and terrorism. The alternative has been to open up. Following the bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon, several local museums opened free as places of respite for the community. The Tunis museum reopened to the public just 12 days after the attack there and some of the looted museums in Yemen became shelters for displaced residents. Amidst and despite these acts of terror, artists and their institutions continue to gather and to create work – supporting the United Nations’ 2015 Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism, and each of us. –Shawn Lent

5. The Great Recession wreaks havoc on the global economy

Though many of its most acute effects have now waned, the Great Recession cast a gloomy backdrop behind the other key news stories of the first half of the decade. Driven by fevered investment in questionable assets such as subprime mortgage loans, the money-making party stopped with the failure of financial giants such as Lehman Brothers, AIG, and others in the fall of 2008. The fallout slammed an abrupt correction on private investment and dampened funding for arts organizations in both nonprofit and for-profit sectors. During the downturn arts council funding in many states took a nosedive, and those in Kansas and South Carolina, among others, survived near-death experiences. To their credit, the arts and nonprofit sectors responded with a series of creative solutions and financial adaptations. And in many ways the recession is now past-tense, given the continuing U.S. economic recovery, the soaring stock market, downward-ticking unemployment, and the stabilizing effect of reforms. Yet other remnants of the downturn – such as the permalance labor market, the stagnation of wages, and ongoing fiscal battles – simply represent a “new normal.” Some experts point out that the recovery has been historically weak and sluggish and that recent unemployment figures actually reflect growing cultural disparity. Others warn that prevailing U.S. political priorities – namely the recently enacted Republican tax bill – portend reduced charity giving and cuts to housing for artists, while the specter of a ballooning deficit threatens the ability of the government to respond to the next economic downturn. Amid all the economic and political hoopla, one thing is clear: given the cyclic nature of history, there is no reason to believe that the Great Recession couldn’t happen again. –JC

6. Racial equity becomes a rallying cry for arts policy and philanthropy

The past ten years have produced a flurry of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the arts, prompted by the efforts of artists of color and the communities that support them. These efforts have gained significant ground thanks to grantmakers restructuring their criteria to address long-standing inequities in the arts ecosystem. Foundations and national agencies such as the Canada Council for the Arts and Arts Council England adopted new policies, resulting in organizations attempting to diversify their staffs and promote wider representation in race, cultural background, gender, and sexual orientation – onstage, backstage, and on screen. The results of these efforts can be hard to gauge: for example, despite Hollywood waking up to its “diversity problem” and an #oscarssowhite movement that contributed to the 2017 Academy Awards honoring the most diverse pool of contenders to date, there’s little evidence yet that it’s more than just a blip on the radar, and 2018 is predicted to be #oscarsstillsowhite. And it’s not just about the film industry: funding gaps continue to be a problem in rural areas and among communities of color across the arts sector. The increased interest in racial equity and social justice takes place against a backdrop of larger cultural shifts in the United States and worldwide: the past decade has witnessed both the election of first African-American president and a sharp increase in racial tensions and anti-immigrant sentiment. In the U.S., the Black Lives Matter movement has strongly influenced conversations about racial equity, while in Canada and Australia that issue centers more on reconciliation with Indigenous populations – particularly prominent this year during a series of controversies surrounding cultural appropriation in publishing and journalism.

There’s still a long way to go, especially considering how growing nationalism impacts equity in the arts, and divergent views remain about what constitutes cultural equity based on the art produced or funded by any given organization or agency. But many artists, organizations, and policymakers seem to be ready to disrupt the status quo in ways that they did not ten years ago, with debates on equity in the blogosphere and funding policies for equity and inclusion marking a shift toward de-centering whiteness and acknowledging the schools of thought and traditions of culturally diverse arts practitioners. –Lauren Warnecke and Fari Nzinga

7. Asian governments make huge investments in cultural infrastructure

The past decade has seen substantial fluctuation in governmental arts funding around the world with developing countries, particularly throughout Asia, spending big on modern-day cultural palaces and sweeping public initiatives. New initiatives include a $27 billion mixed-use development in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; a $2.3 billion development of the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong; the building of a $2 billion film studio in Chongqing, China; and a state-funded Artist Welfare program in South Korea, which insured nearly 24,000 resident artists. (Some of China’s other investments are discussed in item #2 above.) This largesse occurred against a backdrop of Great-Recession-induced cuts in arts funding in traditionally generous Western Europe; in particular, state arts appropriations in Holland and England were cut by 25% and 22% respectively, with other European countries following close behind. To the south, Australia cut 70% of grants to individual artists as part of a stressful period of upheaval in that country’s arts funding structure, and Brazil got rid of its Ministry of Culture altogether, albeit briefly. One contrasting bright spot is Canada, which saw a doubling of its Arts Council funding to $1.9 billion from 2016 to 2021 under the administration of Justin Trudeau.

Many governments have turned to unique funding initiatives to ensure that their tightened purses are being spent appropriately (see Italy and Brazil’s voucher programs and the United Kingdom’s much-debated Quality Metrics program). It should also be noted that declaring winners and losers based on national arts funding alone tells an incomplete story, as some of the new heavy hitters have been accused of inhumane labor practices and harsh government crackdowns while some of the countries that have scaled back have seen increases in private sponsorship. –Andrew Anzel

8. The never-ending battle over net neutrality continues to not end

When Net Neutrality first landed on Createquity’s Top Ten Stories of 2010, the angle was “this is a story that is still being told.” We’re still in the telling. This contentious debate has polarized the tech-policy world since the term “network neutrality” was coined by Tim Wu in 2003, and it shows no signs of letting up, especially after the Federal Communications Commission’s recent repeal of regulations put in place by the Obama administration that were supposed to have laid the issue to rest once and for all.

Here’s how the battle lines are drawn: the pro-net neutrality camp calls for a free, fast and fair internet, where everyone gets equal access to everything. This side argues the internet is a basic human right and a critical tool for social movements, small businesses and start-ups. (Content providers from Netflix to Etsy and Kickstarter tend to be in this camp.) Opponents (usually broadband providers, like AT&T and Verizon) argue the internet should be left to free-market forces. The story begins in 2005, when Bush-era FCC Chairman Michael Powell first articulated a policy of network neutrality. This policy was tested the following year, when the FCC ordered Telco to stop blocking VoIP, and light-ish regulation followed, with the FCC going after AT&T and Apple, MetroPCS, and Verizon, among other efforts. In 2008, the White House switched hands, and the Obama-era FCC delivered major wins for the pro camp: in 2010, it introduced the Open Internet Order (with new guidelines prohibiting discrimination on “wired” services) and in 2015, following a lost lawsuit to Verizon, it voted along party lines in favor of classifying broadband Internet as a public utility. This was vote hailed as historic by advocates of a fair, fast and open Internet and many considered the battle won. (Createquity’s coverage of Obama-era net neutrality stories ranges from victories for proponents to appeals-court reversals to debates within the administration over policy.)

Then, of course, came the election of Donald Trump. Just days past his confirmation in early 2017, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai began rolling back the Obama-era regulations, and in November, Pai released a plan to repeal the 2015 ruling classifying broadband as a public utility. On December 14, despite fake comments and calls to delay (from its own Commissioners, Senators, and the City of New York), the FCC voted to repeal the 2015 rules. As before, the vote was along party lines – and hailed as historic, this time by advocates of deregulation.

So what now? In the short term, expect a slew of lawsuits and Congressional action. But here’s the thing: this is 2017, not 2003. Today we’re in a Google-Amazon-Facebook oligopoly world, and Big Tech has been conspicuously quiet this time around, suggesting they may be rich enough not to care. Some, like award-winning jazz musician Maria Schneider, say net neutrality be damned: we’ve already lost big to Google, and companies had already been denying us content access even under the Obama-era guidelines. And let’s not ignore the regulatory gap created by the AT&T vs. the Federal Trade Commission case, which rules that the FTC is banned from regulating a company if they are, even in a small way, regulated by the FCC. If there’s one thing that both sides can agree on, it’s that the internet is increasingly central to our lives – and the more it matters, and the more money there is to be made, the more we’ll fight about it. –CIS

9. The (near-)death of arts journalism

“It’s not that the book critic goes before the city hall reporter. It’s that the book critic goes before the guy who covers high school hockey,” wrote Jed Gottlieb in a comprehensive review on the state of arts criticism last January. Buzz about the impending demise of arts journalism started gaining steam around 2008 (though troubling signs were in evidence well before that). A flurry of publications – ranging from newspapers like the San Jose Mercury News and the Houston Chronicle to magazines like Time and Newsweek – have slashed A&E sections due to declining subscriptions, free-falling ad revenues, and questions about the relevance of arts criticism in the age of social media, when seemingly everyone is a critic. Even stolid institutions like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have not been immune to cuts to arts and entertainment coverage. In the aftermath, arts critics are opting for buyouts, shifting (by choice or not) to freelance positions or other beats, or exiting the field altogether. News outlets have answered declining readership by pushing writers to create generalized content (read: puff pieces) that arts patrons and hockey dads alike will click on their e-readers, keeping dwindling ad revenue rolling in (for now). Yet critical arts writing has seen a resurgence in alternative venues, with foundations and arts service organizations committing dollars and programs toward initiatives driving innovation in arts criticism and nonprofit journalism, including the emergence of artist-critics who both make and comment on art. To some, however, these shifts can create questionable conflicts of interest. Debate continues – mainly among writers, some employed, and some not – over whether the loss of the independent arts critic’s subjective, evaluative voice will prove a bigger blow than artists would like to admit. –LW

10. Obamacare passes and survives…so far

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, topped our annual review of Arts Policy Stories back when it became law in 2010. Over the years we watched Obamacare have a rocky start, overcome two challenges in the Supreme Court, and battle against increased premiums. Still, we believe Obamacare has been the piece of federal legislation that has most deeply affected the arts ecosystem in the United States in the past ten years. We think this for three reasons. First, by increasing affordable healthcare options for freelance and low-income folks, Obamacare reduces the financial risk often associated with careers in the arts and may allow more individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds to enter the field. Second, lower out-of-pocket healthcare expenses (after taking subsidies into account) for previously uninsured artists may allow artists to spend less time working non-artistic “day jobs” and more time in their artistic medium. Finally, by reducing out-of-pocket expenses for newly insured folks (although not the promised $2,500 annually), Obamacare affords individuals more disposable income to participate in the arts. While several attempts by the Trump administration and current Congress to dismantle Obamacare have failed, the recently signed tax legislation could dramatically elevate costs by repealing the insurance mandate. Congress has acknowledged that such increases could also be used to justify cutting $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid, both of which enroll artists. Even so, Obamacare, or something like it, is likely to exist for at least a little while longer, to the continued benefit of the arts ecosystem. –AA

Honorable mentions

• Corporate media consolidation
• The rise of Kickstarter and equity crowdfunding
• The 2016 U.S. presidential election
• Culture and its place in global Sustainable Development Goals
• Detroit Institute of Arts rescues/is rescued by Detroit
• The rise and (partial) fall of creative placemaking
• The rise of effective altruism and tech philanthropy

Hands, from Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam,” at Italianrenaissance.org

In Createquity’s view, a healthy arts ecosystem maximizes the arts’ capacity to improve the lives of human beings in concrete and meaningful ways. As such, we have sought to better understand the various means by which one measures such improvements, the current state of research across areas of impact, and where there’s room to grow.

Why We Care

Since the evidence base for the benefits of the arts is continually developing and evolving, our investigations in this area have been fairly expansive. We began by grounding our work in the concept of wellbeing – an emerging, interdisciplinary field of study in the social sciences centering on a holistic definition of individual and societal health – to look at the impact of the arts across multiple dimensions of human life. We wanted to better understand how other sectors define and measure wellbeing and quality of life, and how arts and culture might fit into these existing frameworks. This foundational investigation led to a subsequent inquiry into the following questions:

• What are particular claims to the benefits of arts participation?
• Does the majority of available evidence support each claim?
• How strong is the quality of evidence?

What We Know

Grounding our research in the concept of wellbeing helped to shape our definition of meaningful benefits as a result of arts participation. We learned that although most wellbeing frameworks do not explicitly include arts and culture, some do. The one most closely matching Createquity’s worldview is the capability approach originally proposed by economist Amartya Sen, which frames wellbeing in the context of human beings’ freedom to make choices about how to live their lives. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s elaboration of the capability approach embraces the arts’ influence on overall wellbeing both directly and indirectly via the capabilities of “senses, imagination, and thought” and “play,”  which may include active arts participation and creation, as well as observation, reflection, absorption and enjoyment of arts experiences.

Our subsequent review of research into arts and wellbeing – focusing on the benefits of the arts on a range of different wellbeing impact areas – fits into four broad areas of impact: physical and mental health, education and personal development, economic vitality, and social cohesion. Following is a list of benefits claimed for arts participation across these areas, categorized based on the strength of the evidence backing those claims.

We are highly confident that:

• Participatory arts activities help to maintain the health and quality of life of older adults.  There is evidence that singing improves mental health and subjective wellbeing; taking dance classes bolsters cognition and motor skills; dancing and playing a musical instrument reduce the risk of dementia; and visual arts generate increases in self-esteem, psychological health, and social engagement.
• Arts therapies contribute to positive clinical outcomes, such as reduction in anxiety, stress, and pain for patients. Music interventions tend to dominate studies in this area, mostly characterized by passive forms of participation (e.g., listening to music).
• Arts participation in early childhood promotes social and emotional development. For example, teachers report fewer instances of shy, aggressive, and anxious behavior among preschoolers taking dance classes, and toddlers receiving music instruction demonstrate increased social cooperation with other children.
• Student participation in structured arts activities enhances cognitive abilities and social skills that support learning, such as memory, problem-solving, and communication. (While arts participation may improve academic attainment as well, any effects are fairly small. Traditional scholastic measures such as standardized tests and grades have produced mixed evidence.)

We are moderately confident that:

• Community arts activities probably contribute to healthy living habits and improved understandings of health. A few mixed-methods studies have found among participants increases in healthy eating, physical activity, positive feelings, and other areas of personal development. However, it is difficult to know if these habits were sustained over time. Even in the case of sustained arts engagement, there is mixed evidence that it reduces mortality risk in adults.
• Arts and cultural participation probably improves subjective wellbeing (self-reported happiness or life satisfaction). Studies among large population samples cite both passive and active forms of art participation as important determinants of psychological wellbeing.
• Low-income students probably benefit disproportionately from access to arts education. Benefits such as improved cognitive abilities from music participation, or improved measures of tolerance for museum attendees, tend to be higher for students from low-SES households.

We have lower levels of confidence in the arts’ contributions to social cohesion and economic vitality, based on research we reviewed. For example,  participation in the arts may promote pro-social or civic behaviors like voting and volunteering, but the direction of the relationship is unclear – i.e., do pro-civic behaviors engender arts participation or vice versa, or is there is an underlying hidden value driving both behaviors? Evidence suggests that cultural participation may also contribute to economic growth through promotion of innovative workforce, and urban regeneration, but economic impact research is complicated by various confounding factors (e.g., planning policy, availability of jobs, general health of economy), making it difficult to really isolate the specific relationship and intensity of benefits.

What We Don’t Know

• In the absence of longitudinal studies, it is difficult to know the longer-term effects of arts participation. This is most true in the areas of health and early childhood education.
• The potential to make the case for the benefits of the arts suffers from a paucity of experimental and quasi-experimental designs, particularly in the areas of economic vitality and social cohesion.
• Generally, measuring effects at a community level is difficult to do when there are confounding factors. However, greater understanding of how the arts promote quality of life at the community or regional level could help to illuminate potential strategies or interventions that might work at scale to support a healthy ecosystem.
• Createquity’s investigations on the benefits of the arts have focused broadly on general effects on a general population. It is likely that there is quite a bit of variation between disciplines, between different modes of artistic participation (e.g., passive, active, solitary, communal), and between participants (comparing demographic and other differences). Research syntheses and comparative studies looking across these differences are generally lacking.

How to Use this Information

A few action items to consider:

For funders:

• The potential of the arts to improve lives for older adults and those in clinical settings seems under-invested in relative to the strength of the evidence. Consider how age and health fit into your strategy for improving lives through the arts.
• Similarly, consider what proportion of your arts funding portfolio reaches very young children (pre-K and younger), as some of the strongest available evidence indicates benefits for that population.
• Invest in longitudinal studies into benefits of the arts, especially those that involve diverse population samples, varying geographies, and embrace multiple disciplines.
• Consider funding more meta-analyses that take stock of the current spate of literature already in existence. British researchers have published a few of these, but there is much more to be done, and research coming out all the time that could be added to the mix.

For researchers:

• Conduct studies looking at the impact of the arts in comparison to other leisure-time activities, to make effect sizes in the arts more intelligible.
• Seek ways to assess impacts of arts participation across longer time frames, and embrace more experimental study designs if possible.
• There is currently very little research on the benefits of subsidizing the arts, as opposed to the benefits of arts participation. In other words, what proportion of the benefit realized from arts programming can be specifically attributed to grants or donations with that purpose in mind?
• Be transparent in discussing methods and limitations of arts participation, to allow others to learn directly from the research experience (in other words, don’t give undue credit to the arts if there isn’t enough supporting evidence).
• Further explore hierarchies of evidence in arts research, including examples of rigorous qualitative designs.

For arts organizations:

• Foster partnerships with other sectors that might benefit from your arts organization’s work (e.g., community and civic engagement, public health, social justice), and work together to further the arts’ contributions for community-wide benefit.
• Use the evidence that is available to help guide your programming to be as impactful as possible in providing benefits to individuals in your communities.

Resource List

Everything We Know about Whether and How the Arts Improve Lives (2016)
The research could still use an upgrade in many areas. But what we know so far should cheer any arts advocate.
A summary of the benefits of various arts endeavors including participatory activities, arts therapies, and arts engagement by young children and students.

(Eng)Aging with the Arts Has its Benefits  (2016)
In fact, the best evidence we have of the arts’ impact is that they make older adults feel better.
Recent studies indicate that  the most compelling evidence of the value of the arts revolves around improving the lives of older adults.

Are the Arts the Answer to Our TV Obsession? (2016)
Television can wreak havoc on the brain and the body. But people who watch it the most don’t seem to mind.
This article explores how, from obesity to apathy, the side effects of America’s national pastime (watching the tube) are taking their toll. What else to do?

Part of Your World: On the Arts and Wellbeing (2015)
A concept that’s been making the rounds in other fields for decades provides fresh ideas about how to think about the benefits of the arts.
This piece explains how the relationship between the arts and wellbeing could earn the former a proper seat at the table in conversations about human progress.

Capsule Review: The Impacts of Culture and Sport (2017)
What are the relationships between cultural engagement, sports participation, and social wellbeing? A recent study sheds light.
A British study examines the impact of sports and cultural participation on outcomes including measurements of health, education, civic participation, and personal wellbeing.

Capsule Review: Music, Singing, and Wellbeing (2017)
Three reports explore the effects of music on quality of life.
The UK’s What Works Centre for Wellbeing recently commissioned one of the most thorough research syntheses we’ve seen on the benefits of the arts.

A New Way to Think about Intrinsic vs. Instrumental Benefits of the Arts (2015)
Which matters more, art for art’s sake or art for people’s sake? Neither, according to a recent report.
A Philadelphia-based study reveals patterns between cultural participation, economic and geographic factors, and wellbeing among citizens.

Warhol Dollar, by Incase via flickr

We believe that a healthy arts ecosystem should provide opportunities for everyone to participate in the arts at their own individual level of skill and interest. This includes allowing more “scarce” opportunities – like making art for a living – to be available to those people for whom it matters most (i.e., making art is most meaningful) and whose work in the arts offers the greatest benefit to others – by connecting to a large audience, winning acclaim from experts, adding something unique to the cultural diet of humanity, or improving people’s lives in other meaningful ways.

Why We Care

We suspect that economically disadvantaged individuals in particular face a variety of obstacles when seeking to actively pursue careers in the arts, including:

• costs of making/producing art (e.g., materials, rehearsal space)
• indirect costs (e.g., transportation, child care)
• lack of time (due to the need to earn a living)
• inability to take needed financial or social risks (such as student debt for an arts degree, moving to an urban area)
• societal pressure (from social and/or professional environments that treat participation in the arts as a diversion from more economically productive activities)

Then there is the question of tangential income sources – such as a family help or inherited wealth – enjoyed by many who pursue arts careers. If an arts occupation is attractive but probably low-paying, and there are socioeconomic inequalities in the road to becoming a professional, logically that line of work will beckon more people from affluent backgrounds.

So do all the people who have the most to contribute really have the opportunity to pursue a career as an artist? And socioeconomics aside, to what extent are barriers to arts careers shaped by other societal factors – such as race/ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, and/or geographic variables (e.g., urban vs. rural residencies)?

What We Know

… about economic realities and secondary income:

It is difficult to support oneself on making art alone. To make ends meet, many artists have one or more rotating “day jobs” or an alternate plan. Research indicates:

• The day-job phenomenon is especially true for artists who support single-income households. For example, Australian artists who don’t rely on the income from a partner spend more time on non-arts work.
• Others develop a backup plan. Nearly half of artists in the U.S., according to BFAMFAPhD’s “Artists Report Back,” hedge their career bets by majoring in another subject, and arts students pick up more minors and teaching certificates as part of their backup planning.
• The career path of an artist is fraught with economic risk. There is a  long gestation period with high opportunity costs and greater variability in earnings than those working in other fields, and so a greater degree of uncertainty and instability. Artists are also five times more likely to be self-employed.
• Even after establishing a successful career, artists experience the biggest drop between income during childhood and income during adulthood among the 31 careers in a national longitudinal survey.
• Socioeconomic backgrounds play a major role: professionals in “arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations” were about 60% more likely than average to have a father who attended at least some college (55.9% vs. 34.5%), and 70% more likely to have a mother who attended college (55.9% vs. 32.6%).
• Governmental interventions to support artists can be effective, but also come with some strings attached, such as being subject to censorship, systemic perpetuation of cultural inequality, and diluting diversity of cultural expression and creativity.

… about formal education for arts professionals:

Are artist careers mediated by access to higher education? Research indicates that the need for a formal arts degree in order to make a living as an artist is debatable, and the benefits are variable:

• The “Artists Report Back” study claims that 84% of working artists in the United States don’t have a degree in the arts, and about two-fifths don’t have degrees at all.
• Although not necessary to become a successful professional,  an arts degree could help an artist reach a higher level of industry success or make a full-time living as an artist.
• A Danish study indicates that a formal education does reduce the rate of attrition (i.e., abandoning an arts career) for musicians, actors and writers, but not necessarily at the same rate for visual artists and dancers.

What We Don’t Know

Unfortunately, much of the evidence currently available on the topic of socioeconomic status and access to arts careers is indirect and based on incomplete data. The vast majority of research on artists’ livelihoods only examines artists’ current socioeconomic status, not their status at the time when they were deciding what career to pursue (and earlier). We thus don’t know much about how socioeconomic status at different life stages might affect people’s decisions about pursuing an arts career. In addition, while the evidence is consistent with the idea that the high risk of pursuing an arts career deters people from lower education and income backgrounds, we don’t know the extent to which risk really does play a role in the selection of majors, or for that matter whether the level of interest in pursuing arts careers varies across socioeconomic background and other demographic categories. The data and analyses that we do have point to socioeconomic status as one factor, but not necessarily the most important one, in determining whether or not someone will earn a living wage as an artist.

Other key questions we have include:

• What differences exist across artistic disciplines in relation to different career trajectories, opportunities, and potential financial successes?
• How does secondary income (such as spousal or other family  support) affect the opportunities and careers of individual artists?
• How does the availability of a social safety net – such as access or lack of access to affordable health care – affect the distribution and uptake of opportunities to earn a living as an artist?
• To what extent do disparities of opportunities and support for artists from different racial, gender and orientation backgrounds currently exist? And what, if anything, has helped to reduce these disparities?
• What are the differences in access between “very scarce” arts career opportunities – i.e., making a living from the arts – and merely “scarce” opportunities for artists who have more than one income source or who present work in public but not necessarily for money?

How to Use this Information

A few action items to consider:

For researchers

• Synthesize existing research on disparities of opportunities in arts careers by gender, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity.
• Seek a better understanding of professional opportunities by arts discipline – and also why any differences may exist.

For funders and artist residencies

• Commission current research on the questions referenced above to support more strategic thinking and supportive programs in the sector.
• Be cautious about assuming that supporting artists is the same as supporting socioeconomically disadvantaged populations in other sectors. Although artists may earn significantly lower incomes than professionals in other fields, they may come from or have familial access to wealth, which provides a security net not available to others.
• Consider how funders (and advocacy agencies) can play in a role in protecting artists from censorship risk in the face of variable government support – especially in places like Poland or Hungary where democratic institutions exist but are fragile and under threat.

Resource List

Who Can Afford To Be A Starving Artist? (2016)
The key to success might be risk tolerance, not talent.
This article explores the economic realities involving who can actually take up an arts career – those who deserve it, those who really want it, or those who can afford it?

The BFA’s Dance With Inequality (2016)
Most arts majors come from money. Most artists didn’t major in the arts. What does that say about the sector?
A BFAMFAPhD study raises questions as to whether higher education is an arts incubator or a waste of precious prime time.

When Artistic Education Matters  (2017)
Arts degrees don’t seem to have much impact on income from the arts. But do they affect how long people stay in the field?
A Danish study demonstrates how formal education can reduce attrition rates for artists in some disciplines (music, theater, literature) more than others (dance and visual arts).

The State: A Friend Indeed to Artists in Need? (2016)
Internationally, governments can play an important role creating occupational equity for the arts – but there’s a catch.
This article explores the different results of state-aided arts programs in global locales ranging from Scandinavia to the former Soviet Union to North America.

TEDx Talk (2011)
“Never Heard of ‘Em”: Why Citizen Curators (not Daddy’s Money) Should Decide Who Gets to Be an Artist
A transcript of a speech by Createquity founder Ian David Moss, who argues that a hypercompetitive marketplace ultimately limits opportunity for economically disadvantaged artists.

Artists Are Not Alone in Steep Climb to the Top (2013)
It’s an old story: when they’re not creating, many artists spend their time at another job that brings in a steady income.
This article outlines the many ways creative artists navigate the ever-changing economy.

Supply is Not Going to Decrease (So It’s Time to Think About Curating) (2011)
Providing stewardship for a world in which supply of creative content is exploding and will never shrink.
Why institutions and funders should focus their resources on producers and artists who can actually make a difference.

The hall is filled for the concert of the Netherlands, by flickr user Alessandro Grussu

One of Createquity’s primary areas of investigation centers on disparities of access to the benefits of the arts: we believe that large numbers of people face barriers to participating in the arts in the ways they may want to. Not only are those people unfairly missing out on opportunities for a higher quality of life, but the quality and diversity of the cultural products and experiences available to the rest of us – and to our descendants – suffer as well.

Why We Care

In our view, a healthy arts ecosystem maximizes the arts’ capacity to improve the lives of human beings in concrete and meaningful ways. While the evidence base for the benefits of the arts is continually developing and evolving, we feel that participation in the arts offers value to a large majority of human beings, and that arts participation (especially more active forms of participation such as creation or performance) can be deeply consequential, even life-changing. While we do not assume that everyone will or needs to benefit from having the arts in their lives, we do believe that the only way to determine who can gain the most is through widespread and varied exposure to the arts. Thus our model of a healthy arts ecosystem envisions a basic level of access to the arts for everyone.

Furthermore, we believe that opportunities requiring an investment on the part of society – like preparation toward being a professional artist – should be distributed as fairly as possible, by prioritizing those who would create the most value for others through their participation. Thus, when we speak of “access,” we do not just mean opportunities to experience art as an audience member; we also include access to artistic training and related resources.

Below we outline what arts research has shown us about the broad frame of arts participation, encompassing who participates, their motivations and barriers – and what we can do to identify disparities of access and close the gaps.

What We Know

… about the role of economic disadvantage in mediating access to the arts:

Research data paints a consistent portrait of lower participation by people with lower incomes and less education (low-SES) in a wide range of artistic activities – including not just attending classical music concerts and plays but also less “elitist” forms of engagement like going to the movies or dancing socially. (Indeed, surveys show that education is the strongest factor in determining arts engagement rates – more so than income, race/ethnicity, geography, or other demographic variables.) This is despite the fact that low-SES adults, on average, have more free time at their disposal. While cost is a sometimes a barrier to participation, it isn’t the only one: if we could somehow make it so that low-SES adults were no more likely to decide not to attend an arts event because of cost than their more affluent peers, it would likely not greatly change the socioeconomic composition of audiences.

With that in mind, free admission is not a silver bullet to reducing barriers to participation and increasing access. In the museum world, available research suggests free admission doesn’t do much to engage underserved audiences, and communication strategies play a more crucial role than price itself driving attendance patterns.

What about active arts participation (i.e., performing or making art as opposed to passive audience engagement as a spectator)? Research shows that active arts participation is also strongly correlated with education: in other words, while less-educated adults are more likely to sing to themselves or dance with friends than see the opera, the same is true of people with college degrees and well-paying jobs. The evidence for a relationship with income is less clear – data we’ve uncovered from United States indicates that so-called “informal” arts activities do not see proportionally more participation from low-income adults, but research from the UK shows lower-income adults actually engage more when you isolate art-making.

A major contrast to this dynamic is television. The for-profit commercial TV industry is far more effective than subsidized nonprofit arts organizations at engaging economically vulnerable members of our society. Not only do low-SES adults watch more TV, low-SES adults who don’t attend arts events watch even more TV than low-SES adults who do.

… about motivations and barriers to arts participation:

Motivations to participate in the arts vary greatly between different people for different types of cultural experiences. In one survey, more than half of attendees of performances such as music concerts say they went to see a specific artist; less than a tenth of attendees of art exhibits said the same, instead citing a desire to learn something new.

For “interested non-attendees” at arts events, barriers for participation include time, cost, transportation, and social support. Nearly half blamed a lack of time as a reason, almost 40% cited cost, 37% indicated difficulty in getting to the venue, and 22% didn’t have anyone to go with.

Despite a strong interest in arts participation, many retirees, empty nesters and older adults in poor health are disproportionately missing out. Among the chief factors keeping them home: transportation issues (difficulties in getting access to the venue) and social isolation (not having someone to go with). Meanwhile, the opportunity to socialize is paramount among motivators for participation among seniors. These findings are of particular concern given that there is a healthy body of evidence expounding on the benefits of arts participation for older adults.

… about how to measure engagement:

There are many ways to define arts participation, and broadening the definition can be revelatory. Providing an open-ended query about interviewees’ creative activities opened up the playing field about what could and should be considered in a study on “The Cultural Lives of Californians,” which helped to reflect a much broader range of arts participation than even the national Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

Different results between these similar surveys might be explained by a range of other factors, including data collection methodology and sampling. The SPPA was part of a larger survey led by the U.S. Census Bureau – the Current Population Survey (CPS) – and respondents agreed to participate without knowing they would be asked about their arts engagement habits. By contrast, “The Cultural Lives of Californians” synthesizes lessons from a statewide telephone survey that transparently communicated its interest in people’s cultural lives, so people who engage more in cultural activity may have been more likely to respond.

What We Don’t Know

Using the broadest definitions, we can confidently say that most people do participate in arts and culture – it’s just that not everybody participates in the range of activities that intersect with the work of nonprofit arts organizations. Many people get their primary cultural fix from things like listening to the music soundtracks of popular TV shows or attending their child’s band rehearsal – activities that do not involve the nonprofit sector at all. The big unanswered question: would nonprofit arts organizations offer a better or more varied type of experience for the people who aren’t currently being reached by them? Does watching a popular television program like Empire foster the same benefit to those audience members that attending a live stage play does? And if it does, what is the policy justification for subsidizing the cost of providing the latter, but not the former?

Our research has revealed several other “known unknowns,” including:

• Are arts organizations that are relatively free of commercial considerations – i.e., having to constantly fundraise, trying to sell tickets, aiming for a blockbuster – able to take more artistic risks? Do they create and offer a greater variety of programs that provide more value for more people?
• What strategies have been most effective in attracting “interested non-attendees,” and why? Are any of these scalable solutions that could ultimately serve a greater proportion of the population?
• What is the real value of infrastructure – i.e., funding, formal organizations, etc. – in contexts and locations that have historically flourished without it? What strategies are most appropriate to support arts participation in settings that are infrastructure-poor, but culturally rich? Who is best positioned to carry out those strategies?

What You Can Do With This Information

Questions to consider and actions to contemplate:

For arts administrators and artists

• How can you connect to leisure activities that people already engage in, particularly near-universal ones like watching television? Although you might view the couch as competition, it is also a potential connection point.
• How can you ramp up the social component of the experience, either through communications and marketing, or through adjusting programming or setting?
• What are ways you might address barriers such as transportation for audience segments that may not have easy access to their own?
• If your goal is to make your work more relevant and accessible to a socioeconomically diverse audience, consider that a blanket free admission policy may not yield the results you’re looking for.

For funders

• How might you support an ecosystem that recognizes a broader range of activities in its definition of arts and cultural participation? Are you unintentionally privileging certain modes, venues, genres, and cultural traditions in your current programming?
• Commission research to promote greater understanding of the benefits to audiences of different types of arts participation (particularly broken down by sectoral context – i.e., for-profit vs. nonprofit), and the distribution of those benefits across different populations and places.
• Be wary of supporting audience engagement programs that rely on free or reduced prices as the primary strategy for expanding access.

For researchers

• Ask questions about arts participation broadly, avoiding the term “arts” if possible, and encourage open-ended responses to get the fullest picture. “The Cultural Lives of Californians” shows how being expansive in defining arts activities, even letting the respondent lead the conversation, allows for a richer and more nuanced picture of participation.
• Engage in research about the benefits of different kinds of arts participation, especially as it relates to nonprofit arts organizations as providers.

Resource List

Why Don’t They Come (2015)
It’s not just the price of admission that’s keeping poor and less-educated adults away from arts events.
This article explores arts participation rates of people with lower incomes and less education; motivations and barriers among participants; the realities of television engagement; and where we can go from here.

One Size Fits All Does Not Fit “The Arts” (2015)
An NEA report looks at motivations for and barriers to arts attendance.
In probing the motivations of “interested non-attendees” – people who expressed participatory interest in arts events but did not follow through – this report reveals barriers including cost, convenience, and time; it also reveals cultural patterns across artistic disciplines.

Learning from “The Cultural Lives of Californians” (2015)
A survey of Golden State residents reveals lessons in arts participation and how we measure it.
With its broad scope in defining arts activities and use of open-ended prompts, this survey shows the range of ways Californians engage with culture and the significant effect of age on art-making (as distinct from attendance of arts events).

Taking Art Into Their Own Hands (2016)
Audiences who won’t visit your museum may be enthusiastic amateur artists in their spare time.
This article indicates that arts participation is strongly correlated with education, but not with social class or social status – and active participation in art-making is actually inversely associated with income.

Capsule Review: Taking Charge at Museums (2017)
A research study on the effects of charging or not charging for admission on attendance, visitor experience, and funding among UK museums.
This study explores the differences between museums that charge and those that don’t, and emphasizes the importance of effectively communicating changes in charging policies.

Arts Policy Library: Cultural Engagement in California’s Inland Regions (2012)
A survey of rural and suburban populations exposes participation in a broad range of cultural activities.
Among other things, this study shows that while the home is a hugely important setting for arts engagement, funders and nonprofits have virtually ignored it as an arts space.

Arts Policy Library: 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (2012)
A summary, history, and analysis of the influential NEA survey.
This article traces how the SPPA survey tracked various kinds of arts participation for both audience members and creators.

Arts Policy Library: Gifts of the Muse (2009)
A close look at the implications of a far-ranging report on the benefits of the arts.
Gifts of the Muse laid out one of the first frameworks for understanding the effects of arts participation, as well as the evidence supporting that theory.

The Myth of the Transformative Arts Experience (2010)
If we are searching for a life-transforming experience at an arts event, we may have come to the wrong place.
This essay explores the idea that we often place overly high expectations on the effects of the average encounter with art.

Negro Ensemble Company National Tour, 1968, by Philip Mallory Jones

In Createquity’s vision of a healthy arts ecosystem, each human being today and in the future has an opportunity to participate in the arts at a level suited to that person’s interest and skill. Accordingly, it’s important for us to understand the ways in which the current arts ecosystem falls short of this ideal, in particular by failing to include everyone equally or give everyone a fair shot at the opportunities they deserve.

Why We Care

In the United States, a long history of cultural equity activism has drawn attention to ways in which the essential infrastructure of the arts sector – in particular, the nonprofit arts funding system – was originally shaped by and for wealthy, white patrons. The lingering effects of this history are evident today in the disproportionate incidence of organizations celebrating European art forms among the largest-budget institutions in most metropolitan areas.

Createquity’s informed hypothesis is that wealthy donors, who are disproportionately white, continue to influence the art that organizations produce/present, prompting those organizations to cater to donors’ personal preferences and tastes rather than those of the broader community. These patrons also influence the decisions of numerous public and private funders, resulting in ongoing disproportionate subsidies to large institutions founded by people of European descent. The cascading effects of this imbalance are many, potentially decreasing access to meaningful arts experiences and opportunities to make living as an artist for people of color and other marginalized groups.

What We Know

In the United States, a wealth of data supports the notion that the nonprofit arts sector suffers from a lack of racial and other forms of diversity, particularly among larger-budget institutions working in European art forms. Approximately 84% of curatorial, educational, and leadership jobs at art museums are occupied by white people, while 92% of board members at orchestras are white. According to the Foundation Center’s 2015 Foundation Giving Forecast Survey, more than 92% of arts foundation presidents and 87% of arts foundation board members are white. This lack of diversity extends to top leadership in commercial arts industries as well, and acting, directing, and other opportunities in Hollywood disproportionately favor white men.

Meanwhile, giving to nonprofit arts organizations appears to be highly stratified, with just 2% of arts organizations in the United States receiving more than half of total contributed income. In addition, there are clear signs that current funding patterns disfavor people of color, rural communities, and low-income neighborhoods.

From “Not Just Money” by Helicon Collaborative

Knowledge of this nature can establish the existence of a problem, but in order to use research and evidence to help our sector move forward, we must have a clear, and shared, understanding of what cultural equity success looks like. And therein lies the rub: the further we delved into the literature around cultural equity, and the more we consulted experts and connected with some of the activists who precede us, the more we came to realize that shared understanding simply doesn’t exist.

That there are different visions for cultural equity is clear. Where exactly the lines are drawn, however, is somewhat less so. There is an inherent difficulty in examining positions forged through dialogue via documents authored by a few, and any attempt to develop a taxonomy will have its flaws. But in our own conversations, we found it helpful to divide the visions for success we were reading and hearing from advocates into four archetypes: Diversity, Prosperity, Redistribution, and Self-Determination.

• Diversity: The one thing that everyone in the cultural equity conversation seems to agree on is that so-called “mainstream” institutions are far too homogeneous. The “Diversity” vision for cultural equity seeks to rectify this, calling for these institutions to become more reflective of the communities they serve. Conversations about diversity have tended to focus first on audiences, then on programming, and finally on leadership.
• Prosperity: The Prosperity vision takes Diversity’s belief in the power of organizational scale and applies it to institutions started and led by artists of color. These institutions follow the standard model of nonprofit growth, with an eye toward long-term sustainability. An underlying assumption of Prosperity is that large, established institutions of color will last longer, and thus provide more benefit to society over many generations.
• Redistribution: Redistribution favors a larger pool of recipients for contributed income, focusing on the full ecosystem of individuals and institutions that comprise a community; by contrast, the Diversity and Prosperity both embrace an institution-centric frame and the standard market dynamics of the nonprofit arts sector, in which a small number of high-profile institutions dominate.
• Self-Determination: The Self-Determination theory of cultural equity is the most radical departure from the status quo. It calls for full participation in and expression of cultural life for marginalized communities through models that are organic to those communities, and that look beyond established nonprofit arts funding and advocacy tactics.

What We Don’t Know

The existing research leaves several key questions unexplored, the answers to which would help the field direct future efforts to advance cultural equity more strategically.

• How does the level of exposure to and/or interest in arts careers and arts administration jobs differ across race and other demographics (e.g. income, education)?
• What are the ingredients of a cultural experience that people find valuable? Are those ingredients consistent across demographics? Are the demographics of the staff (artistic, programming, and administrative) and board at arts and cultural organizations predictive of a) the demographics of their participants and b) the quality of experience that participants have?
• What effect does the scale of an arts organization (or an organization with arts programming) have on its ability to create specific benefits for artists, audiences, and communities of color? How do networks of larger and smaller organizations perform relative to each other in facilitating these benefits? Does the influence of wealthy donors, funders, and customers tend to promote or harm an organization’s ability to deliver these benefits?
• Are arts activities designed to combat racism and other forms of oppression effective in that goal? How do they compare to other anti-oppression strategies, and do they make those strategies more effective when used in combination? What is the role of the arts in helping oppressed peoples cope, survive, and thrive?

What You Can Do With This Information

We hope this information can be helpful to organizations and agencies of all sizes seeking to define, measure, and achieve equity goals. Honest conversations about cultural equity are critical for all arts organizations, but particularly those that serve a leadership function in the sector – e.g., local arts councils, government agencies, foundations, etc. – who work with a cohort of organizations that may have varying ideas about what equity means in practice. We recommend discussing with your board/stakeholders and colleagues your collective vision of cultural equity going forward; which archetype best fits your goals, organizational structure, and institutional identity?

The four visions of cultural equity that Createquity outlined are not mutually exclusive, nor are their advocates. Yet in practice, the tensions between these ideas can be a source of great confusion if they are not called out explicitly. We recommend consideration of the following questions:

What is the Value (and Cost) of Integration?
The Diversity vision is strongly centered on the idea of people coming together to understand and celebrate their differences. Yet for some activists, this expectation to share and share alike ignores oppressed groups’ right to meaningful control of resources, traditions, and spaces that they can call their own.

How Central are Institutions?
Diversity and Prosperity see institutions as vital infrastructure with enormous potential for community benefit. Nevertheless, it’s worth questioning at what point most institutions tend to prioritize their own preservation over the health of the entire arts ecosystem.

How Influential are Cultural Norms?
One of the most important American cultural norms involves using an individual rather than group lens to talk about benefits and harm. What are some other norms that often go unexamined? How do they impact the work of your institution?

What about the Money?
For funders specifically, if you want to support communities of color out of a desire for economic and/or racial justice, how can you ensure that you are transferring not just resources but meaningful control/ownership of those resources?

What is the Role of Race?
Diversity often starts from a reference point of race, but advocates for Diversity frequently encounter pressure to include measures of social difference such as age, class, and disability status. How important is racial justice to your institutional mission?

What does/can equity look like within a healthy arts ecosystem?  
Pursuing future inquiry through a wellbeing or quality-of-life lens may be an effective tactic for building bridges between visions and the ideologies they represent, by enabling the relative value of components of each vision to be understood as part of an integrated whole. How do we measure and evaluate wellbeing in the context of self-determination? Who decides what’s good for you?

Resource List

On the Cultural Specificity of Symphony Orchestras (2017)
What is the role of white-led arts institutions in a race-conscious world?
As longstanding concerns about cultural equity find voice in policy initiatives, leaders at arts organizations that celebrate European cultural heritage may have to ask whether their loyalty is more to their art form or their local community.

Making Sense of Cultural Equity (2016)
When visions of a better future diverge, how do we choose a path forward?
Cultural equity is increasingly a topic of concern for the arts ecosystem, but not everyone agrees on what it means in practice. This article examines four overlapping but distinct visions of success advanced by cultural equity advocates over the past half century, the assumptions underlying each of these visions, and the fault lines running between them.

Notes to “Making Sense of Cultural Equity” (2016)
Full bibliography and endnotes, along with a set of definitions related to common terms in the discussion of cultural equity.

Who Will Be the Next Arts Revolutionary? (2016)
The story of how the nonprofit arts sector got started offers would-be changemakers some clues.
This article looks into how the non-profit organization became the dominant model for the sector, reaching a boom during the mid-20th century.

Notes to “Who Will Be the Next Arts Revolutionary?” (2016)
Full bibliography and endnotes, especially point 5.

Who Can Afford to Be A Starving Artist? (2016)
The key to success may be risk tolerance, not talent.
This feature article examines whether there is evidence that risk dissuades individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds from pursuing arts careers.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Race (2013)
What can we do to create an open environment for talking honestly about race relations in all of their kaleidoscopic, maddening, shame-inducing complexity?

Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change (2013)
A report published by NCRP argues that arts philanthropy, as currently structured, perpetuates inequality across the arts and culture sector by disproportionately funding large institutions that focus on Western European traditions.

Createquity Podcasts 

• “Createquity Podcast Series 4: Approaching Cultural Equity” (2016)
  Different visions of cultural equity, and how pursuing those visions has played out in practice.
• “Createquity Podcast Series 1: Watch Where You’re Giving” (2016)
  Effective altruism and the arts.

As a think tank and online publication investigating the most important issues in the arts and what we can do about them, Createquity continually gathers and reviews research in the arts sector. With the Createquity Arts Research Prize, we set out to highlight and celebrate the groundbreaking research that we see as essential in maximizing the good that the arts can do.

Arts research occupies no single, well-defined space in either higher education or the wider world; it has roots in many different academic disciplines and intellectual traditions, and it stems from a variety of sources. Candidates for the Createquity Arts Research Prize were drawn from Createquity’s ongoing internal review of hundreds of publications as well as from external nominations, and the winner was selected via two rounds of evaluation. The first was conducted internally by Createquity’s research team using the three criteria of relevance, rigor, and the extent to which the research adds to existing knowledge. The top scoring studies from this round were then evaluated by an external panel comprised of some of the foremost research minds in the country, basing their choices on the criteria above as well as inventiveness, transparency, courage displayed in the choice of topic or approach, and the extent to which the prize would represent a significant opportunity for the author. (See more information on the selection process here.)

Winner of the 2017 Createquity Arts Research Prize, Mirae Kim

Mirae Kim’s prize-winning publication explores one aspect of the important and under-studied question of what sets civically engaged nonprofit arts organizations apart from those whose behaviors are more responsive to market forces. The topic is increasingly resonant within the arts sector, and directly addresses Createquity’s interest in the willingness of arts institutions to prioritize community needs ahead of their own growth and prestige. To investigate this topic, Kim applies a mixed methods approach, robust in its combination of interviews with 21 arts nonprofit directors to inform a survey of approximately 900+ arts organizations, and the integration of key financial data reported on 990 forms to try to uncover patterns related to income sources. The findings of the study suggest that arts organizations that are more civically engaged (as opposed to market-driven):

• Have stronger networks (i.e., work with a greater range of other organizations like schools, senior center);
• Consider civic engagement as an industry norm (i.e., nonprofits are inherently civic-minded institutions); and
• Are consciously aware of their nonprofit status.

Kim also found that earned income negatively correlates with civic engagement behaviors, whereas no correlation between government funding and civic engagement was observed.

Originally, Kim was drawn to this research topic by looking at commercial versus nonprofit theaters in New Jersey, investigating what makes the nonprofits inherently different from commercial theatres. She questioned what is it about the 501(c)(3) identity that is different from commercial ventures.

At the time of her selection, Kim was aware of Createquity but not aware of this inaugural prize. Receiving the congratulatory email in a car driving to Georgia for her new assistant professor position, she was thrilled. She had worked for three years on her research, in some isolation in Missouri. Now, she’s excited by the opportunity to discuss her work and what it means, especially with practitioners. “I love the idea of condensing research into concise briefs and sharing research,” Kim explains. “I am excited about this and looking to connect with people who might want to have a more in-depth discussion about the research and what they see in the real world. This is a great opportunity for researchers who are studying in their offices trying to work on datasets and understand the world better to convey what they find to the people who are out there making real changes.”

This is the first time Createquity (or anyone else, to our knowledge) has attempted to review a year’s worth of arts research with anything approaching this level of comprehensiveness. Congratulations go out to Mirae Kim!

* * *

Additional finalists for the 2016 Createquity Arts Research Prize included:

Runner-Up

“Artistic education matters: survival in the arts occupations”
Trine Bille and Søren Jensen
Does a formal arts education matter in one’s potential for success as an artist? We have published several articles on the role of socioeconomic status in access to arts careers, so this title immediately stuck out as relevant. The research focuses on a group of artists in Denmark, and looks at the influence of their artistic education on survival in the labor market, comparing across different artistic disciplines using detailed statistical procedures. Createquity has published a Research Spotlight of this work.

Honorable Mention

”Does “Strong and Effective” Look Different for Culturally Specific Arts Organizations?”
Zannie Giraud Voss, Glenn Voss, Andrea Louie, Zenetta Drew, and Marla Rubio Teyolia
This working paper, from SMU’s National Center for Arts Research, was a timely response to the controversial 2015 DeVos Institute of Arts Management study that recommended funders consider consolidating grantmaking to organizations of color among a smaller number of institutions. This study was a key source for Createquity’s 2016 article “Making Sense of Cultural Equity.” Its approach of looking at quantitative data to track performance on key indicators, including access to funding, is a fresh lens through which to understand the effectiveness of culturally-specific organizations.

”Do Donors Care About Results? An Analysis of Nonprofit Arts and Cultural Organizations”
Cleopatra Charles and Mirae Kim
This study addresses Createquity’s interest in understanding what motivates decision-making by arts organizations. One of our hypotheses is that donors often dictate what arts institutions do, which may or may not be in alignment with a goal of improving the overall health of the arts ecosystem or maximizing wellbeing benefits from the arts. “Do Donors Care” looks at the important question of whether or not donors change the way they give (e.g., size of donation) based on how an organization performs on outcomes such as attendance via a regression analysis that controls for things like size of organization, age, and fundraising efficiency.

”Showcasing Creativity: Programming and Presenting First Nations Performing Arts”
Jackie Bailey and Hung-Yen Yang, BYP Group; Mandy Whitford and Marija Vodjanoska from the Australia Council for the Arts
One of the few studies on this list that focuses on populations outside of the United States, “Showcasing Creativity” focuses on the the barriers Aboriginal artists face in being able to reach broader audiences in Australia. The methodology combines data visualization techniques to describe frequency of presentations of Aboriginal artists, interviews with presenters, and survey data. Createquity has published a Research Spotlight of this work.

Music, Singing, and Wellbeing – What Works?
Norma Daykin, Guy Julier, Alan Tomlinson, Catherine Meads, Louise Mansfield, Annette Payne, Lily Grigsby Duffy, Jack Lane, Giorgia D’Innocenzo, Adele Burnett, Tess Kay, Paul Dolan, Stefano Testoni, Christina Victor Dolan
We came across this systematic evidence review project from the UK think tank What Works Wellbeing just as Createquity was getting ready to publish “Everything We Know About Whether and How the Arts Improve Lives.” It immediately impressed us as a major resource about the evidence of the effect of music on the wellbeing of adults, both healthy and with dementia (the main focus of the literature under review). Although it is not the first research synthesis covering the topics in question, its comprehensiveness and elegance of design struck us as a model of the genre.

”Well, if They Like it… Effects of Social Groups’ Ratings and Price Information on the Appreciation of Art”
Jon O. Lauring, Matthew Pelowski, Michael Forster, Matthias Gondan, Maurice Ptito, and Ron Kupers
This study looks at the impact of social and monetary contextual information on how people respond to art, potentially adding to our understanding of both the development and cultivation of artistic taste and social constructions of artistic excellence. For Createquity, these ideas are relevant to the question of how a healthy arts ecosystem matches arts participants with experiences that they are likely to find meaningful.

Featured image: South Dunedin community art project. Photo: Flickr user Paul S Allen.

That’s why we are proud to announce this morning the release of the Createquity Higher Education Resource Guide, a primer for incorporating Createquity resources into the college classroom. In the guide, we’ve compiled a number of our online articles that are relevant to undergraduate and graduate curricula covering the arts, arts administration, arts research, cultural policy, economics, and related topics. In the production of the resource guide, the Createquity team worked closely with staff from the Association of Arts Administration Educators and an advisory group of academic professionals.

For example:

• A section on Community Engagement highlights “Why Don’t They Come?” – an article that digs into the nuanced relationship between socioeconomic status and arts attendance.
• In the guide’s section covering Policy for the Arts, we include “Making Sense of Cultural Equity,” which traces the 90-plus year history of cultural equity advocacy in the U.S. and distills four primary visions of success that emerged during this time.

The guide outlines a number of ways to invite students to engage with Createquity materials. In a classroom setting, Createquity articles may serve as:

• Reading assignments
• Resource for students pursuing individual research projects
• Topics or starting point to structure a class discussion
• Opportunities for students to analyze and respond
• A platform to participate in discussion with students at other institutions
• Material for use in class presentations

To download Using Createquity in the Higher Education Classroom, click here.

Featured Image: Faustin Tuyambaze on Unsplash.

• Carlos Manjarrez and John Paxson have joined the Createquity Advisory Council, our dream team of movers and shakers who guide our work moving forward. They each bring decades of experience and a deep well of research and media expertise to our expanding cohort of advisors.
• We now have a full complement of functional managers with the addition of Rebecca Ratzkin as our Research Team Leader and Jack Crager as Managing Editor. These new leadership positions have increased our ability to comprehensively review the latest arts research – culminating in our forthcoming inaugural Research Prize – and to regularly publish engaging content.
• We’re also pleased to announce the expansion of our volunteer corps of contributing associates. This group has doubled in size over the past six months, greatly increasing our capacity in screening research, content curation, and audience engagement. Our newest team members are: Daniel Arnow, Ally Duffey, Sarah Frankland, Teresa Koberstein, Miguelina Nuñez, and Michael Spicher. We look forward to continuing to work with these talented contributors.

Meet the new Createquity team members:

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Carlos A. Manjarrez has more than 20 years of policy research experience. He is a principal and co-founder of NovaKultura Consulting, a cultural and social policy research firm.  He also serves as the director of the Office of Data Governance and Analysis at the Legal Services Corporation, where he heads a research team focused on civil legal aid and access for low-income families. Manjarrez was the founding director of the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, overseeing the only statistical program focused on cultural data in the United States federal statistical system. He has worked on more than 30 national surveys of individuals and institutions, and his research teams are responsible for making more than 80 data files open and accessible through data catalogs and DATA.GOV. He has received support for his research from a variety of foundations and public agencies including the National Science Foundation, Kimsey Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, the United States Agency for International Development, and The World Bank Group. Manjarrez is a Ph.D. student in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Maryland, College Park, focusing on local economic development and cultural sustainability.

John Paxson an Emmy Award–winning journalist, writer and educator. He began his career as a radio correspondent with the Voice of America in Washington, DC, and Chicago before moving to CBS News where he has worked in a variety of roles in radio and television in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. A former vice president at CBS News, Paxson served for nearly ten years as the network’s London bureau chief, responsible for coverage across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia; he directed wartime coverage in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In the US, he worked as the head of news for Northwest Public Radio which broadcasts across the Pacific Northwest and founded an innovative boot camp for journalism students at Washington State University. He lives on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

RESEARCH TEAM LEADER

Rebecca Ratzkin has worked as a researcher and consultant in the nonprofit sector for over the past ten years, helping organizations, foundations and government agencies better understand how people engage with and are affected by arts and culture. Her interest and skills focus on bridging theory and practice, as well as empowering others to conduct and utilize research independent of “experts.” In her role as Senior Consultant at WolfBrown, she directed the Arts Research Collaborative (ARC) for the Hewlett Foundation Performing Arts Program from 2012 to 2015, and works with a range of clients from culturally specific and community-based organizations to large institutions and private foundations. Currently, Ratzkin is continuing her work in capacity building, research and evaluation as Assistant Director of Research and Evaluation at Special Service for Groups, where her projects include technical assistance for California Reducing Disparities Project addressing mental health disparities in Asian American Pacific Islander populations, and evaluation and capacity building for CONTRA-TIEMPO’s innovative From Movement to Movements: Creating Art & Action in South LA program, fostering social connection and community activism through dance. Rebecca is co-author of numerous reports, including Making Sense of Audience Engagement, Understanding the Intrinsic Impact of Live Theatre (part of Counting New Beans), Jazz Audience Initiative Study, and It’s Not About You…It’s About Them: Fund for Artists Donor Study. Rebecca graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College with major in art history, and has a master’s in urban planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, where she studied economic clusters of arts organizations in the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles.

MANAGING EDITOR

Jack Crager is a freelance writer, editor, and content manager based in New York City. He’s a former managing editor of American Photo magazine and editor of Graphis, international journal of design and visual communication. Crager writes about visual arts, music, sports and fitness, and related topics for a variety of print and online publications. He earned bachelor degrees in English and journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. On the side he is a singer-songwriter, strummer, and marathoner. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter and their loyal mutt.

CONTRIBUTING ASSOCIATES

As a cultural worker in New York City, Daniel Arnow has a background in nonprofit arts programming, management and development; he has worked in arts education, creative aging, and producing organizations. Arnow holds a masters in Urban Planning from Pratt Institute with a focus on participatory planning, community development, and arts policy. Daniel recently joined The Actors Fund as Director of Affordable Housing Initiatives. Previously, he served as the Director of Programming at JazzReach where he focused on widening audiences for Jazz and as Executive Director at Meredith Monk’s organization, The House Foundations for the Arts. Arnow continues his own artistic practice as a bass player and composer.

Ally Duffey is an MBA candidate at Wisconsin School of Business, Bolz Center for Arts Administration. Originally from Dallas, she attended Barnard College, Columbia University where she earned a BA in dance and art history. Ally is interested in helping to build fiscally and organizationally strong performing arts organizations that are able to maximize their opportunities for creativity and innovation by building audiences and awareness for the arts across emerging platforms. Prior to returning to graduate school, she spent six years working in fundraising and marketing for dance companies in roles at the Cunningham Dance Foundation, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and Pilobolus.

Sarah Frankland provides strategic cultural relations advice to local and international arts organizations, as well as foreign governments, with a focus on the transatlantic relationship.  Sarah served as the British Council’s Deputy Director and Head of Arts in the United States for twelve years. During this time she led trade missions between the US and Europe, brokered more than 100 artist tours to the US, and spearheaded several international initiatives including Cultural Leadership, Greening the Arts and the UK/US Writers in Residence. Sarah has extensive experience in arts strategy and planning as well as project management, fundraising, and communications. She has worked with arts organizations including Ford’s Theatre and the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC. She graduated from American University with an MA in Arts Management and a BA in Special History from Hull University. She is a Fellow of the UK’s Royal Society for the Arts.

Teresa Koberstein dedicates her spare time to design solutions for improving access to, and quality of, performance spaces in Portland, Oregon. She is currently the Director of Finance & Operations for Krupp Group, a public relations agency in the fashion industry based in New York City, working remotely from her home in Portland. She also serves on the board of Portland-based ensemble Hand2Mouth Theatre Company. Koberstein has contributed to performing arts facility development studies with Webb Management Services, and was a research fellow at Fractured Atlas contributing to program evaluation and various projects. Previously, she served as the communications coordinator for the National Coalition Against Censorship, advocating for artists’ free speech. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a BA in Theatre Arts and holds a Master of Nonprofit Management from Regis University.

Miguelina Nuñez specializes in the creation and development of bi-directional and experiential visual and written narratives for rich media platforms. She has written, produced, and consulted on works for the ANZ, EMEA, LATAM, and NAM markets. In her capacity as a creative consultant concerned with the social dynamics of language change, Nuñez has been featured in multi-disciplinary works sponsored by internationally distinguished institutions including the Centre for Contemporary Arts Geneva, the Wall Street Journal, BAMCinematek, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the Berlin International Film Festival.

Michael R. Spicher works as a writer, researcher, editor, and philosopher. For more than a decade, he has studied, written, and lectured about issues in art and aesthetics, earning a PhD in philosophy from the University of South Carolina. As an academic, he has published articles on beauty, taste, aesthetic experience, and state support for the arts. In addition to his own writing projects, he currently serves as an editor for the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (published by MIT Press), and he also started a website dedicated to ideas in aesthetics, called the Aesthetics Research Lab. He is a lecturer at Boston University in the Arts Administration graduate program, teaching a course called “Writing for the Arts.” In addition to his academic work, he is an artist, moving between painting and fiction writing. His work tends to circle around basic questions concerning meaning, nihilism, and faith.

Featured image: Fireworks by Flickr user Håkon Johansen.

“change” by flickr user samantha celera

At Createquity, we’ve written about theories of change before, and are a big believer in their power to depict strategy in a visual way. We’ve had our own theory of change for several years, but hadn’t gotten around to publishing it on the website until now. Below, you’ll see our take on how Createquity specifically, and leaders in the arts more generally, can begin to move the needle on some of our most pressing issues in the arts and beyond.

In reviewing the document, it may be helpful to focus on two “tracks” defined by the top two activity boxes in red. The first track, “Foster arts decision makers’ capacity to use information,” is about our regular non-feature programming: our monthly Newsroom articles, annual roundups of top arts policy stories, our Research Spotlight reviews of new and interesting research studies, as well as all of the content right here on Createquity Insider. The idea is that by sharing information and modeling a critical, big-picture approach to arts policy, we help to improve the quality of decision-making in the field more generally, independent of any specific issues.

The second track is all about our long-term mission to investigate the most important issues in the arts and what we, individually and collectively, can do about them. By identifying important issues and calling attention to them, we build momentum for finding a solution. Separately, we engage folks who have the power to make a difference in helping us think through what those solutions might be. The end result, if it all works, is a platform that’s grounded in evidence and high-quality analysis that has buy-in from the right people at the right time.

Our theory of change is a living document, so we welcome your feedback at any time.

“Artificial Intelligence” by Flickr user GLAS-8

Each year since 2009, Createquity has offered a list of the top ten arts policy stories of the past twelve months. And let’s be frank: some of those years are a little…what’s a polite way to put this? Boring. (Looking at you, 2013.)

2016 was not one of those. When the fifth-largest nation in Europe decides to give the equivalent of a year’s allowance to every 18-year-old in the country to spend on culture, and that only barely cracks #10 on the list, you know it’s been a consequential year. (To be fair, it also reflects the global perspective we take in our methodology for ranking stories, described more fully last year.) Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is for sure: 2017 is going to tell us a lot about our collective future.

As has been the case for the past few years, creation of this list is distributed amongst our editorial team. Authorship of individual items is noted at the end of each story.

10. The Italians launch a cultural voucher program

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who resigned this month after a bruising referendum, may not have achieved everything he had set out to accomplish, but his government did leave one cultural legacy for the country’s young people. Beginning this year, Italian teens will receive a €500 “cultural bonus” from the Italian government along with their right to vote on their 18th birthday. The money will be available for a full year, and, yes, keeping to its millennial audience, is administered entirely through an app. In its first year, a total of €290 million in government money will be apportioned out to some 574,000 teens–both Italian natives and foreign-born residents. The program is intended to foster affinity between the country’s youth and its arts sector by providing Italy’s youngest adults with incentive to consume culture on their own terms, and is part of a larger package of programs aimed at “fighting terrorism through culture” that was initially announced in November 2015. Though vouchers are viewed as efficient ways to provide social benefits (Brazil implemented a cultural voucher program in 2014; Canada and Finland are experimenting with broader programs), critics of Italy’s program question the wisdom of its launch in a struggling economy and its ultimate ability to empower workers in arts and culture. It’s unclear what will happen to the program under the new administration, though Paolo Gentili, tapped to succeed Renzi, seems, for now, to be following in Renzi’s center-left footsteps. –Michael Feldman

9. The era of Peak TV is upon us

2015 was the year that the number of original scripted television series available in the US surpassed the 400 mark–coming in at 409 shows, up almost 9% from 2014 and nearly double that of 2009. FX Networks CEO John Landgraf dubbed it the year of “Peak TV,” and assured us the decline was nigh (a welcome thought for many). He was, by his own admission, wrong. By his new accounting, the peak will hit in 2017, and possibly carry through to 2019, with the tally soon to cross 500. Netflix is primarily to be blamed (or congratulated) for the push; the streaming video industry as a whole is projected to earn nearly $7 billion this year. The business of too much TV is a complex one, with numerous winners and losers: short-term boosts in salaries and profits don’t necessarily translate to long-term profits; more scripted shows means more room for voices in the writers room but also fierce competition for crew and equipment. And the irony is it’s more expensive than ever to produce a TV show: according to Landgraf, the price for making and marketing an hour of television has gone up about 20% in the past 5 years, to $4-$5 million an hour. Beyond the benjamins (and the fear the good times will come crashing down around us), there’s another side to consider: with the explosion of scripted shows from small producers aimed at niche audiences, it’s becoming increasingly easy to create our own television bubbles, creating a narrative space populated with characters who look and think exactly as we want them to. As we look towards a Trump presidency, fake news, and filter bubbles, it will be imperative to keep an eye on the role of television. We watch as much as five hours a day, after all. –Clara Inés Schuhmacher

8. Ghost Ship brings underground artist spaces into the light of day

Described as one of the worst U.S. structure fires in over a decade, the tragic Ghost Ship warehouse fire took at least 36 lives in Oakland, CA on December 3. The warehouse, whose owner had an industrial permit (but not a residential or event permit), served as the illegal residence of some 25 artists, and was the site of an electronic dance party the night of the fire. The tragedy has pulled back the curtain regarding the crushing cost of rent and inavailability of safe spaces in which artists can afford to live and work, in Oakland and beyond. It has also triggered a flurry of investigations into code and permit violations across the country that has resulted in heavy scrutiny of similar spaces, and the subsequent closings of DIY event venues and live/work spaces in Nashville, Denver, Los Angeles and Baltimore, with more likely to come. Sadly, the issue has become politicized: as of December 24, the East Bay Times reported that the so-called Right Wing Safety Squad, an extremist group on the anonymous message board 4chan, was claiming at least partial responsibility for 16 closures after a call to action December 7 to “Make America Safe Again” by alerting authorities to potential code and permit violations in DIY artist spaces. A counteractive push from foundations is aimed at recognizing that urban artist communities operating in spaces like Ghost Ship are in desperate need of affordable real estate, and artists from marginalized communities are especially affected. Three days after the fire, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf issued a statement regarding a coordinated response to the Bay Area’s real estate problem, involving three local foundations in a $1.7 million grant initiative aimed at “preventing displacement, growing the capacity of the city’s artists and cultural organizations, and enhancing municipal resources for the cultural sector over the long haul.” –Lauren Warnecke

7. Impact investing and equity crowdfunding gain ground

Interest in impact investing–taking a financial stake in ventures designed to create social, economic, cultural or environmental impact–is growing: the 2016 U.S. Trust Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy and the First National Benchmark Survey of Family Foundations found that fully one third of those surveyed are interested in impact investing. The arts have been latecomers to this game, largely because it’s tricky to create a competitive return on investment in many areas of the arts sector. Despite $2.4 billion annually in corporate impact investing, the arts’ best chance may be with individuals, and many are working on making the arts appealing to folks with deep pockets. Upstart Co-Lab, a startup nonprofit headed by former NEA Senior Deputy Chairman Laura Callanan, has forged an agreement with the Calvert Foundation to create a Community Investment Note for impact investment opportunities like low-income artist housing developments. Another way for corporations and foundations to “make an impact” with their investing, of course, is to choose who they don’t invest in. Such divestment movements have been floating around for some time now, but the Brooklyn Community Foundation has taken it further than most, committing to divest all its interests in corporations or initiatives that, in its judgment, harm communities of color. Upstart and Calvert’s Community Investment Note, however, is primarily aimed at individual investors, who now have even more options than before thanks to 2012’s Jumpstart our Startups (JOBS) Act. The JOBS Act lifted regulations on capital investments that kept average Americans from seeking a financial stake in new companies, and this November, the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo announced a new partnership with Microventures to provide vehicles for regular folks who want to invest in new companies. –MF

6. Turkey continues its crackdown on artists and intellectuals

We first wrote about Turkey’s alarming trend towards artistic censorship in 2014 (the story made our Top Ten), and–unfortunately–the news continues to worsen. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was first elected as prime minister in 2003, was once considered a relatively moderate leader. Over the past decade he has gradually manipulated the political system to remain in power, increasingly targeting journalists, artists and intellectuals in his continued drift toward authoritarianism. A “culture war” that began in 2012 when Erdoğan felt his daughter was disrespected during a theater performance has since spurred attempts to exercise control over the state arts funding apparatus, attacks on public art and television, and going after satirists and museums. Erdoğan used an unsuccessful coup attempt earlier this year as an excuse to crack down even more on free speech, shutting down and seizing the assets of 29 publishing houses accused of aiding the enemy, imprisoning more than 120 journalists, blocking social media networks, silencing writers, closing universities, shutting down TV and radio stations, charging the editors of a Turkish daily with espionage, jailing academics on charges of promoting terrorist propaganda, and forcibly overtaking Zaman, Turkey’s largest-circulation newspaper. Freemuse claims that Turkey, along with Russia, China, Iran, and Syria, belongs to “a special league of countries that systematically repress freedom of expression,” with more than half of the recorded violations against artists worldwide originating in those nations. As Ian noted in his recent article on the Trump presidency, artists and media are often among the first to be singled out when an authoritarian government seeks to impose itself on the people. We can only hope that Turkey’s creative class continues to resist. –CIS

5. Audiobooks and podcasts break records

Books and radio, whose death has alternately been heralded and bemoaned for years, are making a comeback–in scrappy start-up form. No longer just the stuff of road trips and bad jokes, audiobooks are the fastest-growing format in the book business today. Fueled by the ubiquitous smartphone, revenue from downloaded audiobooks grew 32.3% in the first half of 2016 compared to last year. By comparison, hardcovers and paperbacks grew by 0.9% and 8.8%, respectively, and e-books revenue declined 20% in that same period. Some 35,574 titles were published as audio in 2015, up from 7,000 in 2011. Edison Research found that 43% of Americans over the age of 12 have listened to an audiobook, and some audiobooks are even outselling their print counterparts. Everyone is looking to get in on the action: publishers are hiring high profile actors, and testing out original dramas; authors, such as Stephen King and Fred Armisen, are writing new work specifically for audio. Meanwhile, the conditions and format advantages that are propelling audiobooks forward are likewise helping podcasts, which are finally breaking into the mainstream after first debuting more than a decade ago. By a recent iTunes count (which does not host all the podcasts out there), there are some 200,000 podcasts in the iTunes library, 40% of which are active, and one-fifth of which are not in English. Edison Research estimates that 36% of the US population over the age of 12 has listened to at least one podcast–21% in a given month. Legacy media organizations including the New York Times, WNYC, the Wall Street Journal and the Des Moines Register have all announced podcasting investments, and media startups are getting in on the frenzy, including Slate, Buzzfeed and Gimlet Media. As with audiobooks, podcasts are still a small sliver of the pie, representing but 2% of the total time Americans spend listening to audio, and some say we’re approaching a glut. Still, the field shows no signs of slowing down yet. Even Createquity has jumped on board–we launched a podcast in collaboration with Fractured Atlas in March. –CIS

4. Virtual reality and augmented reality establish themselves as new art forms

By most accounts, we are living in the future. You can now teleport to a helicopter flying over the Swiss Alps, then back in your living room just by strapping a cardboard box holding your phone in front of your eyes. You can sit on stage, smack in the middle of a live performance by an orchestra, ballet or play, without ever entering a hall. You can experience the Tate Britain’s iconic collection alongside real-time news cycle without traveling to London. You can even walk down your own street and battle it out with your favorite Pokémon characters via Pokémon Go, downloaded to your smartphone. It’s the era of augmented and virtual reality, and, in reality, we’re just scratching the surface of possibility. Interest in virtual reality rose exponentially this year, while the popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go broke through to the mainstream with 100 million downloads worldwide, 30 million daily users, and extensive media coverage. The medium’s potential impact on the arts is far-reaching: arts organizations are putting audience members in the middle of the action, radically challenging notions of interactivity, narrative and site-specificity. Visual artists are pushing the boundaries of their work (see here, here, here), and VR experiences are making their way into film, making a splash this year at Sundance. VR is even changing how news stories are told, with the New York Times leading the charge. It’s changing the world of gaming, too: in South Africa, you can book a spot to play video games in virtual reality at the VRCade, and fend off zombies approaching you from your periphery. With Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard putting VR in the hands of the masses, it will be interesting to see how the medium continues to evolve. The Onion may just turn out to be right–on some counts, anyway. –Benzamin Yi

3. China expands holdings in (and censorship of) arts and entertainment

As Clara predicted, China dominated the news again this year, finding itself on this Top Ten two years running. The country’s economy continues to grow at a breakneck pace, and is predicted to overtake the United States as the world’s largest by 2018. China can thank the entertainment industry for much of this growth, including plans for a new $2 billion film studio in Chongqing, homegrown worldwide blockbusters, and buying up big players such as Dick Clark Productions, Legendary Entertainment, and Dalian Wanda (the Chinese conglomerate that now owns AMC Theatres.) This rapid entertainment biz expansion has raised some concerns in Congress about the potential of Chinese nationalism and socialist propaganda infusing American arts and entertainment. Those concerns are not without merit. China ranks 176 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index–a report by Reporters Without Borders which calls President Xi Jinping a “predator of press freedom”–and the government’s grip on content continues to tighten. Its airtight Great Firewall includes bans on most social media networks and news sites that report a negative image of the country (notably including the New York Times and Bloomberg); this censoring led Google to pull out of the market in 2010. This year, the government passed a law promoting Chinese nationalism in films, updated restrictions on television content, and scaled down relationships with Apple and Disney (despite these companies’ unbridled popularity in the country). It has also continued its intimidation of neighboring Hong Kong: the disappearance of five prominent booksellers in 2015 has virtually everyone in Hong Kong’s publishing industry scared they will be China’s next target. Still, it appears the lure of an enormous untapped global market is hard to turn down. American filmmakers have started producing films that obey the country’s strict regulations regarding content, thus dodging its quota on the release of foreign films, and gaming console manufacturers like Sony and Nintendo are getting back in on the game after a fourteen year ban was lifted last year. Corporations and media companies are adopting an “if we can’t beat them, join them” approach too–even Google is preparing for its return to China and is prepared to follow the government’s rules. Of course, it’s anyone’s guess how things will change once the Trump administration is in the White House, and we find ourselves once again with a case of wait and see on the China front. –LW

2. The United States elects Donald Trump

No top ten list for 2016 would be complete without mention of the election and the now certain inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. As the entire nonprofit sector holds its breath waiting for the effects of a Trump presidency on its business and constituents, predictions about what will come to pass in the coming years run the gamut from apocalyptic to status quo. There are few clues as to how Trump and his Republican majority in Congress might address the arts sector. His responses to Alyssa Rosenberg’s questionnaire about arts policy in March suggest a free market approach, similar to other policy areas like healthcare and education. The delegation of major decisions to Congress, and the recent proposed appointment of Sylvester Stallone to the top arts position in the administration, underscore Trump’s habit of relying on others (often supportive friends with little government experience) to figure out policy details, especially when they fall outside of the core issues that defined his campaign. While tensions between Congress and the National Endowment of the Arts have eased significantly since the culture wars of the 1990s, there is nevertheless a risk that the Republican Congress may revive attempts to defund the NEA in the context of a larger effort to rein in government spending. Meanwhile, the GOP and Trump administration’s promised policy adjustments to the Affordable Care Act (which provides insurance for many independent artists), and planned tax reforms (including the possibility of a rollback of the tax incentive for charitable giving) could both have immediate effects on the financial security of individual artists and small to mid-sized arts organizations. Most concerning of all is Trump’s threats to freedom of the press and his authoritarian impulses, which could expand constrictions on freedom of expression in a country that has prided itself on being one of the safest places for speech in the world. While the likelihood of overturning a mountain of legal precedent protecting the first amendment is relatively slim, Trump’s attempts at intimidation (like lashing out about flag burning or lecturing Mike Pence at a Hamilton curtain call), not to mention the ease with which his supporters can be goaded into threats of violence against vulnerable individuals and populations, are worrying to say the least. The bizarre and uncharted landscape we’ve found ourselves in has inspired much reflection, from calls to action and lessons learned from the campaign, to the role of the arts in promoting fantasy over fact. One thing is clear–artists will play a role in public discourse over the next four years, and we’ll be right there with them. –Rebecca Ratzkin

1. Artificial intelligence comes into its own

Wait, what?! Donald Trump in the Oval Office is not the top story of the year? Amazing as it may seem, events of 2016 make clear that the march of technology promises greater long-term disruption for our society than even our Tweeter-in-chief can muster. Chief among these developments was the March tournament victory of AlphaGo, a computer application developed by Google’s DeepMind team, over Korean Go grandmaster Lee Sedol. While it was expected that an artificial intelligence would eventually topple a human in the ancient Chinese game, the milestone was achieved nearly a decade earlier than anticipated when AlphaGo bested Lee in four out of five matches. To understand how consequential this is, consider that the number of potential positions in Go is exponentially greater than the number of atoms in the universe, putting the game beyond the power of the brute-force computational approach that has enabled computers to defeat humans at games like chess. Instead, the DeepMind team trained AlphaGo to learn from past games in order to develop new strategies for itself in real time–not unlike what a human would do. Google has used similar techniques, more recently, to have its Translate product churn out translations of literature that are almost indistinguishable from human efforts.

The implications for the arts are at least twofold, both enormous. First, the accomplishments of machine learning are directly tied to the accelerating trend of automation pervading all aspects of society, manifesting most recently in self-driving vehicles and fast-casual spots that replace cashiers with iPads. As more people’s jobs become redundant with what machines can do, unemployment rates could rise substantially, creating far more collective leisure time–and far more opportunity for creative expression. (How exactly that leisure time is spent will, clearly, depend a lot on what we decide to do about our social safety net, which is why many people in the tech community favor a universal basic income.) That could be amazing for the cause of art, though perhaps not so great for professional artists, who are already facing competition from the likes of Jukedeck and Google Brain itself. A grimmer view of artificial intelligence’s advances points to the specter of AI as, essentially, a new life form that could compete with humans for dominance of the earth. Given the rate at which machine learning applications are developing, a lot of smart people have begun to conclude that this isn’t just science fiction–to the point that increasing resources are flowing toward the cause of ensuring that the development of an artificial superintelligence, if and when it happens, won’t destroy the human race. Lest you get too freaked out, be reassured that this worst-case scenario is still considered a low-probability outcome by most observers…but perhaps now you can understand why we think this outranks The Donald. –Ian David Moss

Honorable Mention:

• The Pulse nightclub shooting targets social dancers
• Brexit shakes up the landscape for UK artists and organizations
• Google Books ruled to be fair use (and Stairway to Heaven is not plagiarized)
• Artistic quality metrics controversy at Arts Council England
• Canada Council holds grantees accountable for diversity (and other changes)
• Black Lives Matter and US Department of Arts and Culture release policy platforms

Best wishes for 2017 to all!