For all of the predictions flying back and forth about what 2013 holds for the arts and culture sector in the United States, one of the few things we can say with near-certainty is that 2013 will be a year of major transition for the Cultural Data Project (CDP). Our sector’s largest-scale effort to quantify andRead More
Solving the Underpants Gnomes Problem: Towards an Evidence-Based Arts Policy
Arts research is broken. Here’s how to fix it.
Our View of Creative Placemaking, Two Years In
The NEA opens up about its process for defining and evaluating creative placemaking projects and initiatives, positing that almost any successful creative placemaking project would make a difference to its community in at least one of four ways: strengthening the infrastructure that supports artists and arts organizations; increasing community attachment; improving quality of life; and/or driving local economies.
Fuzzy Concepts, Proxy Data: Why Indicators Won’t Track Creative Placemaking Success
One of creative placemaking’s original champions explains why she can’t get behind the field’s latest measurement efforts.
Science Doesn’t Have All the Answers: Should We Be Worried?
On October 1 the science section of the New York Times ran two articles next to each other. One of them describes a recent study that concluded young children at play display behaviors similar to those of scientists, suggesting scientific inquiry is driven by human instinct. The other refers to the alarming extent to whichRead More
Around the horn: Highly Efffective edition
IN THE FIELD RIP Artnet Magazine; more here. I will always be grateful to Artnet’s Ben Davis for being just about the only arts journalist worth his salt during the whole Yosi Sergant debacle. Congratulations to GiveWell, which has announced a not-quite-merger with Good Ventures, an emerging foundation led by Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz (the latter is one of theRead More
In Defense of Logic Models
They’re flexible, they’re transparent, and chances are, they’re already in your head.
Around the horn: It Gets Better edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT Weird, the very day that the Huffington Post published my “debate” with Carla Escoda about arts funding, the New York Times published a “Room for Debate” feature on a very similar topic. Something in the water? Anyway, Sean Bowie has a nice summary if you don’t have time to read all eight entries. TheRead More
Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem
Federal policymakers and private philanthropists are spending millions of dollars on creative placemaking without having developed a clear and detailed theory of how it works.
Public Art and the Challenge of Evaluation
The impact of public art seems harder to measure than almost anything else imaginable. Some have tried anyway. Here’s what they came up with.