from the United Nations: “UNMISS and Partners Conduct Human Rights Community Awareness Programmme”

Title: Understanding the Contributions of the Humanities to Human Development: A Methodological White Paper

Author(s): Danielle Allen, Chris Dean, Maggie Schein, Sheena Kang, Melanie Webb, Annie Walton Doyle

Publisher: Harvard University

Year: 2016

URL: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/HULAWhitepaper.pdf

Topics: humanities, education, impact evaluations, assessment tools, evaluation as assessment

Methods: assuming/defining theoretical concepts about education, coding the learning pathways of the humanities, and then correlating the “logic” of the learning pathways with comparable logical constructs from the study of psychology

What it says: In this white paper, the Humanities and Liberal Arts Assessment (HULA) group at Harvard University proposes a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding and assessing the contributions of the humanities to human development, based on preliminary analysis of qualitative materials from partner organizations and other researchers.* The theoretical framework builds upon two different concepts about education: 1) education as a system of institutions, which is maintained by the state to serve utilitarian purposes (such as cultivating civic service or civic responsibility); and 2) education as individual acts of instruction, which relates to personal development. The practice of humanities is then likened to the practice of “crafts” that help advance education and contribute to human development. The methodological framework treats the humanities as “crafts” that follow certain “craft logics” (pathways by which the craft is practiced, towards the achievement of the goals of the craft). The main idea is that if each humanities practice could be broken down according to categorical logics of its practice, then each tool used and each step of progress achieved in undertaking the practice could be coded in a standardized way to help researchers assess its utility or value.

What I think about it: As a layman, I found the presentation of the language and construction of the HULA methodology too abstract and too academic, which could harm its mass adoption. The definitions and applications of the methodology need to be greatly simplified for the value of the concept to shine through. I am not entirely convinced that it is necessary to make so many parallel comparisons (humanities as “crafts,” each craft as an “artifact,” manner and purpose of humanities practices according to “craft logics,” each logic pathway translated from some comparable construct in psychology) as it could be more effective to simply make a strong case that every practice of the humanities could be coded according to certain logics, and define these logics in an easy-to-understand code book of sorts. I proposed a simplified summary of the main idea above, which could be a good place to start unpacking some of these concepts in a way that even non-experts like me can better understand and then adopt.

What it all means: HULA argues that gathering, coding and analyzing humanities as “crafts” that follow “craft logic” can help us break down the elements that make up a craft, order the elements in a logical developmental pathway, and ultimately understand how humanities practices lead to the achievement of particular educational or human development outcomes. Assumptions are made about each humanities practice in terms of the elements it comprises, how it works, what it is trying to achieve, and which skills it develops – and the effect or effectiveness of each of these components are then coded categorically. Applying the HULA methodology according to the proposed definitions and categorizations requires that the user is familiar with or can easily understand concepts that are rather academic and often abstract, which may ultimately limit its adoption by the wider public.

* It is unclear from this white paper how many partner organizations have been consulted, although the paper did explicitly note that the study sample included at least a “30-year archive of successful grant applications to the Illinois Humanities Council.”

New Sources Reviewed: Arts and Economic Disadvantage (March-April 2015)

Hill, T. (2009). Time Use, Gender and Disadvantage in Australia: Conventional Income and “Full Income” Approaches to Estimation. Economic and Labour Relations Review, 20(1), 13–33. Retrieved from http://elr.sagepub.com/content/20/1/13.abstract

Katz, J. (2015, January 6). How Nonemployed Americans Spend Their Weekdays: Men vs. Women. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/06/upshot/how-nonemployed-americans-spend-their-weekdays-men-vs-women.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

Novak-Leonard, J., & Brown, A. (2011). Beyond Attendance: A Multi-Modal Understanding of Arts Participation (Research Report No. 54). National Endowment for the Arts. Retrieved from http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/2008-SPPA-BeyondAttendance.pdf

Silber, B., & Triplett, T. (2015). A Decade of Arts Engagement: Findings from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 2002–2012 (No. 58). National Endowment for the Arts. Retrieved from http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/2012-sppa-jan2015-rev.pdf

Why is Everyone So Busy? (2014, December 20). The Economist. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-time-poverty-problem-partly-perception-and-partly-distribution-why

Deeper Dives: Arts and Economic Disadvantage (March-April 2015)

Goodin, R. E., Mahmud Rice, J., Bittman, M., & Saunders, P. (2005). The Time- Pressure Illusion: Discretionary Time vs. Free Time. Social Indicators Research, 73(1), 43–70. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27522213

Hamermesh, Daniel and Jungmin Lee. 2007. “Stressed out on Four Continents: Time Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch?” 89(1):374–83. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40043067

Robinson, J. P., & Godbey, G. (2005). Busyness as Usual. Social Research, 72(2), 407–426. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40971771

Robinson, J. P., & Martin, S. (2009). Changes in American Daily Life: 1965-2005. Social Indicators Research, 93(1), 47–56. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27734894

Sevilla, A., Gimenez-Nadal, J., & Gershuny, J. (2012). Leisure Inequality in the United States: 1965-2003. Demography, 49(3), 939–964. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23252678

Meanwhile, we have a Createquity Labs research project that has been ongoing since December that is taking a look at the role of the arts in quality of life/wellbeing. We are preparing another feature article to share findings from this investigation. While this Labs project, being exploratory in nature, is not seeking to test formal hypotheses, it has been guided by the following research questions:

1. How is quality of life defined? How is it measured?
2. How do the arts contribute to quality of life?
3. Where is the strongest overlap between core benefits of the arts and core components of quality of life?

(Note that while we started out using the “quality of life” terminology, our research soon led us to discover the literature on wellbeing which we have since incorporated into this work and adopted as the main frame.) Below are the sources we’ve reviewed thus far for the arts and wellbeing investigation:

Sources Reviewed: Arts and Wellbeing (December 2014-April 2015)

Alkire, S. (2008). The Capability Approach to the Quality of Life. Retrieved from http://www.commission-stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/capability_approach.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/media/uploads/pdf/The-value-of-arts-and-culture-to-people-and-society-An-evidence-review-TWO.pdf

Canadian Index of Wellbeing. (2012). How are Canadians Really Doing? 2012 CIW Report. Waterloo, ON: Canadian Index of Wellbeing and University of Waterloo. Retrieved from https://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-wellbeing/sites/ca.canadian-index-wellbeing/files/uploads/files/CIW2012-HowAreCanadiansReallyDoing-23Oct2012_0.pdf

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

Chancel, L. (2014). Beyond GDP indicators: To what end? Retrieved from http://oecdinsights.org/2014/11/25/7388/

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

Fujiwara, D., Kudrna, L., & Dolan, P. (2014). 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. Scotland 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

Hagerty, M. R., Cummins, R., Ferriss, A. L., Land, K., Michalos, A. C., Peterson, M., … Vogel, J. (2001). Quality of Life Indexes for National Policy: Review and Agenda for Research. Bulletin de Methodologie Sociologique, 71(1), 58–78. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1177/075910630107100104

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/research/publication/cultural-vitality-communities-interpretation-and-indicators

Jones, S. (2010). Culture Shock. London: Demos. Retrieved from http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Culture_shock_-_web.pdf?1286815564

The Lottery of Life. (2012). The Economist. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/news/21566430-where-be-born-2013-lottery-life

The Lottery of Life Methodology. (2012). The Economist. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/news/21567049-how-we-calculated-life-satisfaction-lottery-life-methodology

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

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

Michalos, A.C., Smale, B., Labonté, R., Muharjarine, N., Scott, K., Moore, K., … Hyman, I. (2011). The Canadian Index of Wellbeing. Technical Report 1.0. Waterloo, ON: Canadian Index of Wellbeing and University of Waterloo. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/canadianindexofwellbeingtechnicalpaper.pdf

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

OECD. (2013). How’s Life? 2013. OECD Publishing. Retrieved from http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2013_9789264201392-en

OECD. (2014). Society at a Glance 2014. OECD Publishing. Retrieved from http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/society-at-a-glance-2014_soc_glance-2014-en

OECD Better Life Index. (n.d.). Retrieved January 24, 2015, from http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/

Prescott-Allen, R. (2001). The Wellbeing of Nations: A Country-By-Country Index of Quality of Life and the Environment (1 edition). Washington, DC: Island Press.

Scottish Government, S. A. H. (2006). Quality of Life and Well-being: Measuring the Benefits of Culture and Sport: Literature Review and Thinkpiece [Research Publications]. Retrieved from http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/01/13110743/0

Sen, A. (2004). How does culture matter?’. In V. Rao & M. Walton (Eds.), Culture and Public Action. Stanford UP. Retrieved from http://www.studentsofferingsupport.ca/portal/OutreachProjects/PreDepReadings/A1_How%20does%20culture%20matter_.pdf

Social Progress Index – Methodology. (2014). Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/data/spi/methodology

Stern, M. J., & Seifert, S.C. (2013). Cultural Ecology, Neighborhood Vitality, and Social Wellbeing – A Philadelphia Project. University of Pennsylvania Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP). Retrieved from http://arts.gov/exploring-our-town/sites/arts.gov.exploring-our-town/files/SIAP%20CULTUREBLOCKS%20REPORT%20DEC2013%20V1.pdf

Stiglitz, J. E., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J.P. (2009). Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. Retrieved from http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf

Stone, A. & Mackie, C., eds. Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18548/subjective-well-being-measuring-happiness-suffering-and-other-dimensions-of

Tepper, S. (2014). Artful Living: Examining the Relationship Between Artistic Practice and Subjective Wellbeing Across Three National Surveys. The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. Retrieved from http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/Research-Art-Works-Vanderbilt.pdf

Topos Partnership for the Fine Arts Fund. (2010). The Arts Ripple Effect: A Research-Based Strategy to Build Shared Responsibility for the Arts. Retrieved from http://www.theartswave.org/docs/default-source/Research-Reports/the-arts-ripple-effect-report-january-2010.pdf?sfvrsn=0

United Nations Development Programme. (n.d.). Human Development Index (HDI). Retrieved January 23, 2015, from http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi

United Nations Development Programme. (n.d.). Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). Retrieved January 23, 2015, from http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/inequality-adjusted-human-development-index-ihdi

Ura, K., Alkire, S., Zangmo, T., Wangdi, K. (2012). A Short Guide to Gross National Happiness. (n.d.). Thimphu, Bhutan: Centre for Bhutan Studies. Retrieved January 23, 2015, from http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/

Urban Institute. (2014). The Validating Arts & Livability Indicators (VALI) Study: Results and Recommendations. Retrieved January 23, 2015, from http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/VALI-Report.pdf

Yang, L. (2014). An Inventory of Composite Measures of Human Progress | Human Development Reports. UNDP Human Development Report Office. Retrieved from http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/inventory-composite-measures-human-progress

We look forward to sharing our initial insights from these investigations soon. As always, if you are familiar with any of these sources and/or know of additional research that you think may be pertinent to our work, we welcome your thoughts in the comments. We would like to thank Kiley Arroyo, Sunil Iyengar, Sharon Stout, and Sarah Wilbur for pointing us in the direction of resources on the above lists.

For those of you in or visiting New York City, I’m presenting at two events on consecutive Tuesday evenings at 6:30pm, both sponsored or co-sponsored by Emerging Leaders of New York Arts (ELNYA), the local Americans for the Arts-affiliated emerging leader network here. This Tuesday, I’ll be on what looks like a pretty awesome panel with The Art Newspaper’s Andras Szanto and Alliance for the Arts’s Randy Bourscheidt to talk about defining impact in the arts and the implications of that conversation for arts funding. The panel will be moderated by Bolder Giving’s Jason Franklin and is presented in coordination with NYU Wagner’s excellent Student Network Exploring Arts and Culture (SNEAC). Here’s the link for more info.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 5, 6:30pm
WHERE: NYU Wagner Rudin Family Forum, The Puck Building, 295 Lafayette Street, Manhattan
HOW: Free event.  RSVP here.

Then, on October 12, I’ll be back with a Pecha Kucha-style mini-presentation on cultural mapping and related topics as part of “Four Topics in Search of a Dialogue” at the Salt Space in Chelsea. Fellow presenters include my sometime coworker and ELNYA dynamo Selena Juneau-Vogel, Marit Drewhurst, and Jose Serrano-Reyes. Further details here.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 12, 6:30pm
WHERE: The Salt Space, Salt Space, 1158 Broadway, (5th Floor, enter at 27th Street), Manhattan
REGISTER: $5 suggested cash donation at the door.  Please register here.

Hope to see you at one or both! And if you’re not in New York, there are other Creative Conversations happening all around the country this month. Go here to find out if there’s one near you.

My Favorite Thing That Is Getting as Much Money (50 Million Dollars) as The National Endowment for the Arts in H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Monument and memorial repairs in national cemeteries

[snip]

My Favorite Thing That Is Getting Twenty Times as Much Money as The National Endowment for the Arts in H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Expenses necessary for the manufacturing of advanced batteries

For veterans of the creative industries older than me, this week is no doubt invoking some unpleasant memories. The 1990s brought a firestorm of criticism from cultural conservatives upon the NEA, culminating with the loss of 40% of its funding in 1996 and a lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Yet in the decade since, a lot of conversation has taken place around the arts’ unique value to society. Beginning with Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class and continuing with research into cognitive effects of arts learning and the RAND Corporation’s articulation of intrinsic and instrumental benefits of the arts, suddenly the arts no longer seemed the uninvited guest at the intellectual cocktail party. Perhaps no argument has gained as much steam as that of the creative economy: the idea that the arts and allied for-profit industries play an essential, even central, role in the 21st-century business paradigm. Certainly, it’s the most compelling case for this particular moment. As Ben Adler writes in The Atlantic:

In their search to find programs upon which to rest the complaint that the stimulus bill is too generous, some conservatives have seized upon one of their favorite whipping boys: the arts. “Even [House Republicans] can’t quite believe it… $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts,” declared Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana).

Pence intended to be ironic about the NEA’s role as an engine of economic activity. But he could have been sincere, since his comments were right on the money. Arts are actually a great form of economic investment, particularly public art, and they should be amply funded in the stimulus package. Every year nonprofit arts organizations generate $166.2 billion in economic activity, support 5.7 million jobs, and send almost $30 billion back to government, according to Americans for the Arts. There is hardly a person more likely to go out and spend her stimulus check than a starving artist.

I participated in a discussion on Daily Kos this morning that gave me pause. Even at this liberal bastion of opinion, there were one or two posters who were skeptical about the need for the arts to be included in the stimulus package. When pressed on this point, one of these asked straight up, “what is the economic multiplier associated with the arts?” I had to concede that I didn’t know. For all the pretty numbers in the Americans for the Arts economic prosperity reports, they don’t really tell us all that much beyond the fact that the arts are a big deal. Sure, they induce local spending, but how do we know that other industries wouldn’t do the same? How much of people’s spending on the arts is new spending, and how much is simply money that would be spent on something else if the arts weren’t there?

Arlene Goldbard has received some attention recently for her two-part essay The New New Deal on the Community Arts Network. After offering a number of interesting policy suggestions that would collectively cost a hell of a lot more than $50 million, she advises, “If we succeed in getting a real dialogue started about public cultural policy, it will be because we’ve enlarged the conversation beyond special-interest pleading, one among many weaknesses that have limited the effectiveness of mainstream arts advocacy….We need to make a strong argument for cultural democracy and community cultural development, using multiple realms of knowledge to show how this work advances essential public policy goals.” Goldbard cites nine “powerful” arguments in favor of government support of the arts, as follows (arguments elaborated upon in linked document):

1. Things are changing in a way that elevates culture’s role.

2. Community arts contribute powerfully to community development; they are essential to success in remaking damaged communities.

3. For our brains to serve the future, we must develop our creative imagination and empathic capacities through arts participation.

4. Culture is the balm that can begin to heal social injury, allowing us to face each other across every barrier that creates distance and objectification.

5. Cultural action promotes social inclusion, an essential public aim in a period of vast migrations.

6. Cultural action creates the container that enables people to face each other and enter into dialogue even about the most polarized, heated issues.

7. Marketplace culture, dominated by the commercial cultural industries, is skewed in ways that counter democratic cultural values; the public interest can bring balance.

8. Cultural participation is intrinsically pleasurable and inviting, creating a low threshold for civic involvement.

9. Arts participation develops our capacity to envision, dream and shape the future we desire.

Here’s the thing: all of these statements may, in fact, be true. As an artist myself, I am predisposed to think that they are true, and some of my own experiences match with these claims. However, my anecdotal impressions, even combined with others’ similar and similarly subjective opinions, does not a sound public policy make. While it’s hard to evaluate a claim like “Things are changing in a way that elevates culture’s role,” some of these ideas do in fact lend themselves to empirical study. Take #2 for example. There’s already a bunch of great work at the University of Pennsylvania on the arts and community revitalization [ed.–which Goldbard links to at the the bottom of her essay]; we need more of this research to establish causality and understand the effects with more granularity. Or #8 – cultural participation creates a low threshold for civic involvement. Well, does it? Are arts participants more likely to be civically involved in other ways besides attendance at arts events? And if so, which comes first? Or how about the social injury question, #4? Let’s make a list of major cultural schisms around the world involving large distinct populations that have resolved themselves positively in the past 20-30 years, and try to determine the role or lack thereof that the arts played in each case. Bonus points if said role involved government expenditures on arts organizations and infrastructure rather than individual artists working on their own or through the commercial entertainment/media industry.

A daunting task, to be sure. But I would argue that the key to changing the conversation about the arts does not lie in finding new talking points that are, at their core, based on the same old assumptions. The key lies in finding and generating data to back up (or disprove) those assumptions that we have all been using. And not just superficial counting measures, but rich, intelligent data — data that looks at the quality of arts experiences in addition to the quantity, data that considers creativity in all its forms rather than that housed in one corner of our tax code, data that compares the arts with potential substitutes, alternatives, and complements. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t come up with some hard facts with which to confront the skeptics, we’re never going to escape this eternal he-said (the arts are great) she-said (the arts are cesspools of immorality) conversation.