“Catalog” by Flickr user Beyond DC

The platitudes are on the lips of every arts supporter, ready to be recalled at the first sign of a public hearing or potential funding cut. “The arts are essential – a necessity, not a luxury.” “The arts help kids learn.” “The arts are the foundation of the knowledge economy.” It feels good to say those things, especially if you’re someone who has spent a life in the arts. But are they actually true? Are we pulling a fast one on ourselves and our audience by saying them? Or are we doing a service to the world by spreading the good news?

Over the past half century, hundreds of researchers have spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars grappling with these questions. And while the literature still has a ways to go before we can consider the answers definitive, it is becoming clear in at least several arenas that it’s not just our imagination: arts participation really does improve lives. In particular:

• Participatory arts activities help to maintain the health and quality of life of older adults. As discussed in our previous feature, 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.)

We’ve catalogued these and other benefits in an interactive graphic we’ve created – the first of its kind – that explores the various benefits claimed for arts participation along with the strength of evidence backing those claims. See how the benefits stack up against each other at a glance, or zoom in to read what the research has to say about specific questions. (Read about our methodology here.) We recommend viewing in full-screen mode for best results.

Before we dive in further, a little context-setting is in order. The first thing to note is that what you’re going to read below is a work in progress. The literature on the effects of arts participation is vast and of highly uneven quality. To arrive at the conclusions we express here, we’ve relied heavily on existing literature reviews and meta-analyses on the topics in question, which means that any errors of interpretation or questionable judgments in those reviews are likely repeated here. Over time, we intend to get to know the underlying studies and publications and fill in gaps or make corrections as needed. In addition, new research on these topics comes out on a regular basis, and sometimes it challenges conclusions that we had previously drawn about a topic. For both of these reasons, you can expect that we will make tweaks both to the interactive and the content below as we gain access to new information going forward.

Second, it’s important to remember that the focus of this review is quite broad, and looks for general effects on a general population. It’s likely that in practice, there is quite a bit of variation between disciplines, between different modes of artistic participation, and between participants (e.g., different personality types). We can already say, for example, that music is both the most-studied intervention and the one that seems to have the most robust evidence behind it. As we get to know the literature better via the process described above, we’ll be able to identify these kinds of nuances with more precision.

Readers interested in the details behind the evidence in the article are encouraged to take a look at our capsule reviews on participatory arts for older adults, cultural arts and dementia, arts and early childhood, and arts and at-risk youth, all of which are based on in-depth literature and systematic reviews conducted by others and outline common methodological shortcomings and recommendations for future research. Of particular note is our capsule review on the Cultural Value Project (CVP), which shares the results of the UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council’s three-year investigation into the value of culture. While the full bibliography to this article is far more extensive, our investigation relied heavily on the above sources.

Feelin’ Good: Physical and Mental Health

Of the four broad areas of arts impact that we identified in our review, the most robust research has taken place in the areas of education and personal development and physical and mental health. In fact, the evidence underlying the benefits of the arts for older adults is so compelling that we decided to write a whole separate article about it. A variety of participatory arts activities improve older adults’ mental and physical health, and in some cases, lessen the likelihood of developing dementia later in life. For instance, weekly singing has been shown to decrease anxiety and depression; weekly dance has been shown to improve cognition and attention, posture and balance, and hand and motor skills; and lifelong engagement with music, particularly playing an instrument, is correlated with improved memory among older adults. The arts also play a role in improving the overall quality of life for older adults more generally, such as attitudes toward social life.

While this was some of the most compelling evidence uncovered by our review, older adults aren’t the only beneficiaries. Arts therapies have been shown to improve clinical outcomes among patients. For example, a 2004 review of more than 400 pieces of literature exploring the arts’ and humanities’ relationship to healthcare and the arts’ effects on health identified a number of impacts for arts therapies. This includes visual art and music helping to reduce anxiety and depression among cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, an association between music and reduction in anxiety and blood pressure in cardiovascular care, and reduction in use of pain medicine following surgery. Music tends to dominate these studies, with a generally positive effect on anxiety, stress, and pain reduction among patients. Another strain of studies has explored the related claim that visual art and design may help to improve the quality of healthcare settings, thus improving patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. While the methodological quality of the evidence in this area is considerably weaker than that described above, initial results support the claim..

The arts may also generate health impacts beyond dedicated healthcare settings. We found that community arts activities probably contribute to healthy living habits and improved understanding of health. Using a mixed-methods approach that included a community-randomized design, an evaluation of 100 small participatory arts projects across impoverished parts of London found increases among participants in healthy eating, physical activity, and positive feelings. Similarly, a 2003 mixed-methods evaluation of the Wrekenton Lanterns Project, a community arts project drawing attention to coronary heart disease, suggested that arts activities contributed to healthy personal development, including healthy eating and mothering, mental health improvements, and increased absorption of health information. In the absence of longitudinal studies, however, it is difficult to know if participants sustained these habits over time.

The strongest and most consistent evidence for the health impacts of the arts relate specifically to mental health: in particular, reductions in depression and anxiety. It should come as no surprise, then, that arts participation is associated with subjective wellbeing, or one’s perceived quality of life. Over the past several decades, growing scholarship on wellbeing has sought to address just how well a person thinks they’re doing, with ongoing development of indicator systems that, in more recent years, have begun to incorporate measures related to arts, culture, and creativity. Createquity has been interested in the connection between arts participation and subjective wellbeing for some time. In our own analysis of data from the 2012 General Social Survey, we found no relationship between having attended an exhibit or performance in the past year and one’s satisfaction with life. However, a subsequent research spotlight revealed that among a large sample of Americans, more active forms of cultural participation including playing a musical instrument, gardening, and craft-making were positively associated with life satisfaction.

Our current review of the literature suggests that while causal attribution remains difficult to pin down, arts and cultural participation probably improves self-reported happiness or life satisfaction. A 2010 study of 1,500 randomly selected Italians analyzed two data sets on general wellbeing and cultural participation, yielding surprising results: cultural experiences – in this instance, passive modes of participation such as cinema, theatre, concert, and museum going – were the second most important determinant of psychological wellbeing, second only to the incidence of diseases, and ranking above factors like job, income, and education. And while not all arts participants are necessarily “doing well,” there is some evidence that unhappy people might be worse off it not for their cultural activities. For instance, a 2008 study of 1,124 choral singers in England, Germany, and Australia found that among respondents who scored on the lowest third of the psychological wellbeing scale, singing in a choir had a significant impact on their ability to cope with physical and mental health issues, among other personal challenges. There is some work being done to explore these issues in the US, but existing data sets on wellbeing and arts participation are not as easy to cross-reference. For instance, a 2014 study found an association between arts participation and wellbeing, but the study design made it difficult to determine if it was indeed attributed to arts participation and not other factors.

From Jungle Gyms to Jobs: Education and Personal Development

Although some of the strongest evidence we’ve come across speaks to the value of participatory arts for older adults, one doesn’t have to be a senior citizen, or for that matter even an adult at all, to benefit. On balance, the evidence suggests that the impact of arts and culture on psychological wellbeing is consistent across the lifespan, as far back even as early childhood.

A recent NEA literature review found ample evidence that arts participation in early childhood (birth to eight years) promotes social and emotional development. For example, a 2013 randomized controlled trial of 102 toddlers found that those participating in classroom-based music education were more likely to increase their level of social cooperation, interaction, and independence (as reported by their teachers) than a control group that did not receive a music education program. Similarly, a 2006 study of 40 preschoolers found that those that met with a dance group for eight weeks had stronger improvements in social skills and showed noticeable reductions in shy, anxious and aggressive behavior compared to a control group.

For slightly older kids, student participation in structured arts activities enhances cognitive abilities and social skills that support learning (e.g., memory, problem-solving, and communication). A 2010 systematic review of the Culture and Sport Evidence (CASE) database in the UK concluded that participation in “structured arts activities” could increase young people’s performance on a range of indicators of cognitive and social ability. Perhaps even more importantly, there is good reason to believe that arts education programs are disproportionately impactful for lower-income children. The NEA literature review on early childhood mentioned above includes a Head Start arts education experiment with 88 preschoolers from low socioeconomic status families. Those who participated in music activities showed improved cognitive abilities and increased ability to pay attention than children in the control group that received regular Head Start instruction. According to the NEA literature review, other specific benefits to lower-income youth include increases in confidence, student behavior and social skills. These findings are consistent with those from the well-known randomized controlled trial to measure the impact of field trips to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Benefits such as enhanced critical thinking skills and improved measures of tolerance were two or three times higher for children attending schools in rural areas or that served predominantly low-income households.

An earlier systematic literature review of 188 studies, the landmark 2001 Reviewing Education and the Arts Project (REAP) study, offers another perspective on the evidence base for non-arts academic outcomes of arts education. After comparing 275 effect sizes across groups of comparable studies, the researchers found strong causal evidence for the impact of music listening on spatial-temporal reasoning; learning to play music on spatial reasoning; and classroom drama instruction on verbal skills. However, the evidence was weaker in several other areas, including most effects on reading and math performance.

Indeed, one puzzle embedded in the extensive literature on arts education is how little the aforementioned benefits to learning and cognitive capabilities seem to translate to traditional measures of academic attainment such as standardized tests. Evidence from a wide body of literature suggests that even if there is a positive effect, it is so small as to be practically meaningless. The CASE systematic review cited above found that overall, participation in structured arts activities only improved attainment in high-school-aged students (as measured by standardized tests) by one to two percent. Similarly, a review from the Education Endowment Foundation in the UK concluded that arts participation had “positive but low” effects on academic learning in English, math, and science.

A major drawback within this literature is a lack of longitudinal studies. Short-term experimental designs that assign some students to an arts program and others to a control group are useful for isolating the effects of that particular program, but they usually only measure temporary effects on participants. Both the NEA’s early childhood literature review and the Cultural Value Project note the dearth of research that might isolate the long-term effects of arts participation in childhood over a lifetime.

Arts as Economic Engine, Sort of

In contrast to the health and educational literature described above, research on the economic and social impacts of the arts does not paint as straightforward a picture of benefit to society. In some cases this is because the available research simply is not very robust (unsurprising, given that measuring effects at a community level is far more difficult than doing so at an individual level); in others, it is because the evidence is conflicting, or the implications of it unclear.

Arguably the most convincing case to be made here is that cultural assets (organizations, venues, etc.) probably contribute to higher real estate values at a neighborhood level, but this insight is complicated by questions around the potential negative impacts of gentrification. For instance, a 2013 study on how cultural districts reshape neighborhoods found evidence that cultural districts “have significant impacts on property values,” although the evidence of effects on poverty, education, and families was weaker. A 2006 case study of MASS MoCA and its surrounding neighborhood in rural Massachusetts found significant increases in property values following the opening of the contemporary art museum. Similarly, between 2006 and 2008, a multi-pronged investigation by Mark Stern and Susan Seifert’s Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) revealed a relationship between concentrated cultural assets and rising real estate values. It remains unclear, however, whether this effect generates benefits for existing, non-property-owning residents, like rising income levels or job prospects, or alternatively, brings potential harm through disruption of existing population dynamics. Perhaps surprisingly, there is a general lack of evidence that the arts contribute to concrete negative neighborhood revitalization impacts like displacement, but little attention has been devoted to “fuzzier” outcomes like feeling a loss of ownership.

Another common type of research in cultural economics is the much-touted (and much-criticized) economic impact study. If you work in the arts, chances are you’ve seen a press release at some point in the past decade announcing that the arts generate some large dollar amount in revenue and impressive number of jobs in your community. Claims of this nature may be true in a literal sense, but are usually far less meaningful than they first appear. Sure, the arts industry creates jobs, but so does literally every other industry. The more relevant question is this: “do the arts spur spending in the economy that wouldn’t have happened otherwise?” Evidence for that more ambitious proposal is mixed. For example, a review of 36 studies by the UK-based What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth found that the effects of large-scale facilities on local employment are limited at best; however, the review included both cultural and sports facilities, and was heavily weighted toward the latter.

Speaking of employment, one of the few studies that examines the longer-term effects of arts and cultural participation suggests that cultural participation may contribute to capacity for innovation within the workforce. In an analysis of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Laura Niemi compared more than 7,000 Americans’ history of arts participation as children to their career history as adults. Niemi found a strong association between interest in the visual arts in adolescence and later innovation and entrepreneurship, which held true even when controlling for personality traits associated with innovation (like a willingness to take risks) and educational attainment. Family income, however, was not tested as a control factor.

If the arts help produce more innovative individuals, it stands to reason that the presence of arts and cultural activities and creative industries in a region may contribute to increased productivity and innovation in other industries in that region. For example, a 2015 empirical study of 2,000 creative enterprises in Austria found evidence to support three theories for how creative industries affect an economy’s overall innovation performance: being a major source of innovative ideas, products and services; offering services that lend themselves to innovative activities in other enterprises; and using new technologies to encourage further development in tech production. Do creative industries similarly make a region wealthier? Maybe: a 2011 study examining the relationship between manufacturing, service, and creative industry agglomerations and the wealth of 250 European regions found that for every percent increase in employment in the creative industries, there is a little over a half-percent increase in GDP. As with much of this literature, though, including that seeking to test Richard Florida’s hypothesis that creative industries draw talented workers and employers to a region and increase wealth that way, causation and correlation are difficult to tease out.

Come Together: On the Arts and Social Cohesion

The state of the evidence is even muddier when it comes to the impact of the arts on the social fabric between and among communities. As with economic vitality, evidence in this arena suffers from a lack of experimental and quasi-experimental designs that would help us better understand the social benefits of the arts. However, much of the difficulty is also rooted in the theoretical complexities that complicate coming to a shared definition of terms in this area. Social benefits of the arts have been described by many names, including social capital, social wellbeing, social inclusion, arts for social change, and more. We even struggled with what label to use to describe benefits in this area, and consider “social cohesion” to be a preliminary designation.

One of the better-studied research topics in this area is the relationship between participation in the arts and pro-social or civic behaviors like voting, volunteering, or attending community meetings. A 2014 Arts Council England evidence review found “growing evidence that children and young people’s engagement with arts and culture has a knock-on impact on their wider social and civic participation.” More specifically, based on British and American systematic reviews, high school students who participate in the arts “are twice as likely to volunteer than those that don’t…and 20 percent more likely to vote as young adults.” However, the major problem with research of this nature is that it does not test the very plausible counter-hypothesis that a common personality trait or set of values drives both arts engagement and civic behavior. Experimental work in this area would be extremely valuable for answering that question.

What about the relationship between arts assets and indicators of social wellbeing at a neighborhood level? The best work on this front has been conducted by SIAP’s Stern and Seifert, who attempted in a recent project to analyze multiple dimensions of economic and social wellbeing in Philadelphia. Their investigation, however, failed to find correlations between cultural assets and most indicators of social wellbeing after controlling for race and economic vitality, casting significant doubt on this effect.

Can the arts help increase trust and understanding between people of different backgrounds through dialogue or creating spaces for storytelling? In the United States, Animating Democracy and SIAP have both conducted qualitative and descriptive research into this phenomenon. However, the literature is almost entirely bereft of control groups, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions. One of the few exceptions is the aforementioned Crystal Bridges study on field trip attendance, which reported an increase in tolerance and “historical empathy” among students who attended the museum compared to students who didn’t. It’s difficult to know, however, how meaningful the proxy measure used in this study is in practice. Furthermore, one of the problems for this area of research is that it seemingly matters a lot what messages are being communicated through the artwork when it comes to building bridges across social divides, complicating attempts like this one to assess in general terms whether this type of intervention “works.”

What It All Adds Up To

Last year, Createquity explored the literature on wellbeing and quality of life in general, and noted that culture is often missing from frameworks that seek to capture a holistic definition of wellbeing. This investigation, and the ongoing work that will flow from it, demonstrates how and where the arts fit most naturally into such a framework.

• Arts participation contributes directly to quality of life by increasing self-reported happiness and life satisfaction. This is probably the case for the population in general, and is almost certainly true for the subset of that population that pursues sustained engagement in arts activities over time. In addition, robust effects of arts participation on reducing anxiety and depression have been demonstrated for people in healthcare settings and older adults, two potentially vulnerable populations. This research validates Createquity’s thematic focus on ensuring equitable access to opportunities to participate in the arts across society as a whole.
• Arts participation contributes indirectly to wellbeing via, at a minimum, its effects on education and personal development (particularly the development of emotional and social skills in early childhood, and the development of cognitive capabilities and communication skills in later childhood), and physical health (particularly in healthcare settings). Other indirect effects to wellbeing may exist as well, but the research is not yet at a place where these can be demonstrated conclusively.

This review likewise highlights where additional investments in research would be especially productive. Experimental and quasi-experimental designs are extremely rare in the research on the economic and social impacts of the arts; initiatives to fill this gap, though likely expensive and difficult to implement, would prove enormously helpful in resolving many of the causation vs. correlation conundrums that currently pervade this literature. Even in the health and education areas where these techniques are more common, however, there remains considerable room for further research and greater methodological ambition. There is a strong need in these areas for studies that examine the effects of arts participation over a long period of time, and for randomized controlled trials that use larger sample sizes.

As stated in the beginning of this article, both the research literature itself and our understanding of it are works in progress. We will continue to update and adjust the infographic describing benefits as new research comes to light in the months and years to come. As we learn more about how the arts benefit lives, the knowledge will inform our ongoing inquiry into the most important issues in the arts and what we can do about them.

• Singing improves mental health and subjective wellbeing (i.e., perceived quality of life)
• Taking dance classes bolsters cognition and motor skills, and even lessens the likelihood of developing dementia later in life
• Playing a musical instrument has myriad positive effects, including dementia risk reduction
• Visual arts practice generates increases in social engagement, psychological health and self-esteem

Just how the arts benefit society is one of the most studied topics in arts research, to the extent that multiple literature reviews, most notably the RAND Corporation’s decade-old landmark Gifts of the Muse, have sought to compile our collective knowledge on the subject. In recent years, several important initiatives and publications have added to this evidence base, including the final report earlier this year from the UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project and National Endowment for the Arts’s 2011 literature review on the arts and human development. Over the past few months, Createquity has been reviewing these and other publications with an eye toward creating a continually-updated catalogue of demonstrated impacts for arts activities. What are all of the ways in which the arts contribute to or detract from wellbeing, and how strong is the evidence supporting each of those claims?

Our review of the literature addressing these questions yielded a surprising result: the most compelling evidence of the value of the arts revolves around improving the lives of older adults. Better understanding the relationship between the arts and aging may help to identify areas for improvement in future research into wellbeing, as well as opportunities for investing in the quality of life of older individuals.

Painter — photo by Flickr user M-n-M

The global population is aging in unprecedented numbers and living longer than ever. Between 1980 and 2010, a period marking most of millennials’ present lifetimes, the number of U.S. centenarians increased by nearly two-thirds! Longer lifespans bring immediate implications for many and eventual implications for us all, if we’re lucky. While extending the so-called golden years can be a blessing, challenges include deteriorating health, social isolation, loss of loved ones, and life transitions.

Fortunately, research shows that arts-related interventions can help (in some cases, more so than traditional Western medicine). In particular, there is substantial causal evidence that participatory arts activities help to maintain the health and quality of life of older adults. These benefits, detailed below, include improvements in cognitive and tactile abilities, subjective wellbeing, and dementia risk reduction (although the effects on managing dementia are less clear).

Jamming and Grooving Towards Better Health

The literature on the effects of participatory arts engagement within aging populations is significant not only for the breadth of demonstrated benefits to older adults, but also the relatively high quality of evidence supporting these claims.

Most of the literature we encountered involved making music, although a number were focused on dance. Music and movement activities (playing instruments, singing, dancing) have been shown to improve mental and physical health among older adults. In a randomized controlled trial of 212 British adults over the age of 60, those who participated in weekly singing groups over three months were found to have had improved mental health (decreased anxiety and depression) compared to those who didn’t. These health effects were mostly sustained over a period of at least three months after the weekly singing ended. By contrast, the positive effects of instrument playing do not always persist over the longer term following participation, unless participants have trained or practiced over an extended period of their lives. This might explain why lifelong engagement with music, particularly playing an instrument, is correlated with improved memory among older adults ─ and why some older musicians, like Herbie Hancock at a solid 76, still perform with as much gusto now as they did in their prime. Despite a smaller sample size, another randomized controlled trial of 35 adults aged 60 and over suggested health benefits of dance for older adults. Those who took weekly dance classes over a six-month period showed improved cognition and attention, posture and balance, and hand/motor skills like steadiness and aim in comparison to the control group.

Other research points to the role of the arts in improving overall quality of life for older adults more generally, such as attitudes toward social life. For example, an evaluation of a different, yearlong weekly singing program for adults aged 60 and over revealed marked improvements in emotional wellbeing, especially for those who had been widowed. A mixed-methods study of the effects of painting lessons among older adults in the same age range documented similar improvements in both mental health and social wellbeing. After having participated in these professionally conducted lessons, participants noted increases in social engagement, their sense of belonging, and self awareness and understanding. Likewise, a randomized controlled trial of 50 older adults who participated in 12 visual art sessions over a month showed improvements in self-esteem and anxiety reduction. No wonder your grandmother was always in a good mood after watercoloring class, treating you to ice cream when you picked her up!

Doses of Art to Stay Lucid?

Every 66 seconds, an American develops Alzheimer’s disease. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and kills more people than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. As the population ages, millions will be affected: the number of Americans with the disease will double between 2015 and 2050. With soaring diagnoses come soaring costs ─ financial, emotional, and social ─ for patients and their caregivers. Establishment of accessible and cost-effective methods of delaying Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia-related illnesses is crucial.

A 21-year longitudinal study of 469 older adults aged 75 and over published in 2003 found that playing an instrument, reading, and playing board games were strongly associated with lower incidence of dementia. In fact, those who scored in the highest third on the study’s cognitive-activity scale had a 63 percent lower risk of dementia than those in the lowest third. Dancing was the only physical activity to show similar effects.

Arts engagement also seems to benefit older adults who already have dementia, providing improved communication, cognitive function, self-esteem and social participation. TimeSlips, a creative storytelling program for people with dementia, appears to promote engagement, alertness and social interaction among participating adults, as well as improved attitudes among caregivers towards their patients. On the other hand, a 2013 report from the National Endowment for the Arts cites a review of 24 studies that presents a more mixed picture of the evidence, with music interventions leading to both positive and negative outcomes for individuals in severe stages of dementia-related illness. It’s also important to note that methodological challenges abound in this area of research, including confounding external factors related to social context, interrelated variables, and inconsistent outcome measures, all of which makes drawing firm conclusions difficult.

In fact, a separate literature review by Tony Noice et al. notes similar shortcomings in a broader set of research on participatory arts for older adults. As a general rule, research on the benefits of the arts lags behind the level of rigor frequently encountered in the broader universe of scientific research. So while the evidence described above is quite strong by arts research standards, it nevertheless has limitations. Other opportunities for improvement, according to Noice et al., include introducing more standardized assessment of interventions across art forms and measuring effects over a longer period of time. Though the work to date has been promising, until studies on the effectiveness of arts interventions for older adults more consistently meet rigorous standards, their ability to shape perception of the value of such programs will remain limited.

Music has powers — photo by Flickr user Jinx McCombs

As mentioned earlier, we discovered this wealth of literature on arts and aging as part of a larger inquiry into the benefits of the arts in general. That inquiry, in turn, extends a longer-term initiative on Createquity’s part to reconcile the benefits of arts and culture with broader theories of wellbeing (or quality of life), such as the capability approach. Our next article will explore some of the other areas of benefit that have been claimed for arts participation, along with an assessment of the evidence backing up those claims.

In the meantime, rest assured knowing the older people in your life who participate in the arts are not just pursuing a silly pastime. For some, it might just be the key to a worry-free life or a still-taut mind ─ all the more reason to encourage them to channel their inner Aretha, Baryshnikov, or Picasso.

My Console Collection by Flickr user Sarah

It’s widely reported that able-bodied young men, without college degrees are underemployed and unemployed in record numbers. Despite this hardship, one recent study has found that these young men are actually happier than their equivalents were 10 years ago. The source of their pleasure? Much of it may come from playing video games instead of working. The “real-world” jobs available to them do not provide the sense of achievement or community that can be found through gaming, so many of these young men are choosing to live at home, in a virtual reality (nearly three quarters of the drop in work hours for this group is accounted for by increased time spent playing video games). It seems like bad news, but perhaps the implications of this retreat from the workforce are not as dire as they seem: inventive researchers are working with gamers to find cures for disease.

Can the Quality of Art be Quantified? Arts Council England is betting on it. The government agency recently announced a plan to have all of its National Portfolio Organizations (NPO) that receive over £250k per year must adopt and adhere to the Quality Metrics program, a standardized measurement approach designed to consistently and meaningfully measure artistic quality. These grantees are required to participate in a number of annual evaluations and engage in regular peer review, regardless of art form and organizational structure. Despite significant concerns raised in a post-pilot evaluation of the platform, the program is moving forward – for now. The news has sparked quite a row from UK artists on Twitter, and even incoming ACE Chair Nicholas Serota has expressed skepticism. In other quantification news, a new algorithm predicts the likelihood that a book will become a bestseller and, thanks to Apple’s iBeacon, many of the world’s major museums are using big data in their attempts to improve their visitors’ experiences.

High Culture and Pop Culture Converge. BBC2 is dropping an unorthodox bomb in this autumn’s rating wars: high culture. The British television station will shelve its usual schedule of repeats, to air poetry, dance, and documentaries on Saturday evenings. This new focus on culture will feature contemporary programming rooted in traditional forms and narrative (for example, a twist on WH Auden and a production by a performance artist who merges hip-hop, poetry and theatre). Through the creation of a “cultural destination” for its viewers, BBC2 may well provide the UK’s artists and arts organizations with invaluable opportunities and exposure.

The Connected Future of Fine Art? We suppose it was only a matter of time before “hacking” would come for classical art forms.  In August, the Dutch National Ballet premiered Night Fall, a new ballet choreographed by Peter Leung – not for the stage, but for virtual reality (VR).  Viewers need only a VR-compatible device to experience the “goose bump-worthy” performance, the first of its kind, as technology enables the performers to embark on an instant global tour. Meanwhile, the Tate Britain launched the IK Prize-winning online initiative Recognition. The program employs artificial intelligence to match the Tate Britain’s iconic collection with photojournalism from the contemporary 24-hour news cycle. It is designed to provoke new questions about art and life.

Culture vs. Terrorism. In September, France’s President François Hollande stood in the Egyptian Galleries at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and announced the formation of a $100 million fund to combat terrorist attacks on cultural sites in the Middle East. (He did not say how much his own government would be contributing to this “public-private partnership,” but did express hope that the Met’s donors would pitch in.) Hollande also referenced an upcoming (December 2016) conference hosted by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which will focus on culture and terrorism. Although the preservation of cultural artifacts is integral to global human culture, it is interesting that France’s president advocated for the asylum of art works while its Prime Minister expressed reluctance to grant asylum to people.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Laura Sparks begins her term as the Cooper Union’s first female president in January.  Currently, she’s finishing her term as executive director of the William Penn Foundation; her replacement will be the foundation’s fifth head so far this decade.
• Heather Kim brings over 20 years of experience in higher education research to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in the newly created role Director of Institutional Research.
• Sir Nicholas Serota will leave the Tate, after 28 years (!), to become the next chairman of Arts Council England. Will significant government cuts to the arts prove challenging for the “virtuoso fundraiser”?
• Just four months after being reappointed by David Cameron, BBC chair Rona Fairhead will step down. Her successor has not been named.
• The Center for Arts Education is hiring a Director of Advocacy and Engagement.
• The Center for Artistic Activism is hiring a part-time Non-Profit Manager.
• The New York Public Library’s Library of the Performing Arts is hiring a Deputy Director of Research and Collections Services.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The National Endowment for the Arts and the Center for Cultural Innovation released a long-awaited report on trends and conditions affecting U.S. artists, an update of a major, decade-old study and a centerpiece of Chairman Jane Chu’s “Creativity Connects” program. Meanwhile, new arts data profiles published by the NEA offer state-by-state perspectives on Americans arts participation. The data highlights a north-south divide in American creativity, and reveals that the percentage of American adults who read literature fell to at least a three-decade low last year, after a “long, steady decline.”
• A Los Angeles County Arts Commission literature review on public engagement in the arts, and reports from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Our Museum program provide resources on cultural equity and inclusion in museums and beyond.
• Research commissioned by the UK’s Association of Independent Museums, Arts Council England and the Welsh Government shows that introducing admissions fees does not affect diversity, but may cause attendance to fall.
• The latest annual report from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project focuses on institutional connections, resources, and working across disciplines for arts alumni. And a recent study from artnet suggests that the institution from which an artist receives an MFA has implications for career “success.”
• The National Center for Arts Research released its most comprehensive report to date on national fundraising trends. Meanwhile, a new study published in the Public Performance and Management Review suggests that arts donors aren’t influenced by high attendance.
• Partners for Sacred Places has released the results of an evaluation of its pilot program to match artists to historic sacred spaces.
• John Sedgwick and Mike Pokorny’s research on financial risk in the film industry challenges conventional wisdom on the peripatetic nature of box office predictions. And new research from the Journal of Political Economy investigates movies as a shared experience. Unfortunately, the latest report from the University of California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism reveals that Hollywood is all talk and no action when it comes to advancing diversity.
• A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance suggests a link between ballet and sensitivity to others. On the other hand, new research from Psychology, Public Policy, and Law reports that more people find lyrics threatening if they believe they are from a rap song, as opposed to a country ballad.
• Income inequality isn’t the only kind of inequality: using information from the National Center for Education Statistics, the New York Times reports that the educational inequality gap is narrowing for children entering kindergarten. And results of a new study published in the Review of Income and Wealth indicate that happiness inequality is on the decline.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy released a comprehensive report on evaluation practices at foundations.
• A new study from the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis – Center on Philanthropy explores thirty years of nonprofit research.
• Research from Australia’s Art Gallery of New South Wales found that viewing art relieves anxiety in dementia patients and helps them to “stay in the moment.”
• A new book from Eric Booth and Tricia Tunstall chronicles the growth of El Sistema-inspired music education programs around the world. Not everyone, however, is convinced.

Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence by Flickr user C.

Many teens around the world look forward to their governments “gifting” them the right to vote and/or permission to drink alcohol, when they reach their 18^th birthdays. Others receive absolutely nothing from the state. In Italy, however, teens born in 1998 will hit the jackpot this September. In addition to voting rights, they will receive a €500 “cultural bonus” from the Italian government. 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. True to our times, the program will be administered largely through an app. Though other nations have experimented with “free money” vouchers, Italy is the only to target culture. Critics of the program question the wisdom of its launch in a struggling economy and its ultimate ability to empower workers in arts and culture. As this is the first program of its kind, we’ll have to wait and see.

Political Artists Feeling the Heat in the Middle East. Ever since the unsuccessful coup attempt to topple the regime of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in July, experts have been raising the alarm about Erdoğan’s continued drift toward authoritarianism. Sure enough, soon after he regained power, Erdoğan shut down 29 publishing houses accused of affiliation with the political opposition, along with “a wide swath” of newspapers, magazines, and TV channels. Under Turkish law, the seizure means that all assets of these organizations are permanently transferred to the Turkish government with no possibility of appeal, leaving authors and other third parties in the lurch. It bears remembering that Erdoğan was once seen as a relatively moderate, democratically elected leader—especially in light of recent news coming out of Israel. A group of artists and arts organizations have filed a lawsuit against the country’s culture minister, Miri Regev, who has earned headlines for introducing a “loyalty test” for state-funded arts organizations and threatening cuts to those that refuse to perform in Jewish settlements in disputed territory. Want to help? Artists Rights Justice has a toolkit for you.

The Library is the Place to Be. Not so long ago, the future of public libraries appeared uncertain. What, wondered thousands of (usually digital) think pieces, would happen to those hallowed halls of books in the age of the e-reader, the audio book app, the personal hotspot? Well, it turns out that it wasn’t librarians lacking imagination.  It was all those writers. Public library systems are reinventing themselves as community spaces, where classes and meet-up groups, and special events and makers thrive. Seattle offers its public library cardholders access to free downloads of local music. In Erie, PA, the public library system is experimenting with mobile Wi-Fi hotpots, to help kids without access to broadband at home to keep up with their homework. Believe it or not, in Finland, a public library near Helsinki doubles as a karaoke bar.  The borrowers, it appears, are at the forefront of civic transformation.

Attack of the Short-Fingered Vulgarians. The more things change, the more the so-called alt-right tries to ensure they remain the same (as they were in the antebellum period). Once satisfied to post racist comments on 4chan, this online bastion of the Trump constituency is increasingly engaging in direct action up to and including the outright hijacking of actors’ social media accounts.   Another recent victim, science fiction’s Hugo Awards, opens up a new front in the culture war: vote-based artistic honors. For the second year in a row, nearly all of the shortlisted nominees were hand-picked by a collective known as the “Rabid Puppies,” thanks to a startlingly effective strategy of bloc voting that managed to put a short story called “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” up for an award. The Puppies’ ultimate aim? To ensure that the Hugo winners and nominees reflect themselves (white, male, conservative)—and no, they’re not subtle about this. Science fiction’s more, uh, culturally sensitive constituency has fought back using the same tactics, resulting in a victory for Puppy nemesis NK Jemisin in the Best Novel category and seven wins for “No Award” in the past two years.

Justice for Cultural Heritage. The Islamic State’s ongoing destruction of antiquities in the Middle East has received lots of coverage from Createquity over the past two years (see here, here, here, and here.) Unfortunately, such destruction didn’t start with ISIS; in 2012, fundamentalist group Ansar Dine’s destruction of world-famous heritage sites in Timbuktu made our round-up of the top stories of the year. This month, the International Criminal Court took Malian jihadi leader Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi to trial for the Ansar Dine actions. Mr. Mahdi pleaded guilty, and will now be sentenced. Although the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has handed down war crimes convictions for cultural destruction, this is the first time that war crimes against cultural heritage constituted the main charge of an ICC hearing. Though there is growing resentment among African states that the UN-backed ICC has concentrated its prosecutions on the continent, this case, which comes at a time of heightened international concern about the fate of similar antiquities, could prove useful. Currently, no international court has jurisdiction over crimes in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere; the Malian case could persuade other countries to pursue similar charges.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Two industry veterans recently announced their retirement. Alan W. Cooper, executive director of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, announced his retirement after 23 years with the organization. The search for his successor is underway. Meanwhile, Mary Kennedy resigned her position as CEO of the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Kennedy spent 27 years with the organization, including 14 as CEO, and will remain in a consulting role until her replacement is hired.
• Tracie D. Hall was named the director of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation’s Culture Program. In addition to her success as a community arts leader, Hall is a playwright, poet, and fiction writer.
• Claire Rice is Arts Alliance Illinois’s new Executive Director. She begins her tenure in September, after several years as the National Program Director of Harvard University’s Sustain Arts project.
• The Nathan Cummings Foundation is hiring for a newly created role: Director, Voice, Creativity & Culture.  No closing date.
• UC Davis’s Imagine America initiative is hiring a Faculty Director. Posted August 23; closes October 21.
• American Ballet Theatre is hiring a NYC-based Coordinator, Diversity and Inclusion. No closing date.
• Helicon is hiring a part-time Junior Research Associate. No closing date.
• Kickstarter is hiring an Arts Engagement Strategist. No closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• An Americans for the Arts survey on how the American public feels about the arts demonstrated that a majority supports arts education and government arts funding, and believes that the arts improve community quality of life.
• Chorus America released a first-ever systematic look at the motivations behind choral concert attendees–many of them social.
• An Australian study found that people who attend musical events and/or participate in dance are generally happier with their lives.
• According to an updated study by the Wellesley Center for Women on gender equity in leadership opportunities in non-profit American theater, lack of female representation in top positions is more of a “glass ceiling” than a “pipeline” issue.
• A new National Union of Students study of UK arts graduates found two out of three “don’t think a degree is worth £9k per year.”
• A UK study found an increasing decline in the number of children taking part in theater and dance.  However, research from the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport also shows that the country’s culture sector’s economic contribution has grown by 33% since 2010.
• New research explores the link between gentrification and racial boundary movements in major US cities. US colleges are also highly stratified by wealth, according to a new study from the Education Trust.
• A report from nonprofit consultancy Third Space Studio demonstrated the continued reliance of nonprofit organizations on individual donors.
• SMU’s National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) recently launched its long-awaited KIPI Dashboard, a free online tool that allows arts organizations to compare their individual performance in nine finance and operations categories to that of similar organizations nationally.
• An analysis recently published in the journal Genome Biology found that a surprising number of scientific papers contain errors introduced by Microsoft Excel.
• As if expanded waistlines and slower cognitive response weren’t enough, a new study ties TV watching to blood clots.