Warhol Dollar, by Incase via flickr

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

Why We Care

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

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

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

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

What We Know

… about economic realities and secondary income:

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

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

… about formal education for arts professionals:

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

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

What We Don’t Know

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

Other key questions we have include:

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

How to Use this Information

A few action items to consider:

For researchers

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

For funders and artist residencies

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

Resource List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why We Care

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

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

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

What We Know

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

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

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

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

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

… about motivations and barriers to arts participation:

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

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

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

… about how to measure engagement:

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

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

What We Don’t Know

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

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

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

What You Can Do With This Information

Questions to consider and actions to contemplate:

For arts administrators and artists

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

For funders

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

For researchers

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

Resource List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dance” illustration by Flickr user Luciana Ruivo

Quickly advancing technologies are altering reality in ways that, not long ago, were the stuff of science-fiction movies. Computer scientists have developed a Photoshop-like tool for video, allowing users to paste audio files into a video and manipulate the subject’s lip movements to depict speeches that never happened, or took place in a different context. The algorithm was developed by researchers at the University of Washington, who claim that the lip-synch technology could improve communication and be a boon for the film industry – for example, by enabling editors to save on reshooting already filmed scenes. But there are obvious concerns that the tool might (umm, will) be used to create deceptive videos or propagate hoaxes. Still, investors like Samsung, Google, Facebook, and Intel see the the new technology’s potential in the realms of artificial intelligence and augmented reality – which have themselves seen lots of new developments this month. Apple is developing augmented reality salsa dance lessons with its new ARKit, which allows aspiring dancers to practice their technique at home, with or without a partner. Bots for poetry and art are producing work that’s competitive with human creations. And neurologists have created an instrument that can be played – wait for it – with your mind. The breakneck pace of bot and AI technologies has sparked discussion of the best practices for using these tools, as well as potential ethical and regulatory guidelines that will need to be implemented as humans and machines increasingly live side-by-side.

Things are looking up for the NEA and NEH. Nearly level funding for the major federal arts and culture agencies has been approved by the House of Representatives appropriations committee. The committee’s proposed insignificant cuts stand in stark contrast to those in President Trump’s budget proposal, which would completely have defunded both agencies. Trump first touted widespread cuts to federal arts and humanities funding in January, which some saw as more of a symbolic gesture than a genuine effort to balance the budget. Nevertheless, a call to action among arts advocacy groups and constituents has put pressure on Congress, which has demonstrated support for the arts from both sides of the aisle. The ultimate fate of the NEA and NEH won’t be known for some time: while the House could vote on the bill as soon as the summer recess ends, it likely won’t reach the Senate until the end of the year. Nevertheless, with the most conservative arm of Congress having already taken its turn, it seems likely at this point that the Endowments are safe for another year.

Arts funding for the 2%. Five years ago, Holly Sidford’s research report “Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change” shook the arts funding world to its core, revealing that top 2% of arts organizations (in terms of budget size) received 55% of charitable contributions to the sector. Now, “Not Just Money,” a follow-up study from Sidford’s Helicon Collaborative, reveals that the gap has actually widened among 41,000 arts organizations nationwide, with big-budget institutions increasing their take to 58%. “Not Just Money” further traces the majority of funding to 925 culturally non-specific groups whose work centers around Eurocentric art forms and reaches predominantly white audiences. Helicon reports that communities of color are represented by a quarter of nonprofit arts organizations, but they only get 4% of the funding; meanwhile organizations representing LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and rural or low-income communities are similarly underserved by funders. The trend raises questions about whether ethnocultural organizations must concentrate efforts on collaboration with bigger institutions in order to remain sustainable, and whether continued efforts to close the gap are actually making a difference. Speaking of such efforts, as part of New York City’s newly released cultural plan – which made diversity, equity, and inclusion a top priority – mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed linking future city funding to cultural institutions’ staff and board demographic makeup. Although de Blasio declined to specify target goals, the move has raised concerns of “class warfare” over arts funding between established institutions and smaller ones in disadvantaged neighborhoods, along with predictable pushback from the conservative press.

Fixing the arts education crisis in Detroit schools. Detroit’s public school board seeks to address a yawning gap in arts instruction in the city’s public schools, of which nearly half offer no formal education in music or visual arts. Detroit’s decline in arts education stems, in part, from the public school system’s exclusion from the city’s reorganization after filing for bankruptcy. (The situation is not restricted to Detroit: In 2012 a reported 108,000 students across Michigan were lacking arts education despite the State Board of Education’s mandate that students earn at least one arts credit to graduate high school.) After Detroit’s new superintendent Nikolai Vitti started in June, a freshly elected school board has allocated $500,000 for Vitti to hire art and music teachers who will travel between schools and begin to fill the gap, which is most prominent in elementary and middle schools.

Separation of church and retail? Controversy surrounding Washington, D.C.’s proposed Museum of the Bible has come to a head regarding the museum’s Green Collection. Scholars have long expressed concerns about the Green family, which began acquiring extraordinary numbers of biblical artifacts in 2009. The evangelical Christian family also owns Hobby Lobby, a U.S. chain of retail arts and craft stores, which received shipments containing ancient clay cuneiform tablets in 2010 as packages marked “tile samples.” The artifacts have now been seized as part of a federal investigation claiming that the items were smuggled from historical sites in Iraq. Hobby Lobby’s failure to verify the artifacts’ origins means the company is facing a hefty $3 million fine, on top of relinquishing a majority of the 5,500 pieces, which were bought for $1.6 million. Controversy is not new to Hobby Lobby, which in 2014 won a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the company’s right to refuse contraception coverage to full-time employees, but the new probe also casts a cloud over the Museum of the Bible – for which Steve Green sits as chairman of the board. Museum leaders claim they were not aware they were smuggling artifacts into the country, despite obtaining legal advice from an expert in cultural properties law warning against the 2010 purchase.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS:

• Ted Russell has been appointed associate director of arts strategy and ventures at the Kenneth Rainin Foundation in Oakland, CA.
• Karen Mittelman has been appointed director of the Vermont Arts Council. Mittelman was previously at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
• The Robert W. Deutsch Foundation has appointed Jessica Solomon as its new senior program officer overseeing arts and culture.
• Arts research and strategy consultant Victoria Plettner-Saunders has joined WolfBrown as principal.
• The International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies has appointed Magdalena Moreno Mujica as executive director.
• Dennis Scholl, former vice president of the Knight Foundation, has moved to Miami’s ArtsCenter as its new president and chief executive.
• Former NEH chairman William Adams and Spencer Foundation’s Michael McPherson have been appointed senior fellows at the Mellon Foundation.
• The arts management program at George Mason University has announced a new director: alum Aimee Fullman.
• New York magazine has named theater director Sara Holdren as its lead theater critic.
• DataArts seeks a new president and CEO.
• Dance/USA is accepting applications for director of programs through August 18.
• The Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at USC is seeking a part-time professor specializing in Dance Leadership.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE:

• Consumers are spending more on the arts, according to data collected between 2000 and 2014 by the Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account. The trend is particularly strong for opera and musical theater.
• Research by British publication The Stage indicated a nine-to-one ratio of male to female writers in books, lyrics, or musical scores across musicals presented in the West End over the last decade. Howlround looked at designers and directors within the League of Resident Theatres and similarly found a staggering gender gap in all areas except costume design.
• On the heels of the successful Wonder Woman film, a new report analyzes the gender expression and representation of female comic book characters.
• In the UK, jobs in creative industries are growing as a faster-than-average pace compared to the general workforce.
• A data analysis from Know Your Own Bone suggests Generation X citizens and Millennials will not “grow into” caring about arts and culture as much as previous generations.
• R&B and hip-hop are the top music genres in the U.S. this year, while classical music registers last with just 1% of sales so far. Research in the Journal of Popular Music Education has tried to get to the bottom of why millennials aren’t into classical music, citing length of concerts, restrained audience behavior, and lack of emotional attachment as barriers to appreciation.
• New York City is still king for artists, says a CityLab report, but artists are increasingly moving out of neighborhoods traditionally considered to be “artsy.” With work space at a premium, some artists are looking to school facilities as a potential resource.
• A report from the Creative Industries Federation offers policy recommendations on how governments can provide support to the creative freelance economy.
• Results for All recently published the Global Landscape Review, which aims to understand approaches governments take in using data to make decisions.
• New online tools provide insight on the arts and culture sector. GEOLOOM co>map visualizes cultural activity in Baltimore, neighborhood by neighborhood, and the National Center for Arts Research has created a visitor-to-staff index for comparing performance among similar sized organizations.
• Two reports looking at creative placemaking as a driver for community development show promising results in Cleveland and Washington, D.C.
• A new monitor provides comparable data on European cities across multiple domains related to culture and creativity. Meanwhile, an index published by the Joint Research Centre identifies the ideal European locale as a combination of eight cities.
• A new report makes a case for funding amateur choirs at the same level as sports teams.
• Survey data confirms that Australians place high personal and societal value on the arts.
• The Asia Europe Foundation has released the Indonesia edition of its series of guides looking at the connection between art and sustainability in Asian countries.
• A report of pilot projects by the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation evaluates a framework by which social issues might be positively impacted by indigenous artists’ work.
• Digital tools are reducing opportunities for kids to create original artwork. The trend is not exclusive to the U.S. and recently supported by research from the Netherlands.
• A University of London study reports that one in three professional musicians have suffered from an eating disorder at some point in their lives.
• Two years in the making, the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing has released findings on the potential benefits of arts participation.
• The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies has published its annual report forecasting arts funding at the state level.
• GrantCraft’s paper on theoretical frameworks shaping private foundations offers tools for aligning purpose, public benefit, and action.
• In a survey of 3,200 donors, women gave differently and more generously than men.
• A Grantmakers in the Arts report offers proposals on how funders might reshape their strategies to better reflect the cultural landscape in the 21st century.
• Writing for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Megan O’Neil and Joshua Hatch’s analysis of 1600 organizations shows that many big nonprofits are stockpiling cash, with more money coming in than goes out.
• Art hung above eye-level is perceived by most to be aesthetically inspiring.
• Surprise! Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on whether the impact of the news media on society is positive or negative.

“Old World Inspirational Sign,” by Flickr user Nicholas Raymond

It’s no secret that embarking on a professional career in the arts requires a degree of boldness in the face of economic uncertainty. The prevailing stereotype of the “starving artist” indicates that people do so anyway – either willing to forego comfort for creativity’s sake, possessing alternative income (such as a day job or family help), and/or confident that their talent and drive will see them through. But how long do they stick with it before throwing in the towel – or professionally shifting gears? As the Greek playwright Aeschylus wrote: “Necessity is stronger far than art.”

A study from 2016 assesses the odds of artistic longevity through the prism of academia: does a formal education enhance one’s chances of making it (and staying) in the arts? Using data gathered by Statistics Denmark, “Artistic education matters: survival in the arts occupations” analyzes more than 27,000 employment records between 1996 and 2012 across five categories of Danish artists: visual artists, choreographers and dancers, composers and musicians, film/stage actors and directors, and writers (including journalists).

Authors Trine Bille and Søren Jensen estimate the impact of a formal artistic education on the length of artists’ careers in each of these groups. (The definitions of “relevant education” and “relevant industry” for each arts group are specified in an appendix to the report.) Among their key findings:

• Formal education reduces the rate of attrition (i.e., abandoning an arts career) for musicians, actors and writers.
• The same correlation is not seen among visual artists and dancers, though these samples are smaller.
• Exit rates – especially early in a career – vary between artists in different fields.

Methods of Inquiry

The Bille/Jensen report leverages Statistics Denmark, an agency that collects a remarkable census of all Danish citizens covering employment, income, industry, age, and gender, among many other topics. Made possible via a personal identification number associated with every Danish citizen, this is arguably the most robust longitudinal dataset we’ve ever encountered at Createquity. For its purposes, “Artistic Education Matters” homes in on people ages 18 to 70 (excluding pensioners) who have a positive income primarily generated by work in one of the five defined arts categories over the 17-year time frame of the study. Exit rates are marked by a ‘‘definitive exit from the artistic labor market’’ – a shift in occupation that continues throughout the observed period without a return to arts employment.

Via a literature review, the authors point to several hurdles in the arts labor market, including an excess supply of artists, paltry average income, skewed income distribution, and a low overall survival rate, with just 20% of the subjects remaining in their fields after ten years. “Compared to other fields of employment,” they write, “the arts seem to be a risky business.”

Bille and Jensen’s conclusions focus on artistic survival rates – the odds of remaining in an arts profession – more than income levels. Indeed, they cite a host of cultural and economic literature indicating that artistic education does not have a significant impact on income, noting that many artists are self-taught and theorizing that “indefinable” factors – such as talent, creativity, and ambition – may contribute more to higher rates of payment than formal training does. (Despite this conclusion, Bille and Jensen perform their own analysis of income levels in the dataset and find that, at least for Danish musicians, actors, and writers, a relevant education actually does positively affect earnings. Income from self-employment is not included in the study, though, so we should take those results with a grain of salt.) While acknowledging that “higher income makes [artists] better able to live from their arts,” “Artistic Education Matters” concerns itself mainly with education’s effect on longevity – not financial success per se – in a chosen arts field.

Bille and Jensen employ the Cox model of regression analysis to to investigate what factors predict longevity in the marketplace as an artist, controlling for income level, relevant experience (i.e., working in the field in which the artists studied), other experience, additional employment, and demographic variables such as gender and age.

Motley Crews

Overall, across the five artist groups studied, only about 20% remain in their chosen occupation after 10 years. The report makes clear, though, that the impact of an arts degree varies considerably by discipline. Below we discuss which groups benefit most from a relevant education, from most to least:

• Writers: the authors note that “it is not possible to separate authors from journalists” in the dataset, and this is the largest group, with 14,943 subjects. About 20% have a relevant education: for them, the exit rate after five years is 20%, compared to more than 60% for those without a writing degree. Bille and Jensen note that journalism in particular “functions more like an ordinary labor market, where an education may have an important signaling effect to employers.”
• Actors: the sample of 3,813 “film, stage, and related actors and directors” shows this group to be most vulnerable to an early exit. While Bille and Jensen note that “an actor can get a job without any formal education or other experience,” 16% of the actors had in fact formally studied their craft. At the five-year point, only 45% of those with a relevant education had left the field, compared to 75% of those without.
• Musicians: the sample of 3,161 “composers, musicians, and singers” shows 34% with a music degree; among this group, 55% left after five years, compared to 70% for those without. The authors note relatively high barriers for entry in this field: “technical skills may have an impact on the survival.”
• Dancers: The group of “choreographers and dancers” has only 296 subjects; just 9% of them have formal dance training, and this is said to have “no impact on staying in the profession” (the five-year exit rate difference is less than five percentage points). However, the authors note the small dataset: “The problem is that there are very few observations for this group.”
• Visual Artists: Among 4,851 “sculptors, painters, and related artists” (including workers commercial fields like advertising) the authors report that just 2% have a formal arts education, “which means that most of these visual artists were autodidacts.” Based on this small sample, the formal education “seems to have no impact” on an early exit.

Bille and Jensen also cite data from a 2005 French study – Gender differentiated effect of time in performing arts professions (Coulangeon et al), which investigated survival function estimates for musicians, actors, and dancers in France from the mid-1980s to 2000. Both studies indicate that the most vulnerable period of attrition for all artist groups is in the two years following entry to the labor market; the Danish study, with a wider dataset, shows an even more dramatic early exit rate than the French study.

What Else Might Be Going On?

An obvious and tempting conclusion to draw from these results is that, yes, an arts degree is valuable, at least if one works in music, theater, or literature and if one’s goal is to stay in the profession for as long as possible. Yet for all its specificity, this analysis leaves several key questions unanswered and hypotheses unexplored. Among them are:

• Are these results simply an indication that people who bother to get a formal education in the arts are more committed to their chosen art form in the first place? Could there be a sunk-cost effect where people feel like they ought to stay in an arts field longer if they invested substantial time and resources getting trained in it? Especially since, for most, that probably also meant not getting a degree in some other field?
• Are the conclusions about visual artists and dancers – that formal education has little impact on longevity – simply a reflection of limited data for those groups or is there something more to this than first-glance results?
• Is it possible that people who survive the longest in the arts have alternative income streams (such as family help) that wouldn’t be reflected in this dataset?
• What is the relationship between survival in the arts and financial success? The authors note that a relevant education correlates with higher salaries for three of the arts groups – musicians, actors, and writers – and these are the same groups in which education is seen to increase longevity.
• What role does self-employment play in all this? Unfortunately, the authors chose not to include income from self-employment in the analysis due to challenges with the dataset, which could have skewed the results in unpredictable ways.
• Would we see these same types of results looking at similar data from a different country and/or a different time frame?

The Bille/Jensen study would have benefitted from a closer examination of these hypotheses as they relate to the Danish dataset. With its literature review and emphasis on longevity, this report adds a helpful lens to research gathered by Createquity last year in “The BFA’s Dance with Inequality” – which cast some doubt on the importance of arts degrees for lower-income students – as well as our 2016 article “Who Can Afford to Be a Starving Artist?” But because the study is light on analysis of socioeconomic factors and personal wealth – particularly the role that secondary income support plays in extending an artistic career – it doesn’t illuminate its subject as much as it could.

Then there are socio-political aspects such as government support for arts education: Denmark has a robust social safety net compared to, say, the United States, which may play into arts longevity. Getting a formal arts education in Denmark – where university education is free and living costs are buttressed by a system of grants – does not entail the equity barriers found in countries with high, generally unsubsidized university costs (especially at the graduate level).

Still, with an extraordinarily comprehensive national dataset, thoughtful analysis, and pinpointed conclusions, Bille and Jensen make a strong case for the connection between formal art education and longevity in an artistic career, especially for those working in music, theater/film, and literature. This should be good news to arts school students and grads who hope to spend their lives doing nothing else.

“Coloured pencils,” by Flickr user Alan Cleaver

Title: Artistic education matters: survival in the arts occupations

Author(s): Trine Bille and Søren Jensen

Publisher: Springer Journal of Cultural Economics

Year: 2016

URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0CED3IRNcjobmFCOFNjbGt4dm9BYlFKdmFoQlc4ZmNBU2RV/view

Topics: artists, arts education, arts employment, barriers to arts careers

Methods:  Regression analysis, 1996-2012 data from Danish official statistics, literature review

What it says: Using official Danish statistics, the study analyzes more than 27,000 employment records of artists and journalists from 1996 to 2012, across five arts categories: music, dance, film and theater acting and directing, visual arts, and writing (including journalism). Two forms of regression analysis showed that having a formal arts education in one’s career field reduced the risk of the leaving the arts field in question for musicians, acting professionals, and writers/journalists. However, this correlation is not seen for visual artists and dancers (albeit with a relatively small sample in the dance group).

The study also notes that the bulk of attrition among artists happens during the first two years after starting an arts career. The study compares data from a 2005 French study – Gender differentiated effect of time in performing arts professions (Coulangeon et al), which investigated survival function estimates for performing artists in France – and notes that the French study also found the maximum period of vulnerability to be in the two year following entry to the labor market.

The Bille/Jensen paper cites further conclusions drawn from both the Danish data and the French data:

• an arts career is a risky venture, with a comparably low success rate
• the success rate of aspiring working artists differs by arts sector
• theater artists have the lowest success rate in the first two years, followed by visual artists
• musicians and dancers, along with those in the writers/journalists category, show less attrition in the first two years

What I think about it: Overall, it would have been helpful if there had been greater analysis of socioeconomic status and family and personal wealth – and their income implications – on career longevity in the arts. A related concern is the gender analysis for visual arts: while the study indicates that women have a greater arts career survival rate, it doesn’t explicitly investigate other income support from married partners as additional income sources. (This was more thoroughly explored in a similar 2011 study by David Throsby and Anita Zednik using data from Australia.) Finally, the inclusion of journalists in the writers group makes that data less relevant to the overall conclusions – as the authors themselves admit. They cite literature indicating that journalists operate in a more standard supply-and-demand labor market than artists in other creative sectors.

What it all means: This study uses a longitudinal dataset to provide solid analysis based on large samples and a long-time series, unlike previous studies in the area. The report provides empirical evidence that supports some intuitive insights for arts careers – including differences in career paths in various arts fields – which have been posited in other literature. Its conclusions contrast some of those noted in earlier reporting by Createquity on the complex relationship between higher education and artistic success. The analysis provides one key, demonstrable causal relationship: the connection between formal arts education and career longevity in fields such as drama and music. It indicates that, in certain sectors, there’s a likely causal relationship between having formal arts education and surviving longer in an arts career.

In contrast with the United States, Scandinavian countries may have more longitudinal datasets and rates of success in surviving in the arts – but one should be cautious in comparing countries with robust social safety nets to the United States, where socioeconomic and equity concerns may come into play. In particular, evidence for impact of formal arts education in Denmark for successful careers – where university education is free, and living costs are supported by a system of grants – may point to equity barriers for societies like the United States which have high, unsubsidized university costs, especially at the graduate level.

“mahatma” by artist cryptik

Title: Measuring Critical Thinking: Results from an Art Museum Field Trip Experiment

Author(s): Brian Kisida, Daniel H. Bowen and Jay P. Greene

Publisher: Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness

Year: 2015

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2015.1086915

Topics: arts education, museums, field trip, visual arts, critical thinking

Methods: randomized controlled trial involving 8,000 elementary, middle- and high-school students assigned by lottery to attend a field trip and facilitated tour of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Researchers collected demographic information on the students and conducted a textual analysis of essays written by the students after the field trip responding to an image of a work of art. The essays were coded using a critical-thinking assessment rubric developed by the US Department of Education.

What it says: This study validates and expands upon the results of the authors’ 2013 Crystal Bridges study. The museum field trip was led by trained museum docent facilitating open-ended, student-led discussion about art work in the collections. Following the field trip, students completed surveys on their demographics, prior art consumption and production, knowledge of art, and attitudes toward cultural institutions. Students were also shown an image of a painting that was not part of the Crystal Bridges collection and given five minutes to write an essay describing what was going on in the painting, and what they saw that led them to that conclusion. In the first semester of the experiment, as discussed in the 2013 study, students were shown a representational work of art. Students participating in the study’s second semester were shown an abstract work of art.

All students assigned to the treatment group demonstrated stronger critical-thinking skills in their essays than those in the control group. However, across the board, some aspects of critical thinking as measured by the seven-section rubric were more evident than others; and measurements were not consistent between student responses to representational and abstract pieces. Specifically, students responding to the representational painting showed many examples of observations and interpretations in their written responses, whereas responses to the abstract piece were heavy on observation and light on interpretation. Instances of “problem finding,” “flexible thinking,” and  “comparisons” were less likely in response to abstract work.

However, as reported in the 2013 study, a relatively modest “dose” of arts education – one visit to the visual arts museum – produced a significant effect in the treatment group. Many of the students had never attended a school-based field trip before, and the authors note that students who reported prior exposure to arts education – including non-visual arts education – displayed stronger critical-thinking outcomes in general than students who reported little or no arts exposure. Female students and students from larger communities also scored higher on the critical-thinking rubric. Interestingly, students attending Title I schools showed significantly higher critical-thinking outcomes than their more affluent counterparts when responding to the representational artwork, but the differences were less pronounced for the groups responding to the abstract work.

What I think about it: The 2013 Crystal Bridges was rightly lauded for its scale, clarity, and thoughtfulness. This 2015 follow-up continues in that mold. Randomized controlled trials such as this one are considered a gold standard for research; the high level of inter-rater reliability among the researchers coding the student essays – who were not aware of any student characteristics (including whether they were in the treatment or control group) – leaves little to fault in the study’s design. There are limitations, of course: there is no way to know whether the effects on the treatment group last over time, for example, and whether they would remain consistent in an urban area that afforded residents more cultural opportunities. The difference in student responses to the abstract versus representational works of art also raises questions about the depth of conclusions to be drawn. Students were only given five minutes to write their essays, so the fact that they primarily stuck to observations and interpretations isn’t surprising; nor is it illogical that students working with the abstract piece offered fewer interpretations and more observations about the work. It would be interesting to see how the responses would have evolved if students were given more time to work on them. It would also be useful to know which elements of critical thinking were on display during the treatment group discussions at the museum. According to the authors: “The goal of the museum educators was to facilitate an open-ended, student-centered approach to discuss the works of art, encourage a deep level of engagement, and motivate students to seek out their own unique interpretations.” The extent to which students accomplished this, and the balance of observation versus interpretation in the discussions, may have depended on their abilities to respond to the essay prompt in a short amount of time.

Another question emerges: how much of the impact on students’ critical thinking had to do with the field trip and how much had to do with the arts-based nature of the experience? The authors note that “this research does not establish which components of the art museum experience were essential for increases in critical-thinking skills, or if these same effects could be generated from school-based arts exposure.” I wonder whether there were components that didn’t have to do with the arts at all. If students were guided to discuss a representational photograph, or to observe an environment for a science class, would such observational practice lead to similar results? And how much, if any, of the critical-thinking gains exhibited in this study might transfer over to other activities?

What it all means: Not many randomized controlled trials take place in arts education, so this one is heartening; perhaps it will serve as inspiration to other researchers interested not only in the impact of the arts on students, but how critical-thinking skills are cultivated in the first place. Despite its scale, the study leaves several questions unanswered. It does confirm that, in the short term, students who participated in a field trip to the Crystal Bridges Museum were able to respond to works of art in a more robust way than students who did not. As with the first Crystal Bridges study, the fact that this effect is most pronounced for Title I students examining representational work seems worthy of further examination.

Photo by NEC Corporation of America with Creative Commons license

Nowadays when we knock on the door of a child’s room to check in, we’re likely as not to see her staring at a screen. Is that a good thing? Should we be happier to find the kid reading, singing, or drawing?

These (and many other) questions lie at the heart of “Arts and Cultural Participation among Children and Young People: Insights from the Growing up in Ireland Study,” a 2016 report commissioned by the Arts Council of Ireland. The report attempts to gauge the impact of children’s cultural engagement in the context of our digital era.

Authored by Emer Smyth, research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), “Arts and Cultural Participation” extracts and examines data from Growing up in Ireland – the National Longitudinal Study of Children (GUI), a government-funded study conducted from 2006 through 2013. Smyth’s analysis, which draws on the arts-and-culture part of the GUI data, views cultural engagement through a multifaceted prism. Covering a broad age range from early childhood to the throes of adolescence, “Arts and Cultural Participation” weaves seemingly tangential activities like reading, television viewing, and computer screen time into the findings, all while weighing the effects of social disparities in income, education, and cultural access.

Three key findings emerge from Smyth’s analysis of the data:

• Cultural engagement appears to boost both academic skills and socio-emotional wellbeing for participating children.
• The availability of school-based cultural activities correlates with extracurricular arts participation.
• Despite the best efforts of school-based interventions, engagement with culture and the arts varies widely among demographic groups in Irish society.

Casting a Wide Net

Growing Up in Ireland has a longitudinal design – with data gathered from the same subjects at progressive time points – that probes the cumulative effects of various activities in people’s lives over several years. The inquiry follows two cohorts of children: a group of 11,134 subjects recruited at 9 months of age and then surveyed at ages 3 and 5; and a second cohort of 8,568 children recruited at 9 years of age and again surveyed at age 13.

Smyth’s report for the Arts Council analyzes this data with respect to the likelihood of different groups of children to engage in cultural activities, the influence of schools’ emphasis on cultural activities on children’s cultural engagement outside of school, and the relationship between cultural participation, academic skills, and socio-emotional wellbeing. For younger subjects, researchers interviewed primary and secondary caregivers to learn about activities outside the classroom such as creative play and cultural outings. For older children, questionnaires given to principals and teachers tracked structured activities offered in schools – music, drama, painting and drawing classes – as well as more passive pursuits like attending cultural events. Data for the older group also includes interviews with the subjects themselves.

The GUI dataset tracks two sets of outcomes: cognitive development (as measured by standardized tests) and wellbeing (as measured by the prevalence of socio-emotional difficulties). They control for some individual and family characteristics, such as preschool childcare at age 3, but there are no controls for individual personality traits or certain other environmental factors that might have a role in shaping these outcomes. Thus, the findings are arguably not as reliable as would be the case if the study used an experimental design.

That said, there are other reasons to pay heed to “Arts and Cultural Participation.” While we can’t be sure that the outcomes in question follow solely from cultural engagement, the longitudinal nature of the study, with its ability to compare the same people at different points in time, points provides a useful (and relatively rare) companion to experimental inquiries that typically focus on the short-term effects of engagement. Also of note is GUI’s robust sample size (nearly 20,000 subjects) covering a broad and representative cross-section of Ireland’s population. And while there may be some cultural specificity to studying an ethnically homogenous country like Ireland, that makes the consistency of the findings with studies of the value of arts and culture in other countries all the more striking.

What is Culture, Anyway?

Perhaps the most distinctive trait of the Arts Council report is its broad definition of cultural engagement. The analysis incorporates the common pastimes of reading, watching television, and engaging in screen time (including video games) on computers or mobile devices.

The results are telling. Of all included activities, reading gets the highest marks in terms of enhancing both cognition and wellbeing. The report notes that among younger children, “being read to frequently and having more access to books contributes to improved vocabulary.” Unsurprisingly, such children later take up reading on their own. For older kids, “self-directed reading contributes to cognitive development (in terms of both verbal and numeric skills) as well as to academic self-confidence [and] socio-economic wellbeing.” The report cites the country’s relatively high use of libraries and recommends them as places to promote cultural engagement.

In contrast, television viewing and computer screen time yield mixed results: watching more television is associated with improved vocabulary and better reading achievement – but also with greater socio-emotional difficulties. Similar findings emerge for computer screen time. Smyth concludes that television and screen time may “promote verbal skills but at the expense of poorer socio-emotional wellbeing and more negative attitudes to school.” (Interestingly, no attempt is made to single out social media, possibly because at the outset of the GUI study in 2006, it was not as prevalent as it is now.)

Meanwhile, participatory engagement with the arts – activities such as painting/drawing, music or other types of creative expression, and attending cultural events – correlate with improvement in both test scores and socio-emotional wellbeing. These trends are amplified as the subjects age. “Being involved in a structured cultural activity is associated with positive outcomes across all domains,” Smyth writes, “with higher achievement levels, academic self-confidence and happiness, and lower levels of anxiety and socio-emotional difficulties.” However, it’s worth noting that the magnitude of benefits of arts activities was quite a bit less than the positive impacts of reading for pleasure (for pre-teens) or being read to (for toddlers).

Disparities in Access

Which segments of the population actually enjoy the benefits of cultural participation? The data indicates disparities in youngsters’ cultural engagement along several dimensions:

• Income. Among younger children, “more advantaged families are more likely to read to their child, take them on educational visits and cultural outings, and encourage them to engage in creative play.” Older kids from advantaged families report higher participation in organized after-school activities (which often require payment).
• Gender. Girls engage more frequently than boys across several categories of arts and culture. E.g.: “Remarkable gender differences were evident in the prevalence of painting or drawing (67 percent of girls did so every day compared with 42 percent of boys) and in enjoying music or dance (73 percent compared with 46 percent doing so every day).”
• Population density. Living in an urban area facilitates greater access to some amenities such as cultural venues, libraries, and cinema houses. However, the report cites “no significant difference between urban and rural areas” for participatory activities like painting/drawing, reading, and taking lessons in music/dance/drama.
• Immigrant status. The report cites a “significant difference” between immigrant and native Irish children in involvement in cultural activities in and out of the home, relating this in part to language barriers.

Despite these societal disparities, there’s one place where varied demographic groups can simultaneously encounter arts and culture activities: in school.

The Great Equalizer?

The report reveals a clear correlation between school-based cultural programs and extracurricular participation, both in structured after-school activities and in reading for pleasure. This suggests cultural curricula can offset some of the disparities described above: “school may be the main point of access to arts and cultural activities for many students.”

This effect is apparent even after taking socioeconomic characteristics of individual students into account. Yet Smyth notes that interventions such as Ireland’s Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) program, which launched in 2005 to ensure exposure to the arts among disadvantaged students, have not completely corrected the imbalance among different social classes. “In spite of urban DEIS schools’ promotion of cultural activities,” she writes, “their students are much less likely than others to read for pleasure or to take music/drama lessons and are more likely to spend a lot of time watching television or playing computer games.” What is not clear from the report is whether disadvantaged schools with these programs promote higher levels of cultural engagement in their students than schools without the programs would.

All in all, “Arts and Cultural Participation” makes a solid case for the benefits of cultural engagement among young people across all demographics. It points to school-based cultural activities as one means of increasing children’s engagement with arts and culture, even if it’s not a panacea. But while what we traditionally think of as arts activities (painting, drawing, music, etc.) can lay claim to some of these benefits, the most striking finding of the report is the across-the-board value of reading for pleasure, both in early childhood and especially in adolescence. So to answer the question posed at the beginning, if you catch your 13-year-old deep into the latest volume of The Hunger Games, it’s occasion to celebrate.

“Story Time” by flickr user Alan Wat

Title: Arts and Cultural Participation among Children and Young People: Insights from the Growing up in Ireland Study

Author(s): Dr. Emer Smyth

Publisher: The Arts and Research Council of Ireland and The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)

Year: 2016

URL: http://www.artscouncil.ie/uploadedFiles/Arts-and-cultural-particiption-GUI.pdf

Topics: cultural engagement, television watching, cultural engagement in children, wellbeing, disparities of access, arts education

Methods: Longitudinal study, survey, participant interviews, descriptive analysis, multivariate analysis

What it says: The report from ESRI and the Arts Council of Ireland analyzes data from “Growing up in Ireland – the National Longitudinal Study of Children (GUI),” in order to address three research topics: 1) the likelihood of different groups of children to engage in cultural activities, 2) the influence of different schools’ emphasis on cultural activities on children’s cultural engagement out of school, and 3) the relationship between participation in cultural activities and other outcomes including academic skills and socio-emotional wellbeing.

The GUI is a longitudinal study performed on two cohorts of children. The first cohort of 11,134 were recruited at nine months, and then surveyed in two subsequent waves at 3 and 5 years of age (the report focuses on data from the second of the two waves). The second cohort of 8,568 children was recruited at 9 years old, with a follow-up study at 13 years old. At each time point, the study consisted of surveys and interviews with the children’s caregivers, tests of cognitive abilities and wellbeing, and surveys completed by the children’s school principals and teachers for the older cohorts. Data from all of the cohorts was re-weighted to ensure that is was representative of the population of children in Ireland.

The researchers analyzed a broad range of types of cultural engagement, including: being read to and self-directed reading, participation in drawing, painting, singing, and rhymes, participation in organized cultural activities such as drama or music, being taken to cultural events or on educational visits, and television watching and computer games. When researchers analyzed the distribution of cultural engagement among different groups, they found higher rates of engagement among children from more advantaged social backgrounds, and with higher levels of educational attainment by the mothers, to varying degrees. Children from highly educated and middle class families watched less television and had less screen time overall. The researchers also note the strong influence of gender on cultural engagement, with girls in multiple age groups participating at higher rates. In a couple of cases – including participation in singing, painting or drawing by three-year-olds and independent reading among nine-year-olds – gender had a greater influence on cultural participation than social background.

Researchers also analyzed the relationship between cultural participation and other outcomes for children. The researchers measured two sets of outcomes: cognitive development as measured by standardized tests and wellbeing as measured by the prevalence of socioeconomic difficulties. The analysis controlled for individual and family characteristics, the type of childcare at age 3, and whether the child had started school at 5, but there was no way to control for individual personalities or other characteristics of the children. However, the second set of data collected for each cohort (at 5 years and 13 years respectively) was analyzed in terms of change from the first set of measurements, which makes that data a more reliable estimate of the actual effects of cultural engagement. The most noticeable relationships between changes in various outcomes over time and cultural engagement were:

• Being read to frequently between the ages of 3 and 5 and having more access to books contributes to improved vocabulary at age five.
• Watching higher amounts of television between ages three and five is related to improved vocabulary but also greater socio-emotional difficulties at age five.
• Reading, painting and drawing, attending cultural events, and going on frequent educational visits are all related to decreases in socio-emotional difficulties.
• There is moderate improvement in tests on identifying picture similarities for children who are read to, who paint or draw, and who attend cultural events frequently at the age of five.
• Among older children, self-directed reading and taking part in structured cultural activities outside school time contribute to cognitive development (in terms of both verbal and numeric skills) as well as to academic self-confidence.
• Self-directed reading also contributes to socio-emotional wellbeing.
• Similar to patterns observed in the early years, watching higher amounts of television between the ages of 9 and 13 is related to improved verbal skills but at the expense of greater emotional difficulties.

The researchers also looked at data provided by the children’s school principals and teachers to assess the role of school-based cultural activities. The researchers found that, taking account of social background and other family characteristics, children attending schools with a strong cultural emphasis – measured as a combination of the relative importance of cultural activities to the school’s ethos and the amount of cultural extracurricular activities provided – were significantly more likely to be involved in structured cultural activities and frequent reading. They were also less likely to spend a lot of time watching television. Researchers also looked at differences across types of schools. Notably, Urban DEIS (or disadvantaged) schools were more likely to employ creative activities and play for younger children, and to provide music/dance and arts/crafts activities at the primary level – as well as musical instruments and dance at the second level because of programs and interventions aimed at those specific schools, designed to promote retention and school engagement. However, children at these schools are less likely to read for pleasure or take music and drama lessons and are more likely to spend lots of time watching television or playing computer games, meaning that these interventions are not enough to overcome the disparities of access to cultural activities observed based on social class.

What I think about it: The report makes excellent use of data from a larger study on child outcomes, which seems to have been collected with some study of cultural engagement in mind. While the role of some potential confounding variables like personality factors can’t be determined from the study design, the longitudinal nature of the study is a valuable companion to existing experimental studies that typically focus on the short-term effects of arts engagement. The analysis of participation data alongside individual and familial characteristics allows the researchers to identify disparities of access to cultural opportunities in the early years of life that are replicated across the lifespan. Finally, the school-based data points to the viability of one of the most common interventions to promote arts access and participation: arts education in schools.

The report showcases the importance of including cultural information within large-scale studies of this nature. It also points out interesting connections between cultural activities as traditionally defined and popular-culture diversions such as television watching, revealing the research benefits of considering cultural activities holistically among audiences of all ages.

What it all means: Within this study, reading unsurprisingly wins the day in terms of generating strong positive outcomes for children, but other forms of cultural participation also generate positive results. This study’s longitudinal design allows us to observe how incremental arts benefits add up throughout the actual lives of children over time. While not always dramatic or universal to every arts discipline, the long-term benefits measured in the study are quite apparent, especially in relation to social and emotional development in younger children and cognitive benefits in older children.

Interestingly, both reading and television watching are found to contribute to vocabulary-skills development for children. Yet watching high amounts of television (and spending high amounts of screen time) are associated with higher levels of socio-emotional difficulties. At the same time, arts activities including painting and drawing, attending cultural events, and educational visits correlate with fewer socio-emotional difficulties, which could point to arts engagement as a viable way to counteract negative socio-emotional effects from television watching for young children.

The analysis on disparities of access largely confirms trends researchers have observed in adults. The differences in engagement observed between genders raise interesting questions about how young boys might become more fully engaged in the arts. Finally, the data on schools is both encouraging and not. The study does suggest that emphasis on cultural activities at school can effect cultural engagement outside of school time. However, many programs designed to ensure that arts education activities are provided at disadvantaged schools in Ireland have not effectively overcome disparities of access to cultural activities (besides television). What is not clear from the report is whether disadvantaged schools with these programs promote higher levels of cultural engagement in their students than schools without the programs would. The author also makes note of widespread use of libraries by families with young children, and wonders if they may be a fruitful site for cultural engagement programs.

All of this together suggests that, in Ireland, the arts do indeed benefit children, though not more than reading does. And arts education in schools has a role to play in encouraging higher levels of arts engagement. Questions remain as to whether in-school arts education alone can level disparities of arts access based on socioeconomic status. The larger patterns revealed here are likely to be similar in other comparable societies, but further longitudinal studies in different locations would help to shed light on the long-terms benefits of the arts on individuals within a given society, and the benefits of interventions on the ground.

Methodology for Rating Evidence

We use the following definitions for placement on the graph and for describing benefits in the document.

Does the evidence indicate that the benefit exists?

• Yes: the majority of the available evidence supports the claim
• No: the majority of the available evidence opposes the claim
• Mixed: neither of the above conditions is true

How strong is the quality of the evidence?

• High: multiple studies with causal designs (experimental or quasi-experimental)
• Medium: a single study with a causal design, or multiple studies that otherwise make a compelling case for causal interpretation in the judgment of our team
• Low: neither of the above conditions is met

In cases where the supporting, mixed, and opposing evidence is of differing strength, the stronger evidence is given more weight in determining whether the evidence supports the claim.

In the body of the article, we use the qualifier “probably” to describe effects in the Yes/Medium cell of the matrix, “may” to describe effects in the Yes/Low, No/Low, and all Mixed cells of the matrix, “probably not” to describe effects in the No/Medium cell of the matrix, and “does not” to describe effects in the No/High cell of the matrix.

Note: in general, we support methodological diversity, and are not dogmatic about valuing “gold standard” study designs such as randomized controlled trials at the expense of all other types of research. However, in practice, studies with causal designs tend to be much rarer than descriptive and case-study-based research, and therefore more valuable due to their scarcity and the fact that they are typically more challenging to conduct. In addition, given that the questions explored in this review are inherently causal in nature – can we trust that an activity or intervention makes some kind of benefit more likely – it is appropriate to privilege designs that make a convincing attempt to rule out alternative hypotheses for any observed effects. Our rating of evidence strength takes these considerations into account.

Full Bibliography

Below is a full list of resources which informed this research investigation. Much of our research focused on literature reviews or meta-analyses, and we have included here works that were consulted directly, as well as resources that were encountered within a review and factored into our findings. Works that received a thorough review from Createquity are marked with an asterisk (*).

Arts Council England. (2006). The Power of Art. Visual arts: evidence of impact. Part 2. London. Retrieved from www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/ documents/publications/phpOCmaHq.pdf

Arts Council England. (2014). The Value of Arts and Culture to People and Society: An Evidence Review. Retrieved from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Value_arts_culture_evidence_review.pdf

Arts Midwest, & Metropolitan Group. (2015). Creating Connection: Research Findings and Proposed Message Framework to Build Public Will for Arts and Culture. Retrieved from http://www.artsmidwest.org/sites/default/files/ArtsMidwest_BPWReport.pdf

Asbury, C. H., & Rich, B. (2008). Learning, arts, and the brain: The dana consortium report on arts and cognition. Dana Press.

Bakhshi, H., Freeman, A., & Higgs, P.. (2013). Dynamic Mapping of The UK’s Creative Industries. NESTA. Retrieved from www.nesta. org.uk/publications/dynamic-mapping-uks-creative-industries

Baxter, C., Tyler, P., Moore, B., Morrison, N., McGaffin, R., & Otero-Garcia, M. (2005). Enterprising Places: Sustaining Competitive Locations for Knowledge-Based Business. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge–MIT Institute.

BOP Consulting. (2011). Edinburgh Festivals Impact Study. Final Report. London. Retrieved from www.eventscotland.org/ resources/downloads/get/56.pdf

*Brown, A. (2006). An Architecture of Value. GIA Reader, 17(1). Retrieved from http://www.giarts.org/article/architecture-value

Brown, E. D., & Sax, K. L. (2013). Arts enrichment and preschool emotions for low-income children at risk. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 28(2), 337–346.

Bygren, L. O., Johansson, S.-E., Konlaan, B. B., Grjibovski, A. M., Wilkinson, A. V., & Sjöström, M. (2009). Attending cultural events and cancer mortality: A Swedish cohort study. Arts & Health, 1(1), 64–73.

Carnwath, J. D., & Brown, A. S. (2014). Understanding the Value and Impacts of Cultural Experiences: A Literature Review. WolfBrown and Arts Council England. Retrieved from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/pdf/Understanding_the_value_and_impacts_of_cultural_experiences.pdf

CASE programme: understanding the drivers, impacts and value of engagement in culture and sport. (2010). Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/case-programme-understanding-the-drivers-impacts-and-value-of-engagement-in-culture-and-sport

CEBR. (2013). The contribution of the arts and culture to the national economy. London. Retrieved from www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/pdf/CEBR_economic_ report_web_version_0513.pdf

Clarke, E., DeNora, T., & Vuoskoski, J. (n.d.). Music, Empathy, and Cultural Understanding. 2014: Arts & Humanities Research Council.

Clawson, H. J., & Coolbaugh, K. (2001). The YouthARTS Development Project. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED454130

Clift, S, Hancox, G, Morrison, I, Hess, B, Stewart, D, & Kreutz, G. (2008). Choral Singing, Wellbeing and Health: Summary of Findings from a Cross-national Survey. Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health, Canterbury Christ Church University. Retrieved from https://www.canterbury. ac.uk/health-and-wellbeing/sidney-de-haan-research-centre/ documents/choral-singing-summary-report.pdf

Clift, S., Skingley, A., Coulton, S., & Rodriguez, J. (2012). A controlled evaluation of the health benefits of a participative community singing programme for older people (Silver Song Clubs). Sidney De Haan

*Crossick, G., & Kaszynska, P. (2016). Understanding the Value of Arts and Culture: The AHRC Cultural Value Project. United Kingdom: Arts & Humanities Research Council. Retrieved from http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/documents/publications/cultural-value-project-final-report/

Research Centre for Arts and Health, Canterbury Christ Church University, Folkestone, Kent, UK. Canterbury Christ Church University, Folkestone, Kent, UK: Retrieved from http://www. Ahsw. Org. uk/userfiles/Other_Resources/SSCRCTsummaryreportOct12. Pdf

Daykin, N., & Byrne, E. (2006). The impact of visual arts and design on the health and wellbeing of patients and staff in mental health care: A systematic review of the literature. University of the West of England.

Development Services Group, Inc. (2016). Arts-Based Programs and Arts Therapies for At-Risk, Justice-Involved, and Traumatized Youths. Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Retrieved from http://www.ojjdp.gov/mpg/litreviews/Arts-Based-Programs-for-Youth.pdf

Education Endowment Foundation. (2016). Hallé SHINE on Manchester: Evaluation report and executive summary. Retrieved from https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/our-work/projects/shine-on-manchester/

Everitt, A., Hamilton, R., & White, M. (2003). Arts, health and community: A study of five arts in community health projects. University of Durham.

Falck, O., Fritsch, M., & Heblich, S. (2011). The phantom of the opera: Cultural amenities, human capital, and regional economic growth. Labour Economics, 18(6), 755–766.

Feldman, A. F., & Matjasko, J. L. (2005). The Role of School-Based Extracurricular Activities in Adolescent Development: A Comprehensive Review and Future Directions. Review of Educational Research, 75(2), 159–210. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543075002159

Fujiwara, D. (2013). Museums and Happiness: The Value of Participating in Museums and the Arts (The Happy Museum). Retrieved from http://www.happymuseumproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Museums_and_happiness_DFujiwara_April2013.pdf

*Fujiwara, D., Kudrna, L., & Dolan, P. (2014a). Quantifying and Valuing the Wellbeing Impacts of Culture and Sport. Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/304899/Quantifying_and_valuing_the_wellbeing_impacts_of_sport_and_culture.pdf

*Fujiwara, D., Kudrna, L., & Dolan, P. (2014b). Quantifying the Social Impacts of Culture and Sport. Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/304896/Quantifying_the_Social_Impacts_of_Culture_and_Sport.pdf

Garrod, B. (2014). Investigating the role of Eisteddfodau in creating and transmitting cultural value in Wales and beyond. Arts & Humanities Research Council.

Gerry, D., Unrau, A., & Trainor, L. J. (2012). Active music classes in infancy enhance musical, communicative and social development: Active music classes enhance development. Developmental Science, 15(3), 398–407. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01142.x

Giordano, P. C., Cernkovich, S. A., & Rudolph, J. L. (2002). Gender, crime, and desistance: Toward a theory of cognitive transformation1. American Journal of Sociology, 107(4), 990–1064.

Graham, G., Chattopadhyay, S., & Lakhanpal, J.R. (2014). Using New Metrics to Assess the Role of the Arts in Well-Being: Some Initial Results from the Economics of Happiness. The Brookings Institute. Retrieved from https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/Brookings-Final-Report.pdf

Greene, J. P., Kisida, B., & Bowen, D. H. (2014). The educational value of field trips. Education Next, 14(1).

Grodach, C., Foster, N., & Murdoch III, J. (2014). Gentrification and the artistic dividend: the role of the arts in neighborhood change. Journal of the American Planning Association, 80(1), 21–35.

Grossi, E., Blessi, G. T., Sacco, P. L., & Buscema, M. (2012). The interaction between culture, health and psychological well-being: Data mining from the Italian culture and well-being project. Journal of Happiness Studies, 13(1), 129–148.

Guetzkow, J. (2002). How the Arts Impact Communities: An introduction to the literature on arts impact studies. Presented at the Taking the Measure of Culture Conference, Princeton University: Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. Retrieved from https://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/workpap/WP20%20-%20Guetzkow.pdf

Hacking, S., Secker, J., Spandler, H., Kent, L., & Shenton, J. (2008). Evaluating the impact of participatory art projects for people with mental health needs. Health & Social Care in the Community, 16(6), 638–648.

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Hervas-Olivier, J., & others. (2011). The Importance of Creative Industries Agglomerations in Explaining the Wealth of European Regions. DRUID. Retrieved from http://druid8.sit.aau.dk/acc_ papers/3u3ov4ld8gx1uvxa4pgddeivjeg5.pdf

Hesmondhalgh, D., & Pratt, A. (2005). Cultural industries

Hetland, L., & Winner, E. (2001). The arts and academic achievement: What the evidence shows. Arts Education Policy Review, 102(5), 3–6.

Holden, J. (2006). Cultural value and the crisis of legitimacy. Demos London.

Hyyppä, M. T., Mäki, J., Impivaara, O., & Aromaa, A. (2006). Leisure participation predicts survival: a population-based study in Finland. Health Promotion International, 21(1), 5–12.

Ings, R., Crane, N., & Cameron, M. (2012). Be Creative Be Well. Arts, wellbeing and local communities. An evaluation. London: Arts Council England. Retrieved from www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/pdf/BCBW_final.pdf

*Jackson, M. R., & Herranz, J. (2002). Culture Counts in Communities: A Framework for Measurement (Research Report). The Urban Institute. Retrieved from http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/310834_culture_counts.pdf

*Jackson, M. R., Kabwasa-Green, F., & Herranz, J. (2006). Cultural Vitality in Communities: Interpretation and Indicators. The Urban Institute. Retrieved from http://www.urban.org/projects/cultural-vitality-indicators/publications.cfm

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. (2010). Soul of the Community – Overall Findings. Retrieved from http://www.knightfoundation.org/sotc/

Jones, S. (2010). Culture shock. London: Demos.

Kattenstroth, J.C., Kalisch, T., Holt, S., Tegenthoff, M., & Dinse, H. R. (2013). Six months of dance intervention enhances postural, sensorimotor, and cognitive performance in elderly without affecting cardio-respiratory functions. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 5, 5.

Kay, A. (2000). Art and community development: the role the arts have in regenerating communities. Community Development Journal, 35(4), 414–424.

Kay, A., & Watt, G. (2000). The role of the arts in regeneration. Scottish Executive.

Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science, 342(6156), 377–380.

Konlaan, B. B., Bygren, L. O., & Johansson, S.-E. (2000). Visiting the cinema, concerts, museums or art exhibitions as determinant of survival: a Swedish fourteen-year cohort follow-up. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 28(3), 174–178.

Lambert, C. (2014). The Value of Live Art: experience, politics and affect. Arts & Humanities Research Council.

Lobo, Y. B., & Winsler, A. (2006). The effects of a creative dance and movement program on the social competence of head start preschoolers. Social Development, 15(3), 501–519.

Lowe, S. S. (2000). Creating community art for community development. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 29(3), 357–386.

Manchester, M, & Pett, E. (n.d.). Teenage Kicks: Exploring cultural value from a youth perspective. Arts & Humanities Research Council.

*Mark J. Stern. (2007). Culture and Urban Revitalization: A Harvest Document. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from https://www.reinvestment.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Culture_and_Urban_Revitalization_A_Harvest_Document-Report_2007.pdf

*Markusen, A., & Gadwa, A. (2010). Arts and culture in urban or regional planning: A review and research agenda. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 29(3), 379–391.

Martin, A. J., Mansour, M., Anderson, M., Gibson, R., Liem, A., & Sudmalis, D. (2013). The Role of Arts Participation in Students’ Academic and Nonacademic Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study of School, Home, and Community Factors. ResearchGate, 105(3), 709–727. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032795

*Matarasso, F. (1997). Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts. Comedia. Retrieved from http://www.feisean.org/wp-content/uploads/Use-or-Ornament.pdf

*McCarthy, K., Ondaatje, E., Zakaras, L., Brooks, A., & RAND. (2004). Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts. RAND. Retrieved from http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG218.pdf

McLean, J., Woodhouse, A., Goldie, I., Chylarova, E., & Williamson, T. (2011). An evidence review of the impact of participatory arts on older people. Edinburgh: Mental Health Foundation. http://baringfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/EvidenceReview.pdf Luettu, 16, 2013.

Medeiros, K. de, & Basting, A. (2014). “Shall I Compare Thee to a Dose of Donepezil?”: Cultural Arts Interventions in Dementia Care Research. The Gerontologist, 54(3), 344–353. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnt055

Medvedeva, M., Novak-Leonard, J., Brown, A,. (2011). Audience Impact Study: Literature Review. WolfBrown and the National Endowment for the Arts. Retrieved from http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/Audience-Impact-Study-Literature-Review.pdf

*Menzer, M. (2015). The Arts in Early Childhood: Social and Emotional Benefits of Participation. National Endowment for the Arts. Retrieved from https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/arts-in-early-childhood-dec2015-rev.pdf

Morley, E., & Winkler, M.K.. (2014). The Validating Arts & Livability Indicators (VALI) Study: Results and Recommendations. Urban Institute. Retrieved from http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/VALI-Report.pdf

*National Endowment for the Arts. (2012). How Art Works. Retrieved from http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/How-Art-Works_0.pdf

National Endowment for the Arts. (2013). The Arts and Aging: Building the Science.

Newman, M., Bird, K., Tripney, J., Kalra, N., Kwan, I., Bangpan, M., & Vigurs, C. (2010). Understanding the impact of engagement in culture and sport: A systematic review of the learning impacts for young people. Retrieved from http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/16334/1/Understanding_the_impacts_main_report.pdf

Nicolopoulou, A., Barbosa de Sá, A., Ilgaz, H., & Brockmeyer, C. (2009). Using the Transformative Power of Play to Educate Hearts and Minds: From Vygotsky to Vivian Paley and Beyond. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 17(1), 42–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749030903312512

Niemi, L. (2014). The Arts & Economic Vitality: relationships between the Arts, entrepreneurship, & innovation in the workplace (working paper). Washington, DC: NEA. Retrieved from http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/Research-Art-Works- BostonCollege.pdf

*Noice, T., Noice, H., & Kramer, A. F. (2013). Participatory Arts for Older Adults: A Review of Benefits and Challenges. The Gerontologist, gnt138. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnt138

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Petrie, K. J., Fontanilla, I., Thomas, M. G., Booth, R. J., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2004). Effect of written emotional expression on immune function in patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection: a randomized trial. Psychosomatic Medicine, 66(2), 272–275.

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Ritblatt, S., Longstreth, S., Hokoda, A., Cannon, B.-N., & Weston, J. (2013b). Can music enhance school-readiness socioemotional skills? Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 27(3), 257–266.

Roger Tym & Partners. (2011). Economic Impact of the Liverpool Arts Regeneration Consortium. Manchester. Retrieved from www.larc.uk.com/wp-content/ uploads/2011/10/LARC-Economic-Impact-Final-Report.pdf

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*Staricoff, R. L. (2004). Arts in health: a review of the medical literature. Arts Council England London. Retrieved from http://www.artsandhealth.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/AHReview-of-Medical-Literature1.pdf

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“Catalog” by Flickr user Beyond DC

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

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

• Participatory arts activities help to maintain the health and quality of life of older adults. As discussed in our previous feature, singing improves mental health and subjective wellbeing; taking dance classes bolsters cognition and motor skills; dancing and playing a musical instrument reduce the risk of dementia; and visual arts generate increases in self-esteem, psychological health, and social engagement.

• Arts therapies contribute to positive clinical outcomes, such as reduction in anxiety, stress, and pain for patients. Music interventions tend to dominate studies in this area, mostly characterized by passive forms of participation (e.g., listening to music).

• Arts participation in early childhood promotes social and emotional development. For example, teachers report fewer instances of shy, aggressive, and anxious behavior among preschoolers taking dance classes, and toddlers receiving music instruction demonstrate increased social cooperation with other children.

• Student participation in structured arts activities enhances cognitive abilities and social skills that support learning, such as memory, problem-solving, and communication. (While arts participation may improve academic attainment as well, any effects are fairly small.)

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

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

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

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

Feelin’ Good: Physical and Mental Health

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

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

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

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

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

From Jungle Gyms to Jobs: Education and Personal Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arts as Economic Engine, Sort of

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

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

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

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

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

Come Together: On the Arts and Social Cohesion

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

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

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

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

What It All Adds Up To

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

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

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

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