Among this illustrious group of organizations celebrating their tenth anniversary this year is a little arts policy think tank you might know as Createquity. On October 26, 2007, a modest post here entitled “Hello, world” promised a simple chronicle of a young artist’s journey through business school, with little hint of the much more meaningful work to come. It’s a big milestone for us, one that we savor with pride. But this particular birthday is also bittersweet, because Createquity will not be joining our decade-old brethren for the next ten years. This year, 2017, will be Createquity’s last.

To understand why we’ve decided to end Createquity’s run, it’s necessary to travel back in time a bit. When we relaunched Createquity as a bona-fide think tank for the arts three years ago, I knew full well that we were plotting an ambitious path rife with pitfalls. We were taking on an insanely complex mission—to review, understand, and synthesize arts research more comprehensively and strategically than anyone had ever attempted before—with hardly any institutional infrastructure or startup financial support.

It was beyond audacious. But we felt strongly that to try and fail would be better than not to try at all. Arts leaders are drowning in information. Every year, governments, foundations, universities, and scientists invest thousands of hours and millions of dollars generating research about critical issues in the sector. But according to a 2016 survey sponsored by the Hewlett and Knight Foundations, nearly 80% of arts administrators have difficulty keeping up with information in the field, and only 5% typically read research reports all the way through. With so many professionals lacking time to fully engage with research or a framework to apply the findings in practice, a huge amount of potential goes to waste.

When Createquity relaunched in 2014, our vision was to facilitate progress towards a better world by compiling, vetting, and interpreting relevant insights from the research literature for people with the ability to make a difference. And in three years, we came a long way toward pulling off that vision. We delivered deeply informed analysis and surprising insights on topics including the benefits of the arts, arts participation patterns, artist careers, cultural equity, and the history of the nonprofit arts sector. Our research-driven features have received tens of thousands of page views—according to figures provided to us by the National Endowment for the Arts, more than the NEA’s own flagship research publications. Most importantly, in my view, we began to create a robust logic for how all of this research could optimally inform leaders’ decisions affecting the health of the arts ecosystem—decisions that affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in the United States and beyond.

With the exception of a single six-month stretch, we did all this with less money in our annual budget than what I got paid to stuff envelopes all day in my first-ever arts job. At first, the resource-scarce environment didn’t faze us. Createquity had been a 100% volunteer operation in its previous incarnation, after all, with no budget or legal entity separate from my bank account. We were passionate, we believed in what we were doing, and most of us were employed full-time elsewhere or had other gigs to pay the bills. Sure, money would be nice, but it wasn’t the main point.

But then we started doing the work. And let me tell you, to do this work justice takes time. Hundreds of hours of time for every project we did. Over the past three years we’ve completed seven formal research investigations resulting in ten feature articles. That represents just a small fraction of an expansive research agenda we designed during that same period to help us identify, in a very literal sense, “the most important issues in the arts and what we can do about them.” With team members contributing just a few hours a week on average, getting through that research agenda was slow as molasses and put extraordinary strain on our capacity.

In theory, this is a simple management problem with a simple solution: increase your capacity. Alas, doing so proved to be anything but simple. Both firsthand experience and conversations with media industry experts quickly established that ads, subscriptions, and individual donations (including crowdfunding campaigns) could be a helpful revenue supplement for a niche publication like ours, but far from a core anchor. Providing research or consulting services for hire could have helped pay the bills, but would have run a very high risk of taking us off mission as the unsubsidized work took second fiddle to business realities.

That left grant funding as the obvious answer—obvious not just because it was the only realistic alternative, but also because the funding community is a core audience and beneficiary of Createquity’s research. But the national funding landscape is almost perfectly set up to make a project like Createquity extremely difficult to capitalize. The vast majority of arts funders’ portfolios are restricted to specific geographies, to the point that we found we couldn’t even win grants in our ostensible home of Washington DC because our services were not locally targeted enough. The very few grantmakers that do fund on a national basis typically eschew general operating support and are largely uninterested in supporting grantees indefinitely. These are among the reasons why the arts field has, since the 1980s, dug a formidable graveyard for failed think tank initiatives, some of which have become so buried under the weight of history that I only learned about them for the first time earlier this year.

Even so, our first year out of the gate gave us hope that we might defy the odds. After a successful crowdfunding campaign enabling us to redesign the website and hold our first planning retreat, we quickly staffed up our editorial team, laid out a research agenda, and started reeling in our first funders, culminating in the fall of 2015 when we raised a round of seed investment from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a business planning process.

As we’ve written about before, one of the most important outcomes of the business planning exercise was the recommendation to package Createquity’s remaining research investigations into a two-year initiative. To speed up the process and make it more robust, we would outsource the investigations to professional contractors through a competitive process, leaving the Createquity research team to manage the various overlapping projects in centralized fashion. We called it the Synthesis Project, and we expected that following this “surge” of funding to conquer the frontloaded inquiry part of our research agenda, we could shrink Createquity back down to its grassroots form for the follow-through (focusing on advocating specific action steps associated with priority issue areas). That way, we would skirt the challenges of long-term sustainability that had doomed so many knowledge-building initiatives of the past.

We had phone calls and meetings galore, hosted events, shook down every prospect, called in every favor, and deployed every bit of reputational capital we had in our efforts to get the Synthesis Project funded. It wasn’t enough. The planning grant we received from Mellon in 2015 was to be the last new institutional funding to come our way. On top of that, in the past two years, our two largest general operating funders each decided to refocus their portfolios locally, which meant that we no longer fit their guidelines. All in all, keeping Createquity funded at even a basic level in the years ahead was shaping up to be a major ongoing challenge.

Ultimately, we decided that it was better to close up shop than continue to fight what increasingly looked like a losing battle. We are using these final months to make connections across the threads of different investigations we’ve done and articles we’ve written over the years, tie up loose ends, and, as much as we can, tease out what it all means for practice.

Next week, we will be publishing four briefs laying out the insights we’ve gathered on the issue areas of arts participation, cultural equity, arts careers, and the benefits of the arts. Over the next couple of months, we will be polishing up our internal training materials and resources to make it as easy as possible for people in the arts community to carry on aspects of the work we’ve started in their own spaces and in their own names. And in November and December, you can expect to see some parting thoughts from our team to philanthropists and researchers seeking to optimize their investments in the arts in the decade ahead. Our goal in all of this is to activate the latent potential of our work over the past ten years into the most accessible and actionable content possible. The goal, in short, is to go out of business in style.

Our tentative plan is to cease publishing at the end of 2017. After that, the website will stay up in an archival state indefinitely. Of course, if someone decides to make another go at something akin to the Synthesis Project and wants to pick up where we left off, we will do our best to facilitate that.

I want to be clear that I still believe strongly in the mission of Createquity. This announcement comes just two days before the start of the 2017 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference, which I’m extremely fortunate to have the honor of attending for the ninth year in a row. My wish for Createquity’s final birthday is for all of my friends and colleagues at that gathering to consider the urgent need for a more efficient, networked, strategic, and meaningful approach to building knowledge in service of improving lives through the arts. Though Createquity’s window of opportunity to bring that vision to life has closed, our experience has only reinforced my faith that doing so is not only possible, but tremendously worthwhile.

Many folks have asked what’s next for me. I’ve begun an independent practice working with philanthropists, investors, and governments to deploy resources for good in the social sector; you can read more about that work here. I also expect to continue writing in 2018 and beyond, though about a different set of topics than covered here, and will share more information about that in a future post. In the meantime, although I will miss the environment of learning and intellectual ferment that Createquity has provided in my life for ten years, I am excited and energized by this opportunity to bring a decade of inquiry and discovery to a graceful and meaningful conclusion. I am grateful to all of you for your role in that journey, and I invite you to join me in being a part of Createquity’s final act.

Cover image: “Dramatic golden sunset” by Cindy del Valle

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.

(Brain) Power Breakfast with Createquity
Monday, August 7, 2017
9:30 – 11:00 AM
Northeastern Crossing
1175 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02120

Northeastern Crossing is easily accessible via the Ruggles MBTA Station. More specific directions to the venue are available here.

The program will include introductory remarks from Createquity, the official presentation of the first-ever winner of the Createquity Arts Research Prize (!!), and a series of lightning presentations summarizing and synthesizing Createquity’s in-depth research on a number of pressing issues in arts and culture. Afterwards, we will host a facilitated discussion inviting audience members to reflect on what we’ve learned about the arts ecosystem, what we still need to know, and how we might go about building that knowledge. Ample time for networking and complimentary coffee and pastries will be provided.

Please RSVP by 8/1.

The event is free with donations encouraged.

• 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.

Each year, our field generates tons of research about critical issues in the arts, on topics ranging from the impacts of arts participation to issues of access and equity to what drives organizational performance. Arts research is an expansive domain, and we wanted the scope of eligibility to reflect that. However, to be considered for the Createquity Arts Research Prize, publications had to meet a few criteria. On a logistical level, they needed to have been first released in 2016, written in English, and available to the public (journal articles counted as long as they were accessible through standard library subscriptions). And in terms of content, they needed to be either focused primarily on the arts or have been written with an arts audience in mind. Historical, biographical, or aesthetic analyses of single or small groups of artists’ work were not eligible; nor were cultural criticisms focusing on specific artworks.

We found candidates for the prize from a number of sources. We started with our own Newsroom columns, which contain a section each month featuring “New Research of Note” taken from the 200+ blogs, newsletters, and social media feeds that we collectively follow. We combed a handful of research “aggregators” including the UK’s CultureCase and Canada’s Arts Research Monitor. We issued an open call for nominations, which yielded 18 eligible submissions from readers like you (thank you!). The majority of the content, however, came from academic journals. We dug through the following, reviewing articles published in 2016 for each:

• Artivate
• Arts Education Policy Review
• Creativity Research Journal
• Cultural Trends
• International Journal of Art and Design Education
• International Journal of Arts Education
• International Journal of Arts and Technology
• International Journal of Arts Management
• International Journal of Cultural Policy
• International Journal of Design Education
• International Journal of Education and the Arts
• International Journal of Education through Art
• International Journal of Music Education
• Journal of Cultural Economics
• Journal of Learning Through the Arts
• Medical Problems of Performing Artists
• Research in Dance Education
• Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance
• The Arts in Psychotherapy
• The European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education
• The International Journal of the Arts in Society
• The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society
• Youth Theater Journal

Once we had collected all of this material in one place, we embarked upon three rounds of review. First, screeners extracted crucial information about each study, including a summary of the research questions or hypotheses being explored and the methods employed to pursue that exploration. Screeners were also free to offer a recommendation about whether the piece should or should not be set aside for deeper review. Second, Createquity’s founder Ian David Moss and Research Team Leader Rebecca Ratzkin scored each study on the basis of its relevance to Createquity’s interest in “the most important issues in the arts and what we can do about them,” the rigor of the methodological approach, and the added value it offers above and beyond existing literature. (You can read a more detailed description of these criteria here.)

This rating process yielded a total of eight finalists for the prize, which we’ve now put in front of an external panel of research experts to rank. In addition to the criteria above, the expert panel will consider as “tie-breaker” factors the inventiveness and transparency of the research, as well as the boldness of the topic or approach and the extent to which the Prize would represent a significant opportunity for the author(s) or publisher. This year’s panel includes Norman Bradburn, an esteemed scholar who is a former professor and provost at the University of Chicago and currently senior fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago; Carlos Manjarrez, director of the Office of Data Governance and Analysis at Legal Services Corporation and formerly founding research director for the Institute of Museum and Library Services; and Michael Rushton, director of strategic planning for Indiana University and formerly director of the arts administration program within the university’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. These distinguished individuals join Createquity’s Moss and Ratzkin on the expert panel.

This process has pushed us to standardize our approach for processing and synthesizing research. As a result, we’ve built a comprehensive database of arts research published in 2016 – a pretty amazing thing. Our hope is to build upon this database each year as new research is released.

This is the first time Createquity (or anyone else, to our knowledge) has attempted to review arts research at anything approaching this level of comprehensiveness, and there were some limitations to our process that we’ll look to improve on in any future efforts. For instance, because of differing levels of access to academic databases among our team members, in some cases we relied solely on abstracts for initial screening. This would have biased us towards studies that included methodological descriptions in their abstracts, and may have led us to disregard some valuable studies this time around. We also didn’t use keyword searches to find relevant articles in journals that we don’t follow regularly, which means we probably missed a lot of medical literature, as well as other publications featuring arts-inclusive research from a non-arts disciplinary perspective. And of course, there’s the language limitation – we restricted ourselves to English-language sources for feasibility reasons, which is likely more of an issue for gray literature than academic literature. Even so, we likely missed a fair amount of English-language gray literature from outside the U.S.

Still, despite the imperfections, this was quite a feat for us here at Createquity, and we’re confident the selection process has been much more robust than those that, for example, rely solely on nominations. And we think we’re off to a great start filtering through the untapped potential in arts research. We hope this brings the field a step closer to more fully engaging with arts research, including understanding how to make sense of all the research that’s out there, and how best to use findings in decision-making. We plan to make the big announcement in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

We have long maintained that research – however rigorous or innovative – has little value if it exists in a vacuum: the sharing of discoveries between researchers is essential to a collective understanding of arts issues and, ultimately, a healthy arts ecosystem. We also support the idea of critical evaluations – and ongoing discussions – between peers about the work that is being generated in the research community. This new prize advances these goals: we encourage our readers to nominate work that they greatly admire and believe truly moves our field forward.

What We’re Looking For

Createquity is seeking research that advances the current scholarly conversation, applies new methods to old inquiries to uncover fresh and important insights, and/or explores new avenues of investigation.

Our definition of arts research is broad, and may include studies published in peer-reviewed journals, reports commissioned by foundations or government agencies, dissertations, self-published work, even in-depth blog posts. We are open to quantitative work, qualitative work, empirical work, and theoretical work. It can be from any country in the world. The only requirement is that the research must be about the arts or be written with an arts audience in mind. Generally speaking, we are interested in research on the arts that employs methods from the social sciences, broadly conceived—economics, psychology, sociology, etc.—as well as neuroscience and medical research; please note are NOT looking for historical, biographical, or aesthetic analysis of a single artist’s or small group of artists’ work, or cultural criticism focusing on specific works of art.

Our evaluation criteria will include:

• Relevance: the work has research goals that either 1) connect directly to Createquity’s interest in “the most important issues in the arts and what we can do about them,” or 2) facilitate essential knowledge infrastructure that helps make a broad range of research investigations possible.
• Rigor: the work uses methods that match up well with its research goals, and executes them without obvious flaws.
• Added Value: the work either 1) makes a unique contribution to the literature or 2) is designed explicitly to replicate previous work on an important and under-studied topic.

After getting through an initial screening round, candidates for the Arts Research Prize will ultimately be judged and selected by an external panel of distinguished experts. Additional information is available on our Frequently Asked Questions page for the prize.

We Need Your Help!

Createquity systematically gathers and reviews research in the arts and culture sector on an ongoing basis, and we continue to mine the depths of academic journals and our personal networks for studies published in 2016 that we should be looking at. But we need your help to make sure we haven’t missed anything important! Accordingly, we’ve announced an open call for nominations.

The deadline for nominations is April 10, 2017. You can submit up to three nominations total. If you have more than three you’d like to recommend to us, or have any other questions, please email Rebecca Ratzkin at rebecca@createquity.com.

Thank you for participating in this exciting initiative!

“Reflection” by Flickr user Skip

There’s nothing quite like the experience of reading 160+ pages of someone else’s writing and research about an organization you founded. On the first pass, everything is personal: an inconsequential inaccuracy will feel like the gravest of insults, every validation of one’s original thinking is the ultimate ego boost, and the whole thing is a bit like the classic nightmare of performing on stage in your underwear. The second read, once the fight or flight instinct has subsided, is far more revealing. It uncovers what lies at the intersection between your own lived experience and someone else’s dispassionate analysis of how that experience has played out for other people. It shows which of your originating assumptions have connected deeply with your colleagues and your audience, which of them failed to translate, and which have given way to new understandings entirely.

Amazingly, I had two of these experiences in 2016. Reading Julian Bryson’s doctoral dissertation on the history and unique structure of C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective, a vocal ensemble I founded back in 2005, was just one. The other, of course, was the final report from Createquity’s organizational planning process, funded generously by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation last fall. That report, completed by Pennsylvania-based InfoCommerce Group, has proved to be a pivotal step for us as we continue Createquity’s journey toward identifying the most important issues in the arts and what we can do about them.

Last year, I wrote that “the pace of our research process is substantially slower than we’d like it to be….Whether the answer is increased capacity, a smarter workflow, better project management, or some combination of the above, we’re committed to increasing output in 2016.” As it turned out, we were able to make some real progress this year. Our flagship large-scale research investigations resulted in a total of eight in-depth articles, a fourfold increase from last year, covering topics as diverse as the effect of TV watching on wellbeing, the history of the development of the nonprofit arts sector in the United States, the multifaceted definitions of and visions of success for cultural equity, whether lower-income and less-educated artists face disadvantages making a living at their craft, and the state of the research literature demonstrating various benefits of the arts.

All of that hasn’t changed the fact, however, that these research investigations are incredibly difficult for us to take on as a grassroots, bootstrapped organization. I have to admit that I chafe a bit these days when I hear Createquity described as a “blog,” as if sole-author opinion pieces were still our primary product. Back in Createquity’s heyday as a blog, a typical post might have taken us anywhere from three to 15 hours to put together. By contrast, each of the features I linked to above represents hundreds of hours of work, contributed by a networked team of researchers, a lead author, an editor, a designer, and people helping to get the word out. Our virtual, distributed team may number in the double digits, but when you add up all their hours it’s still just the equivalent of one and a half full-time employees. With that kind of capacity, we can only churn out so many of those big features a year, no matter how good our processes are.

That’s a problem, because we still have a lot of research to do before we can make any kind of confident claim about what the most important opportunities to make a difference in the arts might be. For all the ground we’ve covered, we’ve uncovered just a fraction of what we want to know. How do we think about the role of the arts in fostering understanding across political divides? In driving forward social change? Are there disparities of access to the benefits of the arts for people in poor health? What about in rural areas? How about in the developing world? How does the opportunity for and experience of participating in the arts differ between audiences and practicing artists? Across demographics? There’s no good way for us to prioritize among potential interventions (and encourage the field to prioritize along with us) when there’s so much out there that we haven’t yet explored.

Fortunately, our friends at InfoCommerce came up with an innovative way to increase output without sacrificing Createquity’s nimble and flexible organizational structure. The idea involves outsourcing the research investigations we’ve been doing to teams of external contractors, with our editorial team serving a centralized coordinating role. We’ve identified a set of twenty research investigations that we’d like to pursue over the next two years under this model. We’re calling it the Synthesis Project, and we’re really excited about the possibilities. Making it happen, though, will require a dramatic (albeit temporary) increase in our budget, and the planning and fundraising required is easily as consuming for our team as a research investigation. Accordingly, we’ve decided to put new research investigations on hold until we can conduct them under this new structure.

In the meantime, we will maintain an active publishing schedule in the spring, with monthly Newsroom roundups of the top stories in the arts, commentary on current events in the field and their implications, and reviews of the latest and greatest arts research. We are systematizing our process for keeping up with arts research publications, and aim to publish many more research spotlight articles and capsule reviews in 2017. And we have some other cool things up our sleeves that we can’t talk about quite yet, but we promise they’re awesome!

As noted above, we do all of this on a budget that is beyond shoestring. We have people on our team who command hourly consulting fees in the triple digits in their day jobs, but are willing to work with us for barely above minimum wage. We also have (lots of) people who have to turn us down because barely above minimum wage is all we can afford to pay them. We’d love to be able to work with more of the second kind of people, and your donations have a direct impact on that being able to happen.

Despite running almost entirely on contributed income, we don’t believe in pestering our readers with endless funding drives and gimmicky campaigns. We only make one ask a year, and this is it. One of the most alarming developments of 2016 is the extent to which incentives for telling the truth in public have become distorted. Journalism and research are both truth-telling professions, and like artists themselves, it is Createquity’s mission to speak truth to power. In that respect, there’s a strong case to be made that Createquity is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make to support the arts. We are able to get a lot of high-value content that you won’t see elsewhere in front of an influential audience for a tiny amount of money. But in order to do it, we need allies who believe in the power of truth. If you’ve found our work at all valuable or interesting this past year, please consider making a donation to help ensure there will be more of it in the future.

Thank you, and here’s to 2017!

One of the clearest recommendations from the planning process was to put together a dream team of movers and shakers to guide our work forward. Accordingly, we couldn’t be more thrilled to announce the inaugural members of Createquity’s Advisory Council: Norman Bradburn, Harris Cooper, Marian Godfrey, Maria Rosario Jackson, and Angelique Power. We’ve already been benefiting from the wisdom of this amazing cohort of leaders over the past few months, and they (along with others yet to be announced) will guide our team as we position ourselves for some of the most ambitious work we’ve undertaken yet.

Secondly, we are pleased to introduce you to Ruth Mercado-Zizzo, the organization’s first-ever Operations Director. Since joining us in July, Ruth has brought new energies and logistical strategies to the team, and we are excited to be working with her moving forward.

Say hello to the Createquity Advisory Council:

NORMAN BRADBURN is a Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago. He also serves as the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the faculties of the University of Chicago’s Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, Department of Psychology, Booth School of Business and the College. He is a former provost of the University (1984-1989), chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences (1973-1979), and associate dean of the Division of the Social Sciences (1971-1973). From 2000-2004 he was the assistant director for social, behavioral, and economic sciences at the National Science Foundation. Associated with NORC since 1961, he has been its Director and President of its Board of Trustees. Bradburn has been at the forefront in developing theory and practice in the field of sample survey research in the cultural sector. He co-directs the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators project and was Principal Investigator of the Cultural Infrastructure in the United States project.

HARRIS COOPER received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Connecticut in 1975. From 1977 to 2003, he was on the faculty at the University of Missouri. In 2003, he moved to Duke University where he is Hugo L. Blomquist professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience. Dr. Cooper has been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, the University of Oregon, and the Russell Sage Founda­tion in New York City. Dr. Cooper’s research interests follow two paths. The first concerns research synthesis and research methodology. His book, Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis: A Step-by-Step Approach (2016) is in its 5th edition. He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Research Synthe­sis and Meta-Analysis (2nd ed., 2009). In 2007, Dr. Cooper was the recipient of the Frederick Mosteller Award for Contributions to Research Synthesis Methodology given by the International Campbell Collaboration. In 2008, he received the Ingram Olkin Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Research Synthesis from the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology. Dr. Cooper is also Editor-in-Chief of the American Psychological Association Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology (2012) and served on the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Use of Social Science Knowledge in Public Policy (2007-2012).

MARIAN A. GODFREY currently serves as Cultural Advisor to the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation in Sheffield, MA. She retired from the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2011. Prior to arriving at Pew in 1989, Ms. Godfrey had an extensive background in nonprofit arts management, handling production, administration, fund raising, and strategic planning for organizations including Mabou Mines, Dance Theater Workshop, and La Jolla Playhouse. She produced film and video projects, including a feature-length film for Mabou Mines that aired on public television nationwide. Additionally, she has worked as a consultant both for performing arts organizations and for foundation and corporate programs including AT&T: OnStage. She has contributed numerous articles to Grantmakers in the Arts’ Reader and other publications. Ms. Godfrey has served on advisory panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, on the Presidential Transition Committee in 1992, and the boards of Theatre Communications Group, Grantmakers in the Arts, the Maine College of Art, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and the Curtis Institute Board of Overseers. She is the founding chair of the National Arts Policy Roundtable convened by Americans for the Arts and the Sundance Institute; is a member of the board of directors of the League of American Orchestras, the Poetry Foundation, and TDC; and serves on the Editorial Board for the Yale School of Drama’s on-line Knowledge Base. Ms. Godfrey is a graduate of Radcliffe College and Yale University School of Drama. In 2003, she received the John Cotton Dana Award for Leadership for contributions to museum education from the American Association of Museums. She is married to Thomas J. Gardner and divides her time between Richmond, Massachusetts and Vinalhaven, Maine.

Dr. MARIA ROSARIO JACKSON’s expertise is in comprehensive community revitalization, systems change, the dynamics of race and ethnicity and the roles of and arts and culture in communities. She is Senior Advisor to the Kresge Foundation and consults with national and regional foundations and government agencies on strategic planning and research. In 2013, with U.S. Senate confirmation, President Obama appointed Dr. Jackson to the National Council on the Arts. She is on the advisory boards of the Lambent Foundation and L.A. Commons and on the boards of directors of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts and The Music Center of Los Angeles County. Previously she was on the boards of the Association for Performing Arts Presenters, the National Performance Network, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Cultural Alliance for Greater Washington, Fund for Folk Culture and the Dunbar Economic Development Corporation. She also advises a number of national and regional projects focusing on arts leadership, arts organizations and changing demographics, arts and community development and arts and health. In the 2014-2015 academic year, Dr. Jackson was the James Irvine Foundation Fellow in Residence at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. Currently she is a visiting professor at the Herberger Institute of Art and Design at Arizona State University. Previously, for almost 20 years, Dr. Jackson was based at the Urban Institute, a public policy research organization based in Washington, D.C. There she was founding director of UI’s Culture, Creativity and Communities Program. Dr. Jackson earned a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Southern California.

As President of the Field Foundation of Illinois, ANGELIQUE POWER oversees the charitable distribution of $2.5 million annually from assets nearing $60 million for the foundation, which is known for its strategic support of innovative programs and organizations with a primary emphasis on reaching marginalized communities and populations. Angelique brings with her 20 years of experience in nonprofit management and philanthropy. Prior to Field, Angelique served as Program Director for the Joyce Foundation’s culture program; Director of Communications and Community Engagement at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and developed philanthropic efforts as a senior manager in community relations for Target Corporation. Angelique serves on the boards of 6018North and Grantmakers in the Arts, where she’ll become the Chair in 2017. She is also a founding co-chair of Enrich Chicago, a nonprofit-led movement in Chicago’s art sector that focuses on racial equity. Angelique holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Michigan and a masters of fine arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Angelique became a Fellow with Leadership Greater Chicago in 2015, a year long intensive program that brings leaders across sectors together to study Chicago’s most pressing issues.

And a warm welcome to Createquity’s Operations Director:

RUTH MERCADO-ZIZZO is the Arts Expansion Director at EdVestors, a Boston education non-profit, and is responsible for managing BPS Arts Expansion, a multi-year effort to expand quality arts education in schools across Boston Public Schools through a public-private partnership. She previously worked at Citi Performing Arts Center in Boston, where, as Director of Education, she oversaw the long-term planning and evaluation of all education programs and managed partnerships with cultural institutions and community organizations across the city. Ruth also worked for People’s Light and Theatre in Malvern, PA in both education and administration. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Theatre from Arizona State University, where she was honored with the Herberger College of Fine Arts Research and Creative Activity Award, and is a graduate of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is a past recipient of an Ann Shaw Fellowship, a program to fund career development opportunities for theatre artists and administrators committed to Theatre for Young Audiences and has served as Treasurer and board member of TYA/USA. Previously, Ruth served as a grant panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and is an alum of the National Guild’s Community Arts Education Leadership Institute.

Featured image: Fireworks by Flickr user Håkon Johansen.

Each year since 2013, Createquity has taken a moment to gather its globally-dispersed editorial team all in one place for an intense session of planning and wonkery. What originated as a half-day meeting for three people in 2013 has mushroomed this year into a 10-person, 2.5-day extravaganza. The 2016 Createquity annual retreat will take place in our nation’s capital, and to celebrate, we’d like to invite you, dear reader, to a free reception on Monday, June 27. What could be better than mingling with your fellow big thinkers in the arts over some tea-cured salmon bites and crudité?

Here are the details:

Createquity Reception
June 27, 6-8pm
Teaism (Penn Quarter)
400 8th St NW
Washington, DC

RSVP by June 24th

Your presence will only enhance an already stimulating and enjoyable event. We hope you will able to join us!

Cover image: reception! by Heather Kaiser