Photograph by Joop de Graaff

What would happen if you enlisted some of the most prominent artists in the country to bring the arts into the classrooms of eight struggling schools? Got the White House, foundations, and leading arts advocates involved? Could you use this intensive injection of the arts to transform these schools into healthy learning communities? The Turnaround Arts initiative was created to road-test that proposition, and the results are encouraging enough to take the idea for another, longer spin.

Turnaround Arts is a whole-school initiative aimed at reforming the lowest-performing schools through intensive integration of arts and culture into classroom instruction and school life. Administered by Americans for the Arts and overseen by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH), an arm of the federal government, the initiative was implemented in eight schools around the country beginning in 2012 following a PCAH review of opportunities and challenges in the arts education field. The schools were competitively chosen on the strength of school leadership and commitment and staffing for arts education. However, all had received School Improvement Grants (SIGs) from the U.S. Department of Education, meaning that they were in the bottom 5% of performance in their state and were following strict reinvention plans.

The Turnaround Arts program is built on eight strategic pillars, which include development of a “strategic arts plan,” leadership from the principal and support from the school district and parents, at least forty-five minutes a week of dedicated arts instruction, integrating arts-based learning techniques into non-arts subjects, and collaboration with local arts groups. The design also features intensive and sustained involvement in the schools by high-profile artists, such as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and leading regional arts organizations like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Some of the program’s tactics are specific to arts education – such as the use of teaching artists and community arts organizations – while others add arts elements to more traditional school reform approaches. Turnaround Arts asks schools to consider the role of the arts in engaging parents, improving school infrastructure, and boosting the effectiveness of the administration’s leadership – and it trains non-arts classroom teachers to integrate arts throughout the curriculum, even in those darlings of reformers, literacy and math classes. Schools have considerable latitude in how exactly they implement the model, but the overall theory is that the arts shouldn’t be a bow pasted on education improvement or an occasional intervention in cordoned-off spaces; they should lie at the heart of how we help the schools and kids who struggle most.

So does it actually work? An evaluation published earlier this year suggests that it can. The evaluation team, comprising the University of Chicago’s Sara Ray Stoelinga, independent consultant Yael Silk, and two Booz Allen Hamilton consultants, uncovered early positive indications in the Turnaround Arts pilot, although the report speaks of “hopeful signs” and “potential” rather than an unqualified success.

Much of the report concentrates on describing the ways in which the eight pilot schools put the Turnaround Arts principles into practice. For example, the principal at Orchard Gardens school near Boston, MA, shook up the previous focus on “the 3 R’s” by alternating arts topics and traditional topics like reading and math during the school day. At Roosevelt Elementary in Connecticut, arts education coaches and arts teachers pulled non-arts teachers into professional development, which helped forge a cohesive faculty team at this struggling school. Findley Elementary in Iowa used interactive arts nights hosted by the school, with student performances, group dancing, and dinner in the classrooms, to increase parent and community involvement. Even at one of the most challenging pilot program sites, Lame Deer School on a Northern Cheyenne reservation, an exchange of performances at the school by Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and Northern Cheyenne musicians reportedly thawed the frosty relationship between the tribal community and the State of Montana-run school.

All of these small victories seemed to help the pilot schools make progress towards fixing deep-seated problems such as disinterested students and mistrust of school officials. In perhaps the evaluation’s most notable result, test results show Turnaround Arts schools improving math and reading scores at higher rates than similar low-performing schools in the same regions. On average, from 2011 to 2014, the eight Turnaround Arts schools improved math and reading test scores by greater than six percentage points more than comparable schools that had also received School Improvement Grants. Teachers and administrators saw behavioral changes, too: in a 2014 survey, over three quarters reported reduced disruptions and more focused students. The Turnaround schools also reported modest increases in attendance and more robust decreases in disciplinary incidents, although the evaluation didn’t pull data from comparable schools. While there wasn’t a perfect relationship between school improvement scores and how faithful a given school was to the Turnaround Arts principles, the evaluation did find that the three of the four schools that came the closest to implementing Turnaround Arts – Orchard Gardens, Roosevelt, and Findley schools – demonstrated the best achievements.

Given those serious improvements, why isn’t every school Turningaround? For one thing, eight schools is obviously a small sample size. But two other issues beg caution. First, positive results may have been partly “built in” – that is, the Turnaround Arts process may have selected schools that were primed to succeed. After all, strong school leadership and a committed school district were criteria for selection into the program, and those conditions might have made the schools ripe for improvement even without the involvement of the arts. It is also possible that the excitement and attention of a big new idea for school reform, combined with the novelty of the project and involvement of celebrity figures like Yo-Yo Ma, was more responsible for motivating the schools and students to engage than the specifics of the Turnaround Arts recipe.

Even so, the promising results from two years of work make a strong case for expanding Turnaround Arts – and that’s exactly what’s happening: in May 2014, the program escalated from eight to 35 schools and is now active in 49. The larger version will reach more than 20,000 students, including preschoolers. As that expansion takes place, however, it’s vital that we don’t close the book on the program’s evaluation just yet, for at least two reasons. First, we need confidence that the outcomes in the initial report weren’t statistical flukes made possible by the small scale of the pilot. And second, we need to understand how the effectiveness of the Turnaround Arts method compares to other holistic school improvement strategies, such as Linked Learning.

What happens if you bring the arts into the classrooms of struggling schools? It turns out that it just might help some of our society’s most vulnerable kids learn to love learning and give them a better shot at leading healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. If the early evidence holds up, that will be a story worth telling.

We are thrilled to announce not one, but two opportunities to geek out with us in person:

• On Sunday, June 14 at 9:00 a.m. we will lead a full-length discussion session at the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention. “Building the Capacity to Create Change in Our Sector” will give you the inside scoop on how our 2014 shift in strategic direction came about, what our research process has to say about systemic change, and how it all applies in the real world. We’ll have ample opportunity for small-group dialogue, so this session is not to be missed. Information on registering for the convention is here.
• Shortly afterwards, join us to continue the conversation and/or decompress at a special Welcome Reception for our readers and special guests. We will gather at the Chicago Cultural Center at 1:00 p.m. to meet, mingle, and unwind. The reception is free and you do not have to be an AFTA attendee to attend. If you will be at the conference, however, it’ll be a great way to wrap up your stay before heading to the airport. RSVP no later than June 1.

Hope to see you in June!

The Detroit Institute of Arts’s Woodward entrance. (Image courtesy the Detroit Institute of Arts)

After a two-year battle, a federal ruling to approve Detroit’s bankruptcy plan brought to an end the threat to auction off the Detroit Institute of Arts’s collection. The plan includes the “grand bargain,” an $800 million deal that partly consists of a $366 million investment from the Ford Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Knight Foundation, and other heavy-hitters. In the bargain, DIA supporters are providing funding to save Detroit’s public pensions, with the caveat that DIA be administered by an independent charitable trust, and not by the City of Detroit, which has owned the museum since 1919. While all hail these developments as positive, DIA still has a tough road to financial stability ahead. As it looks to shore up its finances and secure its future by raising its endowment to $400 million, DIA faces hefty legal bills incurred during the bankruptcy battle, and the daunting task of fundraising from donors whose pockets may have been emptied into the grand bargain. Regardless of what the future holds, the foundations will be keeping a close eye on their investment–the Knight Foundation’s Dennis Scholl has been appointed as an observer of DIA’s board.

Publisher Hachette Wins the Right to Set E-Book Prices from Amazon: In a multi-year agreement, “Big Five” publisher Hachette won the right to set prices for e-books from Amazon, which had attempted to pressure the company to price all e-books at $9.99. The retail giant suffered in the court of public opinion for its strongarm negotiation tactics, including long shipping delays of Hachette books, disallowing advance sales, and steering customers to similar books by other publishers. Some authors are calling for Amazon to be investigated on anti-trust grounds; at the same time, Amazon has questioned the need for traditional publishing houses in the digital era. While all sides seem to be breathing a sigh of relief over the deal, it seems clear that the fight isn’t over–publishers have long had a difficult relationship with digital retailers, and observers are think the next negotiation may be just as acrimonious.

Mid-Term Elections Offer Mixed Results for the Arts: In case you were living under a rock last month, we had some elections and the Democrats lost their shirts. So what does that mean for the arts? With the Republican-majority Congress, Americans for the Arts forecasts the passage of a comprehensive tax reform bill, which will likely impact charitable giving rules. The chairship of the subcommittee that oversees funding for the Arts in Education will change, while Representative Ken Calvert (R-CA) will continue to govern the subcommittee that controls the National Endowment for the Arts budget. Barry Hessenius predicts a possible attack on the NEA’s budget, given its symbolic weight for some in Congress, and recommends that arts leaders work to build stronger relationships with our elected officials. Meanwhile, at the state level, arts-friendly candidates suffered losses in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland. In better news, Rhode Island passed a ballot referendum providing $35 million in bonds to renovate arts facilities in the state, and pro-arts measures passed in Palm Beach County, Salt Lake City, Scottsdale (AZ), and Middlesex County (NJ).

Three Foundations Purchase Pittsburgh’s August Wilson Center: The embattled August Wilson Center for African American Culture now rests in the hands of three foundations, which purchased it for $7.9 million from Dollar Bank, its mortgage holder. The Pittsburgh Foundation, Heinz Endowments, and Richard King Mellon Foundation had attempted to close on an $8.49 million deal by October 31, but the sale was torpedoed when a creditor appealed an earlier $200,000 judgment in the Pennsylvania Superior Court, and the foundations refused to proceed until the debt was settled. Dollar Bank was forced to move ahead with a foreclosure auction on November 3, which cleared the Center of its debt and allowed the foundations to complete their purchase.The Center plans to re-open in 2015 under new nonprofit leadership and will continue its mission as a focal point for African American arts and culture.

Obama Says the Internet Should Be Treated as a Public Utility: Net neutrality supporters got an unexpected boost from President Obama this November. The White House released a plan recommending that the Federal Communications Commission reclassify Internet broadband as a public utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which proponents argue would give the FCC the increased regulatory power necessary to protect net neutrality. The president seems to agree with this line of thinking — his administration’s plan also rejects the FCC’s proposed rules to allow for paid prioritization of Internet traffic. Just after the President’s announcement, though, FCC Chairman (and Obama appointee) Tom Wheeler stated that he favored a different approach, one friendlier to the concerns of large Internet service providers like Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner. The Washington Post speculates that Obama’s announcement may merely represent shrewd political positioning, since if the FCC enacts strong rules, and the Republican Congress votes to overturn them, a presidential veto would put Obama and the Democrats squarely in the camp of millions of voters who have asked the FCC for powerful net neutrality protections.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• Indonesia has named the U.S.-educated Anies Baswedan as the new Minister of Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education.
• The NEA’s Director of Folk and Traditional Arts Barry Bergey will retire after 29 years of service.
• Chorus America is seeking a new President and CEO. Posted November 22, closing date December 19.
• Kansas City’s Charlotte Street Foundation is looking for a new Director of Artists’ Programs. Posted October 29, no closing date.
• The Foundation Center is hiring for a Director of Community Foundation Services position. Posted November 4, no closing date.
• The Barr Foundation seeks an Arts and Culture Program Assistant. Posted November 20, no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• A study by the U.S. Trust finds a big bump in charitable giving among wealthy donors in 2014, and projects further growth.
• New research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that nonprofit employment rose during the recession.
• The BFAMFAPhD collective published Artists Report Back: A National Study on the Lives of Arts Graduates and Working Artists, which asserts that “the fantasy of future earnings in the arts cannot justify the high cost of degrees.”
• The researchers behind the Crystal Bridges field trip experiment that we reported on back in October have released another study, this time focused on high-quality theater productions.
• A report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture looks at how well rural areas with a higher proportion of “creative class” workers fared during the recession.
• Suby Raman takes a deep dive into gender representation in America’s top orchestras.
• New research from Italy indicates that those with a need for “cognitive closure” are less likely to appreciate abstract art.

Perhaps no arts-related research study is cited as frequently in the mainstream media these days as Americans for the Arts’s gargantuan economic impact survey, Arts & Economic Prosperity III. Its key message, that the nonprofit arts sector is responsible for $166.2 billion in economic activity nationwide, has been hammered home relentlessly to policymakers, politicians, grantmakers, and arts managers around the country since the report’s initial publication in 2007. Americans for the Arts clearly sees the report itself, along with the general theme of economic relevance, as central to its overall advocacy strategy: as AFTA’s Director of State and Local Government Affairs, Jay Dick, put it while speaking at the 2007 Wyoming Arts Summit,

In the past, when we went to do funding for the arts, we said, “fund the arts, it’s good for the soul.” […] That’s true, [but] it doesn’t work anymore. You know, we have to have a business argument for it. So, “fund the arts because it’s good for the soul—and they bring to the jobs to the economy and they bring taxes back into the [government].” That’s what we have to do.

Not everybody, however, is convinced. For one thing, the dual role that AFTA assumes as impartial researcher and impassioned advocate renders the report vulnerable to criticism on the grounds of bias, criticism that the report itself goes to great lengths to counter. Moreover, even assuming the numbers are accurate, thinkers from Tyler Cowen to Greg Sandow have assailed the very concept of economic impact studies and their utility in advocacy discussions. Indeed, when last we paid a visit to the Arts Policy Library, the authors of Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts argued that relying too heavily on economic and other “instrumental” arguments for the arts is a trap, pointing out that that economic impact studies

…receive criticism because most of them do not consider the relative effects of spending on the arts versus other forms of consumption—that is, they fail to consider the opportunity costs of arts spending. Some economists dispute the validity of the multipliers used in economic studies because they assume that spending on the arts represents a net addition to a local economy rather than simply a substitute for other types of spending.

The tension between the two approaches led journalist John Stoehr to set up a kind of debate between the AFTA and RAND texts in a 2007 article for the Savannah Morning News, a debate that in Stoehr’s mind Gifts of the Muse ultimately won.

As always, though, much is lost in a public debate about a study when most of the participants have only read the press release. The full Arts & Economic Prosperity III report contains some 314 pages of findings, facts, and figures, including 27 multipage data tables and one of the most thorough explanations of methodology I’ve ever encountered in a research report. So let’s dive in and find out what Arts & Economic Prosperity III actually has to say about the economic impact of nonprofit arts organizations in the United States.

Summary

The first thing to understand about Arts & Economic Prosperity III is that it is comprised of many studies in one. It makes use of an innovative distributed data-gathering strategy that involved partnerships with organizations and agencies in some 156 study areas across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The study areas included 116 cities and counties, 35 multi-county regions, and five entire states. These 156 partners were tasked with identifying and coding the universe of nonprofit arts organizations in their area, using the Urban Institute’s NTEE codes as a guide; disseminating, collecting, and reviewing organizational expenditure surveys; conducting audience-intercept surveys at a minimum of 18 representative events in the area; and paying a modest cost-sharing fee (though the study authors take care to note that no community was turned away out of inability to pay this fee). The partners collectively produced 6,080 completed organizational surveys¹ and interviewed some 94,478 audience members about their spending over the course of 2004 and 2005.

Americans for the Arts then collected this data and created four sets of numbers with it. First, it tabulated the total organizational expenditures in each community, noting the breakdown of artistic versus administrative versus capital expenses, and calculated the averages for each of six community cohorts based on population size, labeled A-F (0-49,999, 50,000-99,999, 100,000-249,999, 250,000-499,999, 500,000-999,999, and 1 million and up). Second, AFTA tabulated the audience expenditures related to arts events in each community (excluding the cost of admission), and calculated the averages in the same way. Third, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology ran both the organizational and audience expenditure numbers through a sophisticated econometric tool called an input/output model to estimate the cumulative local transactions that those expenditures might cause in each community. Though those results aren’t reported in the study directly, the researchers ran them through another set of models to come up with estimated resident household income, employment figures, and state and local government revenue that could be attributed to the organizational and audience expenditures. Finally, taking the averages for each of the six population groups, AFTA calculated national estimates for all six of the metrics listed above by mapping the averages on to the populations of the 12,662 largest cities in the United States. (Note: only the 116 cities and counties, the smallest unit studied, were used in the calculation of the national estimates.)

The resulting figures will look familiar to anyone who’s read a news story about arts funding lately. Nonprofit arts organizations account for $63.1 billion in organizational spending and $103.1 billion in audience spending nationally, for a total annual industry footprint of $166.2 billion. Collectively, these expenditures support an estimated 5.7 million full-time equivalent jobs, $104.2 billion in annual household income, $7.9 billion in local government revenue, $9.1 billion in state government revenue, and $12.6 billion in federal income tax revenue.

The study reports that the typical attendee forked out $27.79 per event on top of any cost of admission—what the study calls induced spending—on things like meals, refreshments, clothing, lodging, souvenirs, child care, and transportation. As one might expect, the numbers vary dramatically between local and nonlocal attendees (nonlocal defined as traveling from outside the county). Tourists spent more than twice as much on average as residents on event-related items ($40.19 vs. $19.53), the biggest increases coming from single-night lodging (more than tenfold) and transportation (nearly threefold). Tourists also spent 40-50% more on average than residents on meals/refreshments, gifts/souvenirs, and “other.”

Arts & Economic Prosperity III is, as the title implies, the third study in a series. (A fourth is planned for launch next year.) Comparisons to the previous edition, using data collected in 2000, show a growth of 24% in the five years between studies—a rate that sounds impressive at first, but was actually outpaced slightly by growth in overall US GDP during the same period. Twenty-five communities were represented in both the second and third editions of the study; this group grew more than twice as fast as the national estimates.

Some of the most interesting statistics from the study aren’t the ones that usually make it into the press release or the media alerts. For example, the 6,080 participating organizations reported an average of 125 volunteers who donated a mean of 45.3 hours each in a year. That’s a simply astounding level of volunteerism. The total of 191,499 hours is valued at $3.4 million using Independent Sector’s 2007 valuation of volunteer time. Those hours have no economic impact as defined by the study (and are not included in the national estimates of economic activity), but the study authors take care to note that they add much value to artistic communities anyway. In addition, 71% of responding organizations received in-kind support of one kind or another, valued at an average of $47,906 per organization. The largest source of such support was corporations at 61%, with the balance from individuals, local and state government, local arts organizations, and other.

Though not reported in the study text, the audience demographics (Tables 25-27) are worth a look. Women consistently outnumbered men by nearly a 2:1 margin in almost every community. Assuming the survey samples were representative, we can conclude that arts audiences are VERY well-educated (more than 83% reported having a college degree, and fully a third had one or more graduate degrees) as well as quite affluent (30% reported a household income of more than $100,000). More than 80% of audience members are 35 or older. These results tracked quite consistently between urban and rural areas and between residents and tourists, with the exception that audiences tended to be a bit richer and better-educated in big cities.

I also found Table 9 notable for its breakdown of organizational expenditures on artists. In almost all communities, artists themselves get a truly tiny slice of the money that goes to support the nonprofit arts. Their share was only 11% overall, and ranged as low as 7% in the group of the smallest cities and counties. In a few areas, like Lauderdale County, MS and the entirety of Northwest Minnesota, the total amount spent on artists in a year was not even enough to pay one person’s salary.

Analysis

Since there seem to be a number of misperceptions about Arts & Economic Prosperity III in the media and elsewhere, perhaps the most helpful step I can take at the beginning is simply to delineate what the study is and what it is not. I can tell you that Arts & Economic Prosperity III is:

• A serious study. One thing that becomes clear from reading the entire report is that the people behind Arts & Economic Prosperity III invested significant time and care into getting the numbers right. As I mentioned earlier, A&EP III has one of the most comprehensive explanations of methodology I’ve seen in a research study – a full ten pages of information representing one-third of the non-appendix portion of the report. The authors even make a valiant effort to explain the mechanics of input/output analysis, an advanced econometric technique involving matrix algebra and other graduate-level technical sophistications. Time and again, as questions popped into my mind while I was reading along, I would find them answered in the next section or by the end of the report. Wary of any perception of bias on the part of an advocacy organization tasked with making the case for government funding of the arts, researchers took numerous steps to ensure that the final estimates would not be skewed too far in favor of that conclusion. These steps included large decisions with major implications—the country’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, were excluded from individual study in part because of their outlier status among American arts scenes; areas with unusually high economic activity for their population group, like Teton County, WY and Laguna Beach, CA, were excluded from other national estimates—and small details—like the fact that the audience expenditure survey checked to make sure respondents were over 18, or that organizations collected data throughout the year in order to guard against effects of seasonality.
• A legitimate estimate of total annual nonprofit arts organization and event-related audience expenditures in the United States. Even if you find yourself confused or unconvinced by the input/output model, that $166.2 billion number has nothing to do with it. The organization expenditure estimate is a direct extrapolation from the responses of 6,080 survey participants (which is quite a robust sample) based on the populations of the communities in which they operate. There’s nothing mysterious about this part of the study.Likewise, the audience expenditures—which don’t include tickets or admission prices—are extrapolations of the information from 94,478 survey respondents and everyone in their party (so, in actuality, a sample of nearly 300,000). By excluding airfare and more than one night’s worth or lodging, researchers did their best to limit their inquiry to expenditures directly linked to arts events that would mostly be staying in the local area.
• Clear evidence that the arts are a big deal in this country. The core takeaway of Arts & Economic Prosperity III – that “the arts mean business” – is amply demonstrated by the data. $166.2 billion is a lot of money, well more than one-thousand times the direct support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005. The $63.1 billion represented by the organizational expenditures alone is more than the revenue figures for spectator sports, furniture stores, coal mining, or the hunting, fishing, and logging industries combined. And as the authors point out, most industries can’t claim the same kind of “induced” spending—related payments made by consumers to third parties in connection with a core purchase—that the arts can. Even if the numbers aren’t dead on—a possibility I’ll explore in a bit—the point is clear: nonprofit arts organizations play a far more central role in the nation’s economy than commonly believed.

On the other hand, Arts & Economic Prosperity III is not:

• A perfect study. Despite the authors’ seriousness of intent, the study does contain a few errors, idiosyncrasies, and other less than ideal aspects of its construction. These range from embarrassing but ultimately unimportant mistakes like the mislabeling of the audience income demographics in Tables 25-27 (the last column in each table should read “$100,000 or More” instead of “$120,000 or More”) to potentially more significant issues like the inclusion of both Miami and Miami-Dade County among the 116 cities and counties used for the national estimates, which would lead to an over-representation of Miami’s organizations and audiences in the sample. Other issues will be examined when we take a look at the actual numbers.
• A demonstration that the arts cause economic growth. This is perhaps the single most prevalent myth about Arts & Economic Prosperity III and economic impact studies in general, a myth that is in no way dispelled by language like “the nonprofit arts industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity every year,” that often accompanies the report. Merely counting up the activity associated with the arts in that community doesn’t show that the arts created that activity. Indeed, they easily could have just pointed it in a different direction. If there were no arts, would the audiences who spent $40 to buy dinner across the street have gone hungry instead? Would the office bookkeeper for the local museum not have found another job elsewhere? As I understand it, the arts (or anything else) can cause a net local increase ineconomic activity under traditional definitions essentially in two ways: 1) if they satisfy an unmet need such that people are motivated to spend more money on the arts than they would have spent on other things, thus inducing demand and ultimately driving a higher standard of living; and 2) if they draw money into a community from outside of it. The arts can actually make a pretty decent case for the latter on a local level, thanks to cultural tourism. But once you combine all of those local communities together to make a national estimate, all of those “nonresidents” of your county—with the exception of international travelers—suddenly become residents of the good ol’ USA, and the economic activity associated with the arts is no longer being drawn in from outside the community but merely shifted around within it. As for the first way of creating value, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether and how much that really happens. Essentially, we would need evidence that the same people, on average, are willing to spend more money over the course of a year to attend arts events than they would if there were no arts events to attend. So willing, in fact, that they would take steps in their lives to ensure that they have more money to spend on such things, which (by economic logic) would mean that they would increase their own productivity and value to society, thus making us all better off. No one, to my knowledge, has conducted a study like that, though some researchers have made strides in showing a causal relationship between arts activity and other indicators like housing prices.
• Particularly useful for policy decisions on its own. Let’s say I have some money to give out to improve the city, and I have to decide how to spend it. You come to me and you say, “you should spend that money on nonprofit arts organizations. Nonprofit arts organizations spend a lot of money.” I reply, “umm…okay, that’s interesting.” You go on: “nonprofit arts organizations employ a lot of people.” “So do our pharmaceutical and insurance industries,” I answer. “Should we subsidize them as well?” Finally, you bring out the big guns. “Nonprofit arts organizations produce revenue for your tax base.” “Well, clearly you are already doing a great job of that without my support,” I conclude. “I don’t see a reason why I should give you any.” Do you see how most of these arguments, in a vacuum, are kind of non sequiturs? If one is making an economic argument, policymakers need to know not just what the arts do now but what they can do in the future with an additional investment—their investment. And they need to know how that compares with other potential recipients for that investment. I believe that there are ways to do this, but unfortunately, this particular study is hardly…
• A study of the arts’ “return on investment.” Out of all the report’s assertions, the only one I’d describe as downright false appears right there in the introductory letter on page one—and never again in the report:
  

  Our industry also generates nearly $30 billion in revenue to local, state and federal governments each year. By comparison, the three levels of government collectively spend less than $4 billion annually to support arts and culture—a spectacular 7:1 return on investment that would even thrill Wall Street veterans.

  It’s only a seed, but it’s been enough to sprout numerous other attempts to use this logic (like in this piece from earlier in the month in Miami-Dade County). This much is true—a 7:1 return on investment would indeed thrill Wall Street veterans. It’s too bad the examples aren’t remotely comparable. The $4 billion in government investment and $30 billion in government revenue are two different beasts, apples and oranges. As the report itself tells us, nonprofit arts organizational expenditures total $63.1 billion—which means that the $4 billion coming from the government only accounts for about 6% of this total. Take away that 6%, and you’d still have 94% of those expenditures left—and, presumably, something like 94% of the tax revenues. So, that $4 billion in government investment is really only “responsible” for that last 6%—which turns out to be about $1.9 billion, or considerably less than a 7:1 return (more like 0.5:1, for those keeping count). Now, in fairness, the real story is probably more complex than this—surely the government’s impact is not strictly linear, but makes certain projects possible where none had been before, and communities may be able to leverage that support in other ways. But to realize what a junk statistic this is, think about it this way: if a state, oh, let’s say Pennsylvania, were to get rid of its arts funding entirely, all of the sudden it would be able to claim an infinite return on investment from any arts-related tax or other revenues that come in after that! I’m not sure this is really the line we want to be pushing in these battles.

Now that we understand what A&EP III is trying to do, let’s take a close look at the numbers the researchers actually came up with. I’ll divide these into five categories: the organizational expenditures, the audience expenditures, the volunteer contributions, the input-output model, and the national estimates.

Organizational expenditures

The collection of the organizational expenditure data for each community was probably the simplest aspect of the study, so I think it’s reasonable to assume that, in most areas, the numbers represent decent estimates. A few caveats do apply, however, which I’ve listed with the direction in which they are likely to have skewed the totals (if any):

• First, it worries me a little that the partner organization in each community was given the autonomy to implement the study themselves. While it was probably the key factor in making the scale of the study possible, this distributed approach opens up a number of quality control and consistency issues. For example, who from the organizations was conducting the surveys? Was it senior management? Program staff? Interns? LIKELY IMPACT: UNKNOWN
• The report mentions that the Urban Institute’s NTEE designations were used as a starting point for identifying relevant arts nonprofits in their area. Hopefully, partners would have gone the extra mile to edit those lists, but I can tell you from experience that going by the NTEE codes will tend to result in missed organizations, sometimes important ones, that are coded incorrectly or not at all. LIKELY IMPACT: SKEW LOW
• The study only counted the numbers for organizations that responded to the survey, which means that for communities that saw less than 100% response (which was most of them), there’s almost certainly an undercount. (It also means that communities that had higher response rates were over-represented in the national estimates.) Response rates ranged from 10.4% to 100%, with an average of 41.3%. LIKELY IMPACT: SKEW LOW
• Though responding organizations were asked not to include grants to other arts organizations, any payments to other arts organizations (for example, a presenter paying a nonprofit chamber ensemble, or renting performance space from another nonprofit) could result in double-counting. LIKELY IMPACT: SKEW HIGH
• When you get down to the itemized level, there are some bizarre oddities in the data that, taken together, throw a bit of a shadow on the rest of the numbers. For example, in Table 9, Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) arts organizations are shown as spending nearly eight times as much on artists as Philadelphia, despite having only a third of the total expenditures. Similarly, Jefferson County, AL (Birmingham) is shown as spending more than three times as much on artists as Baltimore, despite budgets only 40% the size. LIKELY IMPACT: UNKNOWN

Audience expenditures

A&EP III employed the audience-intercept method for collecting information about audience expenditures, which from what I can gather is similar to the method used for exit polling in national elections. The caution I mentioned above about the autonomy of the partner organizations applies even more strongly to this portion of the study, as administering survey instruments in person is something usually done by professionals. The survey asked audience members not to report expenditures on airfare, presumably because most of that spending would not impact the local community (also because it’s unlikely that most tourists had flown to the area specifically to see that one event, which is the rationale behind counting only one night of lodging). Other notes and caveats include:

• Audience members provided information about their entire party, which might have decreased the reliability of the data since the practice assumes that respondents knew what other people in their party spent. I’d think this would be more likely to result in undercounting (missed purchases) than overcounting. LIKELY IMPACT: SKEW LOW
• Any spending on concessions at the event (e.g., buying a glass of wine in the lobby at intermission) would be double-counted, since that money would become revenue for the organization and eventually show up in its expenditures. I believe the same is true for items bought at museum gift shops. LIKELY IMPACT: SKEW HIGH
• Though audience members were instructed to report lodging expenses for the night of the event only, it’s a bit questionable how attributable some of these expenditures really were to the arts event. For example, if someone bought an outfit to wear that night, does that mean they wouldn’t have bought the same outfit on some other occasion? If someone was in town overnight, does it mean that they were there specifically for that event? LIKELY IMPACT: SKEW HIGH

Volunteer contributions

As mentioned in the previous section, the volunteer hours reported by nonprofit arts organizations are extraordinarily high. According to the study, volunteers supply the labor equivalent of two full-time staff positions to the average arts organization each year. Upon closer examination of the numbers, I couldn’t find any obvious red flags—while there’s some variation, nearly all communities reported a higher level of volunteerism than I would have expected, even when considering the contributions of board members, etc. I can think of only two plausible explanations. One is that organizations must be counting unpaid internships. The other is that some, especially smaller, organizations may be counting uncompensated time put in by founders or artistic/executive directors, which is likely to be substantial in many cases. These are not the kinds of things that normally come to mind when I think of “volunteer work,” but of course that is what they are, so I guess I’m inclined to take the results at face value. The valuation of volunteer time at $3.4 million comes from Independent Sector’s Giving and Volunteering in the United States 2006, which pegs the value of an average volunteer hour at $18.04 in FY05.

Input/output model

As explained by the report, an input/output model consists of “systems of mathematical equations that combine statistical methods and economic theory” that trace “how many times a dollar is respent within the local economy before it leaks out” and quantify “the economic impact of each round of spending.” The ”economic impact” in question is no more and no less than transactions: if I pay you $20 to serve me food, I have increased economic impact by $20 according to this definition. I won’t attempt to recreate the report’s detailed and extremely technical explanation of how the input/output model works; you can read it for yourself if you like. The basic idea is that for each community, a team led by the former chair of the school of economics at Georgia Tech, Bill Schaffer, constructed a matrix of the dollar flow between 533 industries based on data from the Department of Commerce and local tax records. After adjusting to include only local transactions, this table was then simplified to a matrix of purchase patterns of 32 industries plus households. The table was then run through an iterative model that, at each stage, sought to calculate the local requirements in terms of output to make possible the numbers seen in the previous iteration of the table. After a certain number of rounds (I think 12, but it’s a little hard to tell from the description), the numbers are all added up to get the total cumulative transactions made possible by an infusion of the amount of money represented in the organization and audience expenditures.

I don’t really have any complaint with the input/output model itself—it was constructed by a trained professional, and without having access to the actual spreadsheets and models used, there’s no way for me to verify its conclusions independently. The main issue is more conceptual: namely, that the model takes for granted that all of the money coming in as a result of organizational and audience expenditures is new money, money that would not have been available to the community otherwise. But of course this isn’t true: if people weren’t working as or for artists, and going out to see arts events, they’d probably be doing something else that would involve money—quite possibly more money than there is in the arts, given the high education levels of many in the field. One way to deal with this, at least on a local level, would be to simply exclude the spending of residents, figuring that what we care about is new money brought into the community by those outside of it. This methodology would break down significantly at the level of a national estimate, however. Perhaps this is why the study authors admit,

…as in any professional field, there is disagreement about procedures, jargon, and the best way to determine results. Ask 12 artists to define art and you will get 24 answers; expect the same of economists. You may meet an economist who believes that these studies should be done differently (for example, a cost-benefit analysis of the arts).

Indeed, I would have been very interested to see the results of a cost-benefit analysis, as it would seem to me to be a more relevant measure of the value of public investment in the arts. However, the input/output model is what we have, and so it is up to us to understand properly what it means. As with the expenditure totals, the impacts on things like employment, household income, and tax revenue are associations rather than causal links. The arts may account for 5.7 million jobs nationally, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve added 5.7 million jobs to the economy that wouldn’t be there otherwise.

National estimates

At first glance, one would assume that the national estimates of organizational and audience expenditures are almost certainly skewed low. As mentioned earlier, the study leaves out specific estimates for our nation’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, instead assigning them the averages for the 1-million-and-up population group. This decision was made, according to AFTA’s Senior Director of Research Services, Ben Davidson, thanks in part to cost considerations as well as a desire to avoid overinflating the national totals. By how much does this downplay the overall national estimates of economic activity? Well, the average for the Group F (population 1,000,000+) bucket of cities and counties is $408 million in total expenditures by organizations and audiences. Two estimates for organizational expenditures alone are $5.8 billion for NYC and $1.5 billion for LA; assuming a similar spread on the audience side, we’re probably looking at a gap in the ballpark of $13 billion caused by not measuring those two cities directly. Furthermore, an untold amount of activity is left out because the study tabulated spending figures and estimated audience totals only from organizations that responded to the survey. One would hope that the most significant organizations in each community were more often than not in the responding column, but even so it’s likely that a fair amount of economic activity in the 156 study regions simply was not counted.

Despite the factors mentioned above, I think that there remains a pretty compelling reason to think that the national estimates are actually overinflated after all. The reason is simple, but easily missed. It is selection bias among the 156 study regions—and specifically, among the 15 communities in the smallest population category, that of cities and counties containing fewer than 50,000 people.

Think about it this way: in order to participate in the study, a community needed to have a nonprofit organization or government agency with the following attributes: a) a programmatic focus on the arts (preferably exclusively on the arts); b) the staff capacity, expertise, and interest to manage a research project that involved identifying and surveying all of the nonprofit arts organizations in their area and conducting in-person audience surveys at a minimum of 18 events throughout the year; and c) the financial capacity to participate in AFTA’s cost-sharing fee (note: though this fee was supposedly waived for any partners that couldn’t afford to pay it, it’s unclear to what extent partners who didn’t take the time to ask were aware that this was an option—the call for participants for Arts & Economic Prosperity IV, for example, does not mention the fee waiver.)

Out of the thousands of cities and counties in the United States with populations of less than 50,000, how many of them do you think meet these criteria? Do you think that there might be some important differences between the ones that did and chose to participate in the study versus the ones that didn’t? Like, for example, a LOT more arts organizations and arts spending?

Luckily, Arts & Economic Prosperity III studied a few different kinds of regions, including entire states, making some interesting comparative analysis possible. I put together a table below with the average economic activity per capita for each of the six population subgroups for the cities and counties, as well as the average for the 35 multi-county regions and the estimates for each of the five states studied. First, looking at the different population subgroups, rather than per-capita spending going down as populations get smaller and more spread-out as one might expect, there’s a big jump in both organization and audience expenditures from group B (50,000-99,999) to group A (under 50,000). More interesting, however, is the comparison between the cities and counties and the multi-county regions, and especially the entire states. A statewide count would not suffer from the selection bias discussed here: instead, it would incorporate urban and rural areas in proportions not all that dissimilar from the rest of the country. Similarly, some of the multi-county regions studied occupy large swaths of land, and their arts organizations could pool their resources to meet the requirements for participation in the study.

The average expenditures in the smallest city and county population group are absolutely off the charts. Group A cities’ and counties’ arts organizations spent nearly two and a half times as much per capita as the regional average and more than three times as much as the statewide average. Their audiences spent more than five times as much as the statewide average.² It’s not just group A, though—all of the city and county subgroups have per capita expenditures higher than those for the regions and states. In fact, the highest average for a state in the study was lower than the lowest average for a city/county subgroup. That’s not random. That’s selection bias.

So what happens when your national estimate is based on the city and county averages in Groups A-F (and especially sky-high group A) rather than the lower regional and statewide averages? Remember, the estimate is based on the populations of the 12,662 largest cities in the US—all the ones with populations of at least 500, according to Davidson—and more than 90% of those cities would have been in Group A.

Well, we can do a little exercise to sense-check the numbers. The total nonprofit arts organization expenditures nationally should be roughly equal to total arts organization revenues. I checked the Giving USA statistics for arts and culture, which include contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations but not government support or earned income, and got an estimate of about $12 billion for 2006. Then I checked data from the National and Local Profiles of Cultural Support study that looked at the typical breakdown of income sources for nonprofit arts organizations and pegged the contribution of private donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations at 25% as of 1998. So if $12 billion accounts for 25% of arts organizations’ budgets, their total budgets should be around $48 billion—not outrageously off, but nevertheless only about three-quarters of AFTA’s $63.1 billion estimate. And 25% was the lowest estimate I found on the web of private contributions to nonprofit arts budgets. Now, this is not conclusive–it’s certainly possible that Giving USA itself undercounts the revenues of nonprofit arts organizations and foundation contributions. And maybe the breakdown of income sources was dramatically different in 2005 for whatever reason. But given the information we have, I think it’s fair to assume that AFTA’s expenditure numbers are probably not that conservative after all.³

Implications

So is Jay Dick right that we need “a business argument” for the arts? I think he is, and I think Arts & Economic Prosperity III is helpful in that regard—to an extent.

As I read Arts & Economic Prosperity III, I found myself coming back again and again to the theme of language. A&EP III is a serious study, one worthy of our attention and use for advocacy and research purposes. However, some of its potential impact is undermined by the hyperbolic language with which it is often presented to the press and politicians. The first several pages of the report are cluttered with spurious or misleading statistics and graphs that distract from the more strongly supported of the study’s findings. For example, on page seven there’s a graph that shows “jobs supported by nonprofit arts” apparently outnumbering several categories of specific professions, including lawyers, farmers, and computer programmers. Of course, there’s a crucial difference: the arts number includes all jobs supported by the industry (according to the study’s calculations–so, not just artists and arts organization employees but people at Staples, Guitar Center, etc.), rather than jobs in specific professions. Any of those industries—software, legal, agriculture—could likely draw up a similar graph to make itself look good. Or take the consistent use of the word “generates” when talking about the economic transactions associated with arts organizations and audiences, which clearly implies a causal connection that has not been shown to exist. There is a whole section entitled “Nonprofit Arts & Culture: A Growth Industry” that conveniently downplays the fact that the arts grew at rate slower than overall GDP between this study and the last one. And then there’s that bogus 7:1 “return on investment” figure that we dissected earlier. These overreaches ultimately provide fuel to the economic impact naysayers such as Cowen and Sandow, and may only encourage those with an axe to grind against the arts to sharpen their instruments.

That’s a shame, because I think there is a real case to be made for the economic impact of the arts. As we’ve seen in several smaller studies that focused on particular geographic areas, there seems to be strong evidence for a causal relationship between the density and proximity of arts providers today and growth in local real estate prices tomorrow. That, pure and simple, is economic impact right there. Furthermore, though I’ve spent much of this article talking about substitution effects and pooh-poohing the notion that all of the spending associated with the arts represents spending that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise, it would be equally foolish to assert that none of that spending represents new value being created, either through bringing money into the area via cultural tourism or improving quality of life such that people are willing to spend more than they would have otherwise.⁴ Even if the arts turn out not to be the absolute most surefire way to spur economic development in local communities in all cases, I think we can assume that they often represent one component of a successful growth strategy. And certainly we can argue with a clear conscience that the arts support real jobs, that they play a much bigger role in the economy than commonly assumed, and that public subsidization for the arts is not the same thing as a giveaway.

For the fourth edition of Arts & Economic Prosperity, which is in its planning stages right now, I hope Americans for the Arts will take advantage of its strong local partnerships and infrastructure to help fill in some of the gaps in what we know. The building blocks for causal analysis are already there. In fact, the audience questionnaire for A&EP III did ask audience members the reason why they were in town that evening, and one of the options was “I am here specifically to attend this arts event.” Alas, this information never found it into the data tables or the report itself. Another question on the survey could ask audience members what they would have done with their time and money instead that afternoon or evening if they had not attended the event. Even though this wouldn’t be the most reliable data in the world due to its reliance on self-reports of hypothetical situations, it would nevertheless get us a step closer to an understanding of the true economic impact of arts events. Finally, at the organization level, it seems obvious that government investment in the arts must have some return, we just have to be careful about attributing outcomes to it that would have happened anyway. So why not ask organizations where they would make cuts if deprived of government funds as part of the expenditure survey? If you really wanted to go nuts with it, you could literally ask them to submit a revised budget that doesn’t include government support and see what they end up cutting. This last approach, needless to say, would be difficult to pull off, but one wouldn’t need to do it everywhere to get some idea of what the overall picture would tell you. A few sample communities might be sufficient as a pilot.

We should be grateful to Americans for the Arts for investing as much time, capital, and seriousness of purpose into this research as it has. While there are a number of paths open for improvement of this work, the foundation upon which those improvements would be laid is solid. I look forward to finding out what Arts & Economic Prosperity IV will have in store for us.

¹Since the study focused on nonprofit arts organizations, spending by for-profit creative firms and industries was excluded, as was any spending by individual artists. However, government-sponsored arts councils and presenting facilities were part of the study, and so were select programs embedded within non-arts organizations, such as university presenters.

²In fairness, the authors did exclude Laguna Beach, CA from the organizational expenditures and Teton County, WY from the audience expenditures when calculating the national estimates. However, even with this precaution in place, the averages still compute to $210.76 and $251.93 respectively–far above the next-highest number in each category.

³Part of the problem, really, is that organizational and especially audience expenditures just aren’t that strongly correlated with population. Looking at the data tables, one sees huge variances in nonresident spending totals between cities in the same category, like Miami Beach ($72.2 million) vs. Lauderdale County, MS ($502k), or Philadelphia County ($565 million) vs. Suffolk County, NY ($5.7 million). I’m guessing there are a lot more Lauderdale Counties in this country than Miami Beaches. (Indeed, according to Davidson, this is the reason why the cities with a population of less than 500 were not included in the estimates.) If it were possible to extrapolate the national estimates using local estimates of economic activity rather than population size, this approach might yield a more reliable result.

⁴While this study documents attendance at arts events by nonresidents, it does not do much to show that their travel plans were dictated by those events. However, it does point us to resources that go farther: a 2001 study by Travel Industry Association of America and Partners in Tourism found that 65% of adult travelers attended an arts and culture event while on trip 50+ miles away from home, and that 32% of these (i.e., about 20% total) stayed longer because of event. And of those that stayed longer, 57% (or about 11% of all travelers) extended their trips by one of more nights. So we can infer from this that arts and culture events were directly responsible for one or more nights of lodging expenses for approximately 11% of adult long-range travelers in 2001.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• The International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies concluded its sixth World Summit on Arts and Culture in Chile earlier this month. Nearly 400 arts leaders and policymakers from 67 countries gathered to address shared challenges facing the arts world.  The summit coincided with the launch of IFACCA’s report detailing arts advocacy campaigns and best practices.
• The NEA’s Director of Design, Jason Schupbach, talks about the agency’s next steps in creative placemaking “in the spirit of openness and oversharing,” and telegraphs a gradual shift in Our Town’s focus from local case studies to national initiatives.
• New Jersey is the first state in the country to include data on student enrollment in the visual and performing arts in its annual report on school performance. Slightly less than half of Garden State high school students are enrolled in a course in one of the four art forms.
• The New York Times provides a glimpse into the capricious process used by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs to review and approve applications from prospective residents seeking to live in lofts legally reserved for artists.
• A proposed noise ordinance in New Orleans drew a musical protest outside of city hall when musicians gathered to ensure their political voices, and their music, are not only heard, but heard at a proper volume.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Joan Finkelstein, formerly Director of 92^nd Street Y Harness Dance Center, is the new Director of the Harkness Foundation for Dance, replacing Theodore S. Bartwink.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• More good news for Gibney Dance: Director Gina Gibney’s dreams of turning their new space previously occupied by Dance New Amersterdam into a resource for emerging artists are $3 million closer to becoming a reality thanks to a  gift from the Agnes Varis Trust to make repairs to the facilities.
• Can an accounting change by SoundExchange impact the ability of middle-class performers and indie labels to create more music? The Future of Music Coalition thinks so.  A frequently disbursed stream of income that pays performers on a monthly, rather than quarterly, basis can help free up musicians to concentrate on their work rather than wonder how they’ll pay next month’s bills.
• Internet radio service Pandora pays nearly half its revenue to performing artists and labels, while only 4.3 percent goes to songwriters and publishers. Think that’s unfair? So does the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) which represents the latter. But it was Pandora that brought suit to lower the royalty rate paid to ASCAP members. At the heart of the issue is whether music publishers can remove their catalogs from digital transmissions, while still using professional recording organizations like ASCAP to represent their work on issues such as collecting money from terrestrial AM/FM radio stations.
• Meanwhile, back in the world of terrestrial radio, this is what happens when you leave cultural taste-making to the whims of the commercial marketplace. More than ever before, radio stations are playing the same damn songs over and over. The article is interesting throughout, including such tidbits as the fact that the top 10 songs last year were played twice as much as the top 10 songs a decade ago, the fact that this trend is an example of data-driven decision-making on the part of radio stations, and this quote:
  

  In the new intensely scrutinized world of radio, said Mr. Darden, “taking risks is not rewarded, so we have to be more careful than ever before.”

IN THE FIELD

• Ever admire the shelves of beautiful art books as you exit through the gift shop? Turns out they rarely turn a profit, so commercial publishers often avoid them. Enter the Artist Book Foundation, a new nonprofit dedicated to filling the gap.
• Norwegian readers are in for a treat: 135,000 titles, still protected by copyright, are going online for free in Norway thanks to an agreement arranged between the National Library of Norway and Kopinor, an umbrella organization of major authors and publishers.
• Sometimes, when you want a concerto, you really want a concerto: during the Minnesota Orchestra’s lock-out attendance at smaller community orchestras jumped noticeably. We won’t know the long-term effects until well after concerts at Orchestra Hall resume on February 7.
• Just as the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra prepare to head back to the stage, the entire board of Minnesota Dance Theater abruptly resigned last week, with no explanation yet as to the reason.
• Confused about the difference between a “cultural cluster and a “cultural district”? Learn more in a podcast highlighting work in Cincinnati led by ArtsWave and the Kennedy Heights Arts Center.
• In a victory for Venn diagrams, Americans for the Arts and 12 other national arts and education organizations have endorsed “A Shared Endeavor: Arts Education for America’s Students,” which defines shared delivery of arts education and identifies advocacy priorities generalist teachers, art specialists and teaching artists can support together.
• Arts administrators take note: Americans for the Arts has announced its spring webinar series, which includes sessions on the NEA, rural and small communities, and assessing social impact.

BIG IDEAS

• American artists are taking note of an international movement to ensure a “basic income” for all as a way of ending poverty. In a model proposed by Swiss artist Benno Schmidt, every citizen would receive a modest monthly check, regardless of need or merit.
• Is a permanent facility an asset or a prison to the modern arts organization? Diane Ragsdale shares four steps to scrutinize and reframe organizational core beliefs, and applies them to commonly-held assumptions regarding building-based arts organizations.
• Founder and CEO of The Teaching Company Thomas Rollins, whose nerd-tastic “great lectures on world history” got an affectionate nod in Createquity’s article on MOOCs and arts education, wades into the MOOC debate himself and finds the idea that they can transform higher education to be “utter nonsense.”

RESEARCH CORNER

• What does the cultural data landscape look like? Get a bird’s eye view from the report New Data for the Cultural Landscape: Towards a Better Informed Stronger Future just published by the Cultural Data Project. Barry Hessenius pulls out key highlights and probes the persistent challenge of educating leaders in our field to make strategic decisions using data.
• AFTA’s Randy Cohen digs deep into the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s recent report on the contributions of the arts to GDP. Turns out, it omits a lot of architecture, design and creative writing at the college level, and many arts grantmakers. Fortunately, the BEA is open to suggestions for improving its strong first cut. Follow the link to contribute your thoughts.
• The University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center is out with the second issue of The Digest, which summarizes academic research on the cultural sector from the around the world, which is often inaccessible to a broad audience. The issue examines “creative cities in theory and practice.”
• A new Pew report finds that, although the typical American read five books last year, nearly a quarter of us read none at all. In related news, libraries continue to draw patrons in innovative ways, such as installing 3D printers, shifting collections from the academic to the popular, and offering hog-butchering seminars.
• Big Data may be a boon for marketers, but when does segmentation cross over the line into discrimination? A research fellow at MIT argues that this is the central ethical dilemma of today’s data analysts.

The lobby of the Willard Hotel is rumored to be the birthplace of the term “lobbying.”
Photo by Ellen Meiselman

In March of 2012, Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) launched the Arts Education Funders Coalition. The goal of the Coalition is “to research and identify federal policy opportunities that promote equitable access to arts education in all public schools.” It consists of about 135 individuals from 115 organizations within GIA’s membership and is led by a small advisory committee of prominent voices in arts advocacy, education, and philanthropy.

This is new territory for GIA. The organization’s president and CEO, Janet Brown, acknowledged in a recent conversation that public policy can be uncomfortable, risky, and “very difficult to get funders to invest in.” Successes are few, far between, and at the mercy of our volatile political process. But when a critical mass of arts education funders felt funding nonprofit programs was no longer a sufficient strategy to achieve their aspirations to further arts education in public schools, they decided to attempt to affect policy directly, and GIA took on the challenge.

Setting the stage

When attempting to influence public policy, an organization must first decide where and how to target its efforts. Will the focus be on the federal, state, or local level? Should a law be enacted, tweaked, or repealed? With the Arts Education Funders Coalition, GIA decided to focus on the federal level and work toward adding pro-arts language to existing education legislation.

In announcing the formation of the Coalition, Janet Brown explained:

Why is GIA involving itself in federal policy, you might ask. It’s because that’s where decisions are made in education in America. Although we’d love to believe that education policies are determined locally, the reality is federal policy drives the actions made by state departments of education and local superintendents and school boards. Our obsession with testing to determine learning is evidence of this. Equity issues are best dealt with at the federal level where the governmental “carrot” is meant to level the playing field.

Despite its national aspirations, the Funders Coalition hasn’t garnered much attention to date from the arts sector. According to Janet Brown, “[The Arts Education Funders Coalition is] not a very visible project because it’s a different kind of advocacy than American for the Arts (AFTA).” AFTA, the lead advocacy organization for our sector, mobilizes email campaigns and organizes Arts Advocacy Day, which brings hundreds of people to Washington each year in an overt attempt to draw the attention of policymakers to issues concerning the arts community, among other advocacy efforts. (The organizations are talking to each other: AFTA’s Vice President of Government Affairs and Arts Education, Narric Rome, is on the advisory committee of the GIA Arts Education Funders Coalition.) GIA is taking a quieter approach, banking in part on the assumption that a pro-arts education agenda would have more clout coming from a group of people who have skin in the public education game:

As a group of funders who have contributed millions of dollars to the public education system or to the nonprofit arts sector to compensate for lack of arts education in public schools, Coalition members and other funders have a stake in developing effective policy that will secure the place of arts education in twenty-first century education.

To lead the effort, GIA hired a Washington, DC firm specializing in education policy, the Penn Hill Group, to help develop an agenda and do the on-the-ground lobbying. Executive vice president Alex Nock has been presenting the Funders Coalition’s progress as part of GIA’s web conference series.

The Funders Coalition’s agenda takes on many aspects of federal education policy, including juvenile justice, research, Head Start, teacher evaluation, and the cornerstone of federal education legislation, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, formerly known as No Child Left Behind). It describes the arts-positive change the Funders Coalition would like to see in each area, including:

• “that any school improvement structure adopted in ESEA reauthorization… include arts education as a strategy in the overall plan to turn around a low-performing school,”
• “that arts education be integrated into the Head Start standards and partnerships be encouraged between Head Start providers and community arts organizations,” and
• “that the [Investing in Innovation] program adopt an absolute priority for arts education that requires the Department of Education to fund quality applications with an arts education focus.”

The agenda is multifaceted, but GIA’s focus is on language. According to Janet Brown, the Coalition faced a choice at its outset. It could propose new, stand-alone legislation to advance arts education, or lobby to change existing laws. After considering the contentious political climate, relatively low priority of education policy on the congressional to-do list, and extreme amount of time and effort brand new legislation would require, GIA and the Penn Hill Group deemed the latter option more realistic.

The story so far

We’re just weeks away from the Coalition’s second birthday. What progress has it made?

On November 18,2013, GIA sent an email to members of the Funders Coalition with good news: “Through work with Members of Congress and their staff, [we were] able to ensure that arts education would play a prominent role in the preschool programs funded under [a proposed] bill should it pass Congress over the next year.” Time will tell how “prominent” that role actually is, but the announcement suggests an encouraging victory for what is a relatively new effort.

Pre-K may have been low-hanging fruit for the Funders Coalition. Without standardized testing and other competitors for the class time that older students face, Pre-K curricula naturally have more room for the arts. But according to Brown, the inclusion of arts-friendly language in the bill was not inevitable. “If we had not been there the language would not have been included,” Brown said. “Bills are written based on the knowledge of the staff who are writing them.” If that’s the case, it’s a good thing the Penn Hill Group and GIA are there to educate them.

The Coalition has also succeeded in getting more specific language included in Senator Tom Harkin’s bill to reauthorize ESEA, which will hopefully be brought to the Senate floor for consideration in March or June. ESEA has been waiting for reauthorization since 2007, and Alyson Klein for EdWeek accurately called its chances back in June: “Everyone knows that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is ultimately headed absolutely nowhere [in 2013], thanks to partisan divisions.” The language included in Senator Harkin’s bill is a win for the Funders Coalition, but the success of the bill is difficult to forecast given Congress’s recent track record of inaction when it comes to ESEA.

The next act

The Funders Coalition’s effort raises familiar but tricky questions about arts education advocacy:

• Is legislative language without designated funding enough to make real change? New York City’s arts education legislation is a great example of the folly of language that isn’t backed by specific, dedicated funding. In 2007, $67.5 million previously earmarked for arts education was released to the discretion of school principals. Accountability measures were put in place to theoretically ensure that students received the arts education prescribed by law, but many arts advocates would argue that the state of arts education in New York City schools has declined as a result of the change. The conventional wisdom is that if decision makers don’t have to spend money on a non-tested subject, they likely won’t, focusing resources instead on subjects in which the school is held accountable for its performance. To ensure the delivery of arts education in schools, policy needs to mandate what is to be provided to students, allocate dedicated funding, and establish a mechanism to ensure compliance. How much will be budgeted, for example, for the arts if they are to play a prominent role in preschool programs across the country? Will the appropriated funding be enough for full-time arts teachers in every school or simply materials with which general classroom teachers can incorporate arts projects? Language will help, but it’s not everything. Funding is a very important piece of the puzzle. Which begs the question…

• Does it make more sense to work at the federal or state/local level? Federal policies set priorities which states are encouraged to adopt via competitive funding programs and other means of reward and punishment. All states receiving Race to the Top grants, for example, must develop comprehensive teacher evaluation systems as a condition of funding. Nevertheless, education is constitutionally assigned as a state concern and the bulk of education funding – over 90% – comes from state and local sources. Therefore, state and local officials have the most control over how education funds are spent. If you grant the premise that money is a key, if not the key, ingredient in successful reform, the states could be the best place to advocate for arts education.

For now, it’s too early to tell what answers we might glean from GIA’s experience, and whether its quieter strategy will pay off. It could be that potential victories for the Funders Coalition really do influence state priorities and lead to expanded arts education opportunities in schools. At the very least, as the Funders Coalition continues its work we should know more about the potential for funders to be advocates. There are many valuable lessons to be learned as this effort continues.

• With a rare, wide-open mayoral race underway, Boston’s arts community has come together to assert some political sway of its own. The new advocacy coalition MassCreative organized a nine-candidate forum that actually pushed back a televised debate. The primary is today.
• North Carolina’s Randolph County just banned Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from school libraries following a parent complaint that the novel is “too much for teenagers.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation welcomes Createquity’s own Daniel Reid as its new executive director and Courtney Hodell as director of the Whiting Writers’ Awards.
• The Ford Foundation announced Martin Abregú as its new vice president for the Democracy, Rights, and Justice program, and Hilary Pennington as the vice president of Education, Creativity, and Free Expression. Pennington, who previously led education initiatives at the Gates Foundation, will oversee all of Ford’s arts funding beginning October 1.
• Nearly a year after its prior president, Jeremy Nowak, resigned after eighteen months on the job, the William Penn Foundation has announced a search to fill its top leadership position, newly reframed as a “managing director.”
• John Palfrey, an expert on technology and civic engagement, is succeeding Robert Briggs as the new chair of the board of the Knight Foundation.
• G. Wayne Clough, who has served as the director of the Smithsonian Institution since 2008, will step down in October 2014.
• So long, Technology in the Arts blog; hello, Arts Management and Technology Laboratory. The rebranded/reimagined service from Carnegie Mellon’s arts management program will serve as “a research outlet for those working and learning in the arts management and technology sector,” and features interviews, case studies, research summaries, and more.

IN THE FIELD

• Nathan Zebedeo reviews Sarah Durham’s Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications for the (ahem) brand-new Fractured Atlas Book Club.
• Last week, Americans for the Arts hosted a blog salon focusing on arts education and the “trifecta of education accountability—standards, assessment, and evaluation.” The salon included a perspective from Createquity’s own Talia Gibas and a nice summary from Kristen Engebretsen, and touched on testing, teacher evaluation, the Common Core, and more.
• Speaking of accountability, Tennessee is rolling out an ambitious evaluation system for visual and performing arts teachers that relies on portfolios of student work. Teachers select samples they feel show evidence of growth over time, and submit them electronically for peer review. Time-consuming and complicated? Yep. Worth following? You bet.
• Udacity, a popular provider of online college-level courses known as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), has announced the launch of Open Education Alliance, bringing together leading tech companies and educators to “bridge the gap between the skills employers need and what traditional universities teach.” Is there an Open Arts Education Alliance in the near future?
• The Detroit Free Press takes an in-depth look at the embattled Detroit Institute of Arts’s long and tangled relationship with its hometown, providing insight into the current threats of deaccessioning.
• Last Wednesday, September 18, #AskaCurator Day “connect[ed] experts in venues large and small directly to gallery and museum fans across the world, inviting both parties to take to their [Twitter] handles and ask each other anything they want.” You can catch up on the conversations here.

BIG IDEAS

• “Arts Dinnervention” participants Devon Smith and Laura Zabel each reflect on the recent WESTAF-supported discussion, which brought together twelve arts leaders to consider new solutions to old problems. While the convening did not result in a singular path forward, there was one notable consensus: “the arts are not in trouble, it’s the institutions that are failing.”
• The Dallas Morning News has taken a novel approach to hiring a new art critic to its staff, a position empty since 2006. The addition of Rick Brettell, an art history professor at the University of Texas, will strengthen the news org’s arts coverage and is the second time it has worked with UT to hire a local professor as a cultural critic.
• Is it ethical for arts funders to start what they cannot finish? Diane Ragsdale, one of the official bloggers at the upcoming Grantmakers in the Arts conference, has her doubts.
• How is an artist like a social entrepreneur? Laura Callanan explores the similarities at SOCAP13.
• If you’re looking for a dose of wisdom to go with your morning cup o’ joe, start here: an array of arts leaders including Roberto Bedoya, Janet Brown, Richard Kessler, Margot Knight, and Mara Walker reflect on what they have learned from their years in the field.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Break out the champagne – the arts have stagnated! Americans for the Arts’s new 2013 National Arts Index is practically identical to last year’s, following several years of steady decline. The study finds deeper reason for optimism in the wake of the Great Recession: over the last 10 years, total private giving to all charities and the total number of workers in all occupations have been strong predictors of the health of the arts sector, and both are up.
• Jon Silpayamanant digs into the WPA Federal Music Project with an annotated bibliographic timeline and argues the WPA, as well as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration that preceded it, were crucial to classical music during the Great Depression.
• Data on the relationship between cities’ aesthetics and economic health may be soon within reach thanks to Place Pulse, a project out of MIT that asks users to rank  photos from cities as more or less “boring,” “safe,” “lively,” etc.
• A new survey conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy catalogs concerns about foundations from non-profits: nearly half of the respondents felt that foundations are not aware of the challenges the respondents face, and more than two-thirds believe foundations fail to use their various resources to help nonprofits with their challenges. Commentators blame power dynamics and the “inherently self-serving” structure of foundations.
• Connoisseurs of fine wines and classical music may be dismayed over recent studies examining the complexities involved in critical judgement. Turns out that experts and amateurs alike are susceptible to everything from presentation, environment, and even price (gasp!) when it comes to evaluating quality.
• When faith and evidence collide, sometimes it’s faith that wins – at least when it comes to politics. See also Margy Waller’s Uncomfortable Thoughts piece for Createquity from back in the day.

• You probably didn’t know it, but your fancy new mobile device is making it more difficult for your favorite local theater company to keep its wireless microphones. The Federal Communications Commission is considering auctioning off two “safe haven” broadcast channels used by wireless mics to commercial wireless providers. Theatre Communications Group led a Capitol Hill briefing in support of keeping the safe haven channels intact and also has a full write up for those looking to get up to speed on the issue.
• Despite being, arguably, the cultural capital of the United States, New York City lacks a formal cultural plan – unlike, for example, Chicago, Austin, and Roanoke, VA. Two NYC Council members have introduced a bill that would change that, forcing the Department of Cultural Affairs to assess the cultural needs of artists and communities on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.
• The Big Apple is also gearing up to choose a new mayor, and candidates on the right and left have expressed a range of support for the arts. Interestingly, all but one (Republican and Democrat) claim to be favor of increasing arts education spending. Any guesses as to which one? (Related: Guy Yedwab and the League of Independent Theatres have a voter guide for artists.)

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The federal copyright office’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel stepped down from her position last month. The Future of Music Coalition pays tribute to Espinel’s service.
• The new director of San Diego’s Commission for Arts and Culture, Denise Montgomery, resigned last month after just 44 days in her position stating, “I cannot in good conscience remain part of the Filner administration.” Montgomery was not the first to leave the administration in response to the mayor’s ongoing sexual harassment scandal. By the end of August, Filner himself was forced to resign. His legal troubles continue.
• Farewell to Trevor O’Donnell, who is leaving behind the nonprofit arts – and his lively blog, Marketing the Arts to Death – to focus on his architecture work.

BIG IDEAS

• In advance of the Arts Dinner-vention Project, Devon Smith offers an awesome google-doc-rumination — with a running comment thread — on “a revolution in the arts.” More, please!
• Mark Schubin has created a half-hour video overview of the history of technology solutions in the performing arts, from sound ducts in opera houses to the phonauthograph and beyond.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• “Deaccessioning has always been tricky”: whether it’s public outrage in the UK or legal troubles in Detroit, cashing in on beloved works of art is no easy way out of financial trouble. Meanwhile, the Willem de Kooning Foundation has decided to sell 10 paintings by the late artist to fund a special endowment program. Rather than risk the negative publicity a public sale could garner (see above), the works have been consigned to Gagosian Gallery, who will exhibit the pieces in an upcoming show and whisk them away privately at undisclosed amounts. The Foundation hopes to raise more than $30 million from the sale.
• On the heels of last week’s announcement that Nashville Symphony Orchestra musicians have agreed to a one-year, 15% reduction in salary, Minnesota Orchestra’s union musicians are standing their ground over demands for higher pay. The stalemate could result in the loss of their renowned conductor Osmo Vänskä and cancellations in their concert series this November.

IN THE FIELD

• Barry Hessenius’s annual list of the Fifty Most Powerful and Influential People in Nonprofit Arts is out, with a lot of new names but a conspicuous lack of arts education leaders. Congratulations to all who were mentioned.
• Arts Council Silicon Valley and 1stACT Silicon Valley have merged into a new nonprofit called Silicon Valley Creates. And two of Chicago’s oldest arts education providers, Art Resources in Teaching (A.R.T.) and Urban Gateways, are also merging. A.R.T., which was founded in 1894 — yes, 1894 — was “severely affected by a combination of recession, public policy challenges, and limited philanthropic support,” and its programs will henceforth be considered part of Urban Gateways’s Visual Arts program portfolio.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The NEA and the UMass Arts Extension Service are creating a treasure trove for “research into the history of the field of arts management, with the potential to help influence arts policy on the national level.” The new National Arts Policy Archives and Library (NAPAAL) will be housed at Amherst and made freely available online. Initially, the archive will include key documents from the two partners as well as Americans for the Arts and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, but outreach will continue to make the archives a “comprehensive scholarly resource.”
• Last spring, Americans for the Arts and the Nathan Cummings Foundation held a Funder Exchange on Evaluating Arts & Social Impact. A recently released report summarizes key points of the discussion and a few case studies in innovative evaluation by funders.
• A new study led by Leonid Perlovsky of Harvard University conducted in Quebec documents higher grades among gifted and talented students taking optional music classes; the students increased test performance in all subjects. The research somewhat addresses a common complaint about such studies, which is that the difference in performance might be due to a difference in inherent ability among the students.
• In his “Let’s Turn this Old Barn into a Theater!” series (parts I, II, and III), community development consultant Mike Hickey provides a fascinating and comprehensive summary of the opportunities and challenges for cultural organizations that make the decision to “buy non-cultural facilities and fix them up.” These findings are the result of a case study of so-called “adaptive reuse” for NOCD-NY.
• Researchers in England report that European artists are more satisfied with their jobs than non-artists – despite higher rates of unemployment and lower income levels. Earlier research found a similar effect in the United States. (Interestingly, British artists themselves report about average job satisfaction.)
• Video games for 70-and-80-somethings may become all the rage. Research out of the University of San Francisco indicates that video games can help improve attention and focus in healthy older adults.
• The MacArthur Foundation has released the findings from  its recent review of the MacArthur Fellows Program, claiming the study reaffirms the program’s positive impact on the professional lives of award recipients and the engaged public. The Foundation also announced its decision to increase the fellows’ living stipend, upping it to $625,000 paid out over five years.
• Britain is due for its decennial census next year, but officials are considering two alternatives to the classic Big Data survey: shifting it online or scrapping it entirely and relying on existing data from other sources. The goal is to reduce the $1.10 per person per year cost. Take note: the per-capita cost in the US is almost four times as high.
• The deadline to apply for an NEA Research: ArtWorks grant is coming up November 5, and Program Analyst Melissa Menzer has some helpful tips for potential applicants.

• The National Endowment for the Arts has shared a draft of its strategic plan for FY14-18, and in what I believe may be a first, is inviting public comment on it via SurveyMonkey. Ah, these modern times we live in. Now let’s just hope House Republicans don’t succeed in slashing its budget by 49%.
• A new report from the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU and the Center for an Urban Future details 15 policy innovations for cities that are “novel, proven and scalable.” While no arts-specific innovations made the list, one of the ideas is a type of “digital badging” program found in Philadelphia, Providence and Chicago that “allow[s] students both inside the K-12 system and outside to earn credentials for skills they learn in a wide variety of educational settings, from digital tools workshops at public libraries to art classes at museums.”
• The City of Buffalo is at risk of losing over $1 million worth of donated musical instruments if it follows through with cuts to music programs in its schools.
• The City of New York has taken over management of the financially troubled South Street Seaport Museum.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The McKnight Foundation has hired Arleta Little as arts program officer, replacing Laura Zimmermann. If she’s looking for advice on how to settle into her new role, she can check out this completely awesome video Laura made as a goodbye kiss to her old employer.
• After 25 years in various positions at the Ford Foundation, philanthropy data nut and friend of the blog Kyle Reis is now Senior Director of Global Data Services at TechSoup. Here he is writing about the Foundation Center’s Reporting Commitment.

IN THE FIELD

• Doug Borwick offers a range of thoughts from the Americans for the Arts Convention.
• So long Codaex, a European classical music distributor.
• A new national network of Latino theater companies has formed in Southern California. Service organizations will note with interest that a Theatre Communications Group conference was the forum that provided the initial push.
• In very sad news, Rick Lester, founding CEO of arts marketing consultancy TRG Arts, passed away suddenly last weekend while participating in a bike ride for charity. TRG, which is notable for its management of nearly two dozen community arts patron databases across the country, has a memorial page up with a myriad of touching tributes from colleagues past and present.

BIG IDEAS

• The NEA’s Jason Schupbach reflects on the Our Town program now that its third round of grants has been announced.
• The Internet is democratizing all sorts of things, not just the arts. Here, the Atlantic reports on the rise of citizen cartography.
• Rather than trying (or refusing) to do more with less, why not use the challenge as an opportunity to explore constructive partnerships?
• Two more than worthwhile perspectives on the past and future of online marketing, from Seth Godin and Adam Thurman.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Attention study-at-home MBA candidates: the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Phil Buchanan points us to a motherlode of Stanford philanthropy case studies made available for free recently via Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen’s ProjectU. CEP also has some tips for communicating with grantees.
• Rick Noguchi of the Irvine Foundation offers an inside look into grant deliberations and explains how the foundation made some of its decisions in the most recent round of the Exploring Engagement Fund.
• Streaming music services in general, and Spotify in particular, have come under increasing criticism from musicians for their ultra-low royalty payout rates. Most recently, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and several associates decided to pull their music from the site in protest. But is Spotify actually undercutting music piracy rather than album sales? As usual, the folks at Future of Music Coalition have turned in the most thoughtful analysis we’ve yet seen on this issue.
• Thinking about starting a crowdfunding project and not sure how to figure out the budgeting? You might want to try Taylor Davidson’s financial modeling template in Excel.

RESEARCH CORNER

• A new report from Americans for the Arts details the mostly modest salaries of local arts agency employees. But who says you can’t get rich being an arts administrator? Indeed, the NEA’s Sunil Iyengar has a long post on income inequality in the arts, and the idea that it may be portending changes in the economy as a whole. And Diane Ragsdale considers the interesting question of whether being paid too much “crowds out” one’s existing intrinsic motivation to work.
• Can we make a dent in poverty just by teaching parents how to parent better? A long-term study from Jamaica suggests maybe so. Meanwhile, the achievement gap between rich kids and poor kids is now twice as large as that between black children and white children. The cause of poor performance by poor students? No one’s quite figured it out yet, but it’s not bad teachers, nor is it moms on crack. (Seriously – a 23-year longitudinal study in Philadelphia has revealed that being born to poverty affects kids’ cognitive development far more than whether or not their mothers were on crack while pregnant. Think about that one for a bit.) Here’s a map of poverty and race in America.
• Boston’s Charles River is finally swimmable again – a concrete example of a data-driven policy success. (And it took nearly two decades to make it happen.)

ETC.

• Congratulations to Andrew Taylor on a full decade of his blog, the Artful Manager. That is quite a milestone in this space! Andrew had it going on pretty much light years before any of us.
• Ben Huh, the head of I Can Has Cheezburger (better known as the home of LOLcats), on “bad art”:
  

  [W]e are entering an age where there is very little in the way between an idea and an expression online, and that means more and more people are participating in ways of expressing themselves. What we do is encourage that artistic expression even if we don’t recognize their creations as “fine art.”

  Human beings have this incredible desire to connect and express themselves and that is what is filling up our time on the Internet, and I don’t think that is bad. It is actually a wonderful thing.

The Director of Federal Affairs works with the Senior Director of Federal Affairs and Arts Education and the Chief Counsel of Government and Public Affairs in developing and promoting the federal legislative agenda of Americans for the Arts to Congress and the Administration.  Advocacy efforts include direct lobbying; proposing, monitoring, and analyzing legislation; working in formal and informal coalitions; organizing strategic events; and mobilizing Americans for the Arts’ grassroots members and constituencies.  Advocacy efforts also include the production of the Arts Advocacy Day annual conference.  The Director will be responsible for liaison work with the U.S. House of Representatives and legislative policy development relating to tax policy, technology, education, economic development and other issues considered by both the House and the Senate, as well as the Administration. (Deadline: May 24)

Americans for the Arts’ Marketing, Communications, and Technology team is looking for a Communications Content Manger to identify, create, and distribute valuable content and stories to attract, acquire, and engage targeted audiences. The ideal candidate will be familiar with multiple platforms (print, web, and social media) for delivering content to broad audiences and savvy at developing content for these platforms. Working with staff, the Manager will help define their existing and potential audiences and help shape their work into content and stories that engage and build relationships. Whether you are writing or assigning the development of such content, you will be guiding and inspiring those you work with about the power of storytelling and content. (Deadline: May 24)

The Research Associate provides day-to-day coordination of research studies on segments of America’s arts industry. These are action-oriented studies about the programs and services of local arts agencies, expand the conversation about arts policy, and provide awareness and understanding of the value of the arts in community life. Research studies focus on such issues as the creative industries, economic impact of the arts, and the budgets and programs of the local arts agency field. Specifically, the Associate’s work involves understanding project goals and methodologies; coordinating data collection efforts; ensuring accurate data entry; conducting appropriate statistical analyses; and writing data summaries, final reports, and articles for publication. (Deadline: May 31)

Note: The Communication and Content Manager position runs ARTSBlog, an important resource in the arts blogosphere.

Museum and Cultural Affairs Director, City of Riverside (CA)

The City of Riverside is seeking a dynamic and innovative professional to serve as Museum and Cultural Affairs Director and to lead the City’s expanding Arts and Culture program. The position is an integral member of the executive management team and will direct the development and operation of the Municipal Museum and promote the arts for people of all ages. The successful candidate will be responsible for multiple entertainment venues to include programming for two 1,600 seat theaters as well as a black box theater. The Museum and Cultural Affairs Director is also responsible for putting on the City’s signature events including the famed “Festival of Lights.”

Deadline: May 31, 2013. This position carries a salary range of $116,136 to $145,116.

Executive Director, American Evaluation Association (via SmithBucklin)

SmithBucklin is seeking an Executive Director in our Washington, D.C. office to work closely with the Board of Directors and membership as the chief staff executive for our client organization, the American Evaluation Association (AEA). The American Evaluation Association is an international professional association of evaluators devoted to the application and exploration of program evaluation, personnel evaluation, technology, and many other forms of evaluation. Evaluation involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of programs, policies, personnel, products, and organizations to improve their effectiveness. AEA has approximately 7500 individual members representing all 50 states in the United States as well as over 60 foreign countries.

No deadline. You can apply here.

Summer 2013 Seth Godin Internship

For the fourth time, I’m assembling a team of interns to brainstorm, sketch out and possibly build a new online thing. I’m hoping you’re open to reading through the details of how this works and possibly applying.

Deadline: May 31, 2013. As they say, self-recommending.