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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“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.

“Sculpture by Ron Mueck – Two Women 2005” by flickr user Lance

Title: Participatory Arts for Older Adults: A Review of Benefits and Challenges

Author(s): Tony Noice, Helga Noice, and Arthur F. Kramer

Publisher: The Gerontologist, 54(5)

Year: 2013

URL: http://gerontologist.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/10/geront.gnt138.full.pdf+html

Topics: Arts participation, older adults, creative aging, quality of life, health benefits, cognition

Methods: Literature review

What it says: This article reviews literature on the health benefits of active arts participation among older adults ages 60 and older in good general health. Arts activities include dance, expressive writing, music (singing and instrumental), theater, and visual arts. The review included a combination of 31 experimental and correlational studies conducted between 1985 and 2013. The following were excluded: case studies; studies with small sample sizes (n < 8); reports in non-peer-reviewed journals; articles not written in English; and studies focusing on arts therapies to treat those with illness, trauma, or other life challenges.

Overall, the studies demonstrate positive cognitive, affective, and quality-of-life outcomes. The review categorizes findings based on art forms

• A number of dance studies using quasi-experimental designs demonstrated cognitive and physiological improvements (e.g., increased attentional control). Dancers also scored higher on self-assessments of general health and subjective wellbeing compared to control groups. One of the studies suggests that cognitive benefits might be attributed to dance’s aesthetic qualities, rather than aerobic exercise, as no significant improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness among study groups (dancers and non-dancers alike) was observed.
• Studies related to expressive writing include evidence of improved processing, speed, attention, verbal learning, and memory, although this may be moderated by participants’ educational level and interest in writing. One study revealed psychological benefits, indicated by improvements of scores on a standard depression scale. The authors note that studies involving expressing writing were the only ones where a professional artist was not involved. This is a notable distinction because it may 1) point to why effects were likely moderated by participants’ level of educational attainment, or existing interest in writing, and 2) shed light on the value of formal arts instruction, which is likelier to draw sustained engagement (and produce substantive effects) than one-off attendance at events or other modes of passive engagement in the arts.
• Music-related studies produced a wide variety of results. For singing, there were self-reported decreases in doctor visits, falls, and use of over-the-counter medicine, decreases on a standard depression/anxiety scale, as well as improvements in overall health and involvement in activities and statistically significant improvements in emotional wellbeing, quality of life, and knowledge of singing;increases in self confidence were marginally significant. As for playing a musical instrument, results include: decreased levels of anxiety and depression, increases in the human growth hormone (associated with higher energy and improved memory and sex function), significant improvements in cognitive processes, and perceived favorable effects on health, and to a lesser extent, on social relationships and personal development. In some cases, positive outcomes did not persist over the longer term following music participation,unless, instrumentalists had trained or practiced over an extended period of their lives.
• Theater studies produced positive evidence, mostly related to increases in memory, comprehension, creativity, problem-solving, and personal growth. A study on improvisational drama yielded positive changes in anxiety, and another demonstrated improvements in wellbeing and physical measures, but not psychological health.
• Lastly, visual arts studies using qualitative methods revealed increases in social engagement, sense of empowerment, psychological health, skills development, ability to set new challenges, and identity preservation. One study using a randomized controlled trial yielded positive outcomes measures for anxiety, affect, and self-esteem.

The authors acknowledge the limitations of the research: the total number of studies reviewed is relatively small; a variety of instruments were used to measure change; and not all experiments were well controlled. To improve consistency across future research, they propose standardizing measures, vocabulary, and behavioral outcomes to assess effectiveness of interventions across art forms. They also recommend consistent use of pre/post design, and including control groups, where appropriate, as well as pursuing more meaningful sample sizes, more diverse populations, and longitudinal studies that measure effects over a long period of time.

What I think about it: The review offers a useful overview of health benefits associated with older adults’ arts participation. Some of the claims that were summarized had no indication of statistical significance, which may be a result of authors’ attempt to succinctly summarize findings from studies that used a wide variety of research designs. Nonetheless, the summary chart prepared by the authors is useful in showing the breadth of methods, sample sizes, and outcome measures used across arts interventions among older adults.

What it all means: Noice, Noice, and Kramer’s review was published the same year that NEA released The Arts and Aging: Building the Science, a report summarizing findings from its public workshop exploring research gaps and opportunities for understanding the relationship between the arts and health and wellbeing among older adults. A preliminary version of this review was prepared as a paper for the workshop, so this is a useful, evidence-based supplement to the mostly anecdotal findings in the NEA’s summary. The two combined – in addition to the NEA’s 2011 white paper on the arts and human development, which has a chapter on arts, health and wellbeing among older adults – show that there is growing momentum in the field of creative aging. The health focus and population specificity of this field offers a unique opportunity to lay the groundwork for developing more rigorous research designs for arts inventions broadly. In doing so, researchers can begin to identify the specific benefits of aesthetic engagement. In addition, researchers and advocates can use this evidence to gain support not only from public arts agencies, but also from non-arts agencies serving aging populations.

• Singing improves mental health and subjective wellbeing (i.e., perceived quality of life)
• Taking dance classes bolsters cognition and motor skills, and even lessens the likelihood of developing dementia later in life
• Playing a musical instrument has myriad positive effects, including dementia risk reduction
• Visual arts practice generates increases in social engagement, psychological health and self-esteem

Just how the arts benefit society is one of the most studied topics in arts research, to the extent that multiple literature reviews, most notably the RAND Corporation’s decade-old landmark Gifts of the Muse, have sought to compile our collective knowledge on the subject. In recent years, several important initiatives and publications have added to this evidence base, including the final report earlier this year from the UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project and National Endowment for the Arts’s 2011 literature review on the arts and human development. Over the past few months, Createquity has been reviewing these and other publications with an eye toward creating a continually-updated catalogue of demonstrated impacts for arts activities. What are all of the ways in which the arts contribute to or detract from wellbeing, and how strong is the evidence supporting each of those claims?

Our review of the literature addressing these questions yielded a surprising result: the most compelling evidence of the value of the arts revolves around improving the lives of older adults. Better understanding the relationship between the arts and aging may help to identify areas for improvement in future research into wellbeing, as well as opportunities for investing in the quality of life of older individuals.

Painter — photo by Flickr user M-n-M

The global population is aging in unprecedented numbers and living longer than ever. Between 1980 and 2010, a period marking most of millennials’ present lifetimes, the number of U.S. centenarians increased by nearly two-thirds! Longer lifespans bring immediate implications for many and eventual implications for us all, if we’re lucky. While extending the so-called golden years can be a blessing, challenges include deteriorating health, social isolation, loss of loved ones, and life transitions.

Fortunately, research shows that arts-related interventions can help (in some cases, more so than traditional Western medicine). In particular, there is substantial causal evidence that participatory arts activities help to maintain the health and quality of life of older adults. These benefits, detailed below, include improvements in cognitive and tactile abilities, subjective wellbeing, and dementia risk reduction (although the effects on managing dementia are less clear).

Jamming and Grooving Towards Better Health

The literature on the effects of participatory arts engagement within aging populations is significant not only for the breadth of demonstrated benefits to older adults, but also the relatively high quality of evidence supporting these claims.

Most of the literature we encountered involved making music, although a number were focused on dance. Music and movement activities (playing instruments, singing, dancing) have been shown to improve mental and physical health among older adults. In a randomized controlled trial of 212 British adults over the age of 60, those who participated in weekly singing groups over three months were found to have had improved mental health (decreased anxiety and depression) compared to those who didn’t. These health effects were mostly sustained over a period of at least three months after the weekly singing ended. By contrast, the positive effects of instrument playing do not always persist over the longer term following participation, unless participants have trained or practiced over an extended period of their lives. This might explain why lifelong engagement with music, particularly playing an instrument, is correlated with improved memory among older adults ─ and why some older musicians, like Herbie Hancock at a solid 76, still perform with as much gusto now as they did in their prime. Despite a smaller sample size, another randomized controlled trial of 35 adults aged 60 and over suggested health benefits of dance for older adults. Those who took weekly dance classes over a six-month period showed improved cognition and attention, posture and balance, and hand/motor skills like steadiness and aim in comparison to the control group.

Other research points to the role of the arts in improving overall quality of life for older adults more generally, such as attitudes toward social life. For example, an evaluation of a different, yearlong weekly singing program for adults aged 60 and over revealed marked improvements in emotional wellbeing, especially for those who had been widowed. A mixed-methods study of the effects of painting lessons among older adults in the same age range documented similar improvements in both mental health and social wellbeing. After having participated in these professionally conducted lessons, participants noted increases in social engagement, their sense of belonging, and self awareness and understanding. Likewise, a randomized controlled trial of 50 older adults who participated in 12 visual art sessions over a month showed improvements in self-esteem and anxiety reduction. No wonder your grandmother was always in a good mood after watercoloring class, treating you to ice cream when you picked her up!

Doses of Art to Stay Lucid?

Every 66 seconds, an American develops Alzheimer’s disease. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and kills more people than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. As the population ages, millions will be affected: the number of Americans with the disease will double between 2015 and 2050. With soaring diagnoses come soaring costs ─ financial, emotional, and social ─ for patients and their caregivers. Establishment of accessible and cost-effective methods of delaying Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia-related illnesses is crucial.

A 21-year longitudinal study of 469 older adults aged 75 and over published in 2003 found that playing an instrument, reading, and playing board games were strongly associated with lower incidence of dementia. In fact, those who scored in the highest third on the study’s cognitive-activity scale had a 63 percent lower risk of dementia than those in the lowest third. Dancing was the only physical activity to show similar effects.

Arts engagement also seems to benefit older adults who already have dementia, providing improved communication, cognitive function, self-esteem and social participation. TimeSlips, a creative storytelling program for people with dementia, appears to promote engagement, alertness and social interaction among participating adults, as well as improved attitudes among caregivers towards their patients. On the other hand, a 2013 report from the National Endowment for the Arts cites a review of 24 studies that presents a more mixed picture of the evidence, with music interventions leading to both positive and negative outcomes for individuals in severe stages of dementia-related illness. It’s also important to note that methodological challenges abound in this area of research, including confounding external factors related to social context, interrelated variables, and inconsistent outcome measures, all of which makes drawing firm conclusions difficult.

In fact, a separate literature review by Tony Noice et al. notes similar shortcomings in a broader set of research on participatory arts for older adults. As a general rule, research on the benefits of the arts lags behind the level of rigor frequently encountered in the broader universe of scientific research. So while the evidence described above is quite strong by arts research standards, it nevertheless has limitations. Other opportunities for improvement, according to Noice et al., include introducing more standardized assessment of interventions across art forms and measuring effects over a longer period of time. Though the work to date has been promising, until studies on the effectiveness of arts interventions for older adults more consistently meet rigorous standards, their ability to shape perception of the value of such programs will remain limited.

Music has powers — photo by Flickr user Jinx McCombs

As mentioned earlier, we discovered this wealth of literature on arts and aging as part of a larger inquiry into the benefits of the arts in general. That inquiry, in turn, extends a longer-term initiative on Createquity’s part to reconcile the benefits of arts and culture with broader theories of wellbeing (or quality of life), such as the capability approach. Our next article will explore some of the other areas of benefit that have been claimed for arts participation, along with an assessment of the evidence backing up those claims.

In the meantime, rest assured knowing the older people in your life who participate in the arts are not just pursuing a silly pastime. For some, it might just be the key to a worry-free life or a still-taut mind ─ all the more reason to encourage them to channel their inner Aretha, Baryshnikov, or Picasso.

Ukulélé — photo by flickr user oh_debby

In a perfect world, who should have access to the arts? Among artists, arts administrators, and arts educators the answer is likely to be unanimous: “Everyone!” And yet for the most part, that conviction is based on little more than gut instinct and personal experience. Do we actually have any evidence that people are happier with their lives for having art in it?

Those of you who read Createquity’s recent article on television and wellbeing might have noticed an interesting tidbit: according to our analysis of data from the 2012 General Social Survey, there is no relationship between having attended an exhibit or performance in the past year and one’s satisfaction with life, after controlling for factors such as health and income. Left unexplored by that analysis, however, was the question of more active forms of participation – i.e., creation and performance. Enter “Artful Living,” a recent paper from Vanderbilt University’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. Not only does the 2014 study reveal a positive correlation between several forms of active participation and life satisfaction (which some scientists refer to as “subjective wellbeing”), it finds that some forms of art increase people’s wellbeing more than others, and that the arts improve some people’s lives more noticeably than others, too.

In “Artful Living,” Steven Tepper and his team examine the relationship between several creative pastimes and subjective wellbeing, and compare findings across demographic groups. The authors focus specifically on “artistic practice” (including activities such as playing a musical instrument and craft-making), rather than more passive forms of arts participation, such as attendance and reception.

Drawing on data from three national surveys, the researchers find a generally positive relationship between maintaining an artistic practice and various measures of subjective wellbeing. For instance, using a dataset of over 20,000 responses to the DDB Needham Life Style Survey of consumer attitudes in the U.S., the authors find that all three of the artistic practices examined (playing a musical instrument, gardening, and craft-making) are all positively associated with life satisfaction. Moreover, life satisfaction increases with greater frequency of participation in any of these activities. While the relationships are positive across the board, there are considerable differences between those three practices: the wellbeing gains associated with playing an instrument are almost twice as large as those for craft-making.

Besides the differences across artistic practices, the researchers observe that these positive correlations are more pronounced among women and people of color than their male and white counterparts. The relationships are particularly strong for women engaged in craft-making and gardening and people of color who either play an instrument or garden. The authors theorize that this might be attributed to certain benefits of artistic practice like self-expression and a greater sense of personal control and efficacy, which might be particularly helpful for improving the wellbeing of historically marginalized groups.

In addition to the DDB data, the Curb Center researchers analyzed data from a survey of 1,700 college seniors at nine institutions (the Double Major Student Survey) and from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), which surveyed slightly more than 4,000 graduates from 76 art colleges. The results from the Double Major Student Survey lead the authors to conclude that students who engage in arts activities have a more positive self-image and social outlook. The SNAAP data indicates higher levels of life satisfaction among former arts students who have continued their artistic practice, but only among those who feel that they have adequate time to practice their art. Those who continue to create art but feel they don’t have enough time to do so report lower levels of life satisfaction than arts graduates who gave up their creative work entirely.

While these findings are intriguing, it is difficult to say how meaningful these associations are, as the effect sizes are fairly small. The developed models include variables such as age, race, gender, income, employment status, and marital status, plus data on respondents’ artistic practice. All of these variables together only explain about 8 to 13 percent of respondents’ subjective wellbeing.

The authors try to contextualize the size of the wellbeing increases associated with an artistic practice by stating that the increases are comparable to or greater than those that result from being married or having children. That seems pretty impressive at first glance, until one thinks about the fact that over 30 percent of marriages end in divorce, and that spending quality time with a crying newborn at 2am is a decidedly mixed blessing. It turns out that the ups and downs of these life-changing events are reflected in wellbeing surveys: the impact of marriage on wellbeing is fairly mixed, and while individual studies have conflicting results, it seems like levels of life satisfaction generally aren’t so different for parents and non-parents.

A more helpful point of comparison is provided in a study that compares the wellbeing impacts of sports and cultural engagement in the U.K., which came out the same year as “Artful Living.” As in “Artful Living,” the British researchers found a positive, statistically-significant relationship between artistic endeavors and life satisfaction. However, the increase in life satisfaction associated with arts engagement is slightly lower than that of participation in sports. This certainly isn’t the final word on the subject, but it demonstrates how comparisons can be used to make the effect sizes intelligible.

Even with these caveats, “Artful Living” serves as a great example of exploratory work demonstrating the relationship between the arts and wellbeing in the U.S. It also gives us valuable insight into the varying effects of artistic practice on different populations. As always, additional research would be useful. While experimental methods would be desirable, incorporating more forms of artistic practice within a general population survey like the DDB Needham Lifestyle Survey might be an excellent first start. In the meantime, “Artful Living” is notable for taking the challenge of measuring the wellbeing impact of the arts head on, and lays a helpful foundation for future research.

“I Want to Be Well” by Michael Escanuelas

Title: Quality of Life Indexes for National Policy: Review and Agenda for Research

Author(s): Michael R. Hagerty, Robert A. Cummins, Abbott L. Ferriss, Kenneth Land, Alex C. Michalos, Mark Peterson, Andrew Sharpe, Joseph Sirgy, and Joachim Vogel

Publisher: Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique

Year: 2001

URL: http://bms.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/075910630107100104

Topics: quality of life, indexes

Methods: Review of indexes measuring quality of life

What it says: In this article 22 indexes which measure Quality of Life (QOL) are assessed to determine their usefulness for public policy purposes. The indexes were reviewed by members of the Committee for Societal QOL Indexes, using a standard set of 14 criteria developed for the project. Some of those criteria pertain to the index as whole, including that it should have a clear policy purpose, be grounded in well-established theory, and be reported as a single number but also able to be broken down into parts. Other criteria relate to the types of measures the indexes rely on, specifying that those measures should be valid, reliable, and sensitive, measurable at multiple geographic levels, and based on time series data to allow for monitoring over time. Finally, multiple criteria concern the indexes’ domains, a term for the constituent parts of Quality of Life that an index includes such as Health or Security. According to the criteria these domains should be measurable in both subjective and objective dimensions, potentially neutral, positive, or negative in their contribution to QOL, and, taken as a whole, encompass the totality of life experience. For generic indexes used with multiple populations and contexts, each domain must have relevance for most people in a variety of different contexts and populations.

In addition to including brief reviews of all 22 indexes, the article makes several general observations and recommendations. First the authors suggest standardization in the domains included in QOL indexes and the terminology used to refer to them. They then provide a list of seven domains that represent the conception of QOL shared by most of the indexes, which includes: relationships with family and friends, emotional wellbeing, material wellbeing, health, work and productive activity, feeling a part of one’s local community, and personal safety. If an index is being developed for a specific population, the authors do leave room for the inclusion of supplementary domains which are of specific importance to the group being measured. They use the example of leisure, which may be of specific concern in developed nations, but does not qualify as a universally accepted domain, in their view.

The authors also recommend that indexes place greater emphasis on distinguishing policy inputs and outputs (as well as a third category, “throughputs” which measure individual responses to environmental factors), noting that this will create greater opportunity to use these indexes to test public policy measures. Finally, the authors discuss various methods of determining the weights that should be given to the measures used in an index and recommend two specific methods: two-stage factor analysis and conjoint analysis.

What I think about it: For those new to or even partially versed in methods of measuring quality of life or wellbeing, this article provides a useful glimpse into the large body of academic work and thought in this area. The sheer number of indexes available in this realm speaks to the impetus behind this work, as well as its value. The authors use the well-established method of peer review for their assessments, and their established criteria are seem logically sound to a layperson, though very exacting in their expectations.

What it all means: While the article probably shouldn’t be considered a foolproof recipe for a good quality of life index (an early footnote is careful to disclaim that the views expressed do not represent the opinions of all members of the committee it was published by, pointing to some potential internal disagreement with the recommendations) it is a good starting point for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of how academics approach the process of measuring quality of life.

For the arts sector, the notable absence of “culture” or equivalent within the authors’ list of standard domains is of interest, as is the example given of leisure as a domain that may be a priority unique to developed nations, and therefore only appropriate for indexes specific to those populations, as culture and leisure are sometime considered together. The Canadian Index of Wellbeing, for example, includes a domain called “Leisure and Culture” which draws upon measures of cultural participation rates, as well as other types of leisure.

Given the authors’ criteria, and assuming the difficulty of arriving at a universal human conception of how culture should fit into our lives, the emergence of “culture” as a standard domain in quality of life or wellbeing studies may not be inevitable. This might mean that exploring how the arts contribute to other domains of quality of life may be equally as important as developing locally relevant conceptions of and ways to measure cultural vitality.

“Livskvalitet/Quality of life” by Gunilla G

Quality of Life, Wellbeing, and Standard of Living: Definitions and Common Usage

In embarking on our exploration of the arts and wellbeing, we researched formal definitions and common usage of several overlapping terms used in this larger field of inquiry: wellbeing, quality of life, and standard of living.

We found that there is a good deal of ambiguity around the meanings of these terms, and this lack of conceptual clarity has been called out repeatedly over the past 50 years. While we felt that the details of this debate were too esoteric to address in our feature article (which is intended for a broad audience of generalists), we want to make this information and our current understanding of the terms available to our dedicated Createquity Insider readers.

While antecedents of the social indicators movement can be traced back to the 1920s and 30s, efforts to measure how well people are doing really took off in the 1960s. Part of the ambiguity surrounding the concepts and terminology used to describe the objects of study results from the fact that researchers in several different fields—as varied as public health, economics, and psychology—took an interest in measuring wellbeing around the same time and without much exchange with their colleagues in other disciplines.

As early as 1973, researchers criticized the lack of conceptual clarity around the terms “quality of life” and “wellbeing.” David M. Smith argued that “wellbeing” should exclusively be used in reference to objective measures of a population’s living conditions, whereas “quality of life”—which to Smith held more evaluative connotations—should be used in reference to people’s self-reported, subjective assessments of their lives.

Despite Smith’s admonitions, it seems that the situation hadn’t improved much by the end of the 20th century. In 1999, Barbara K. Haas asserted that “the terms QOL [quality of life], satisfaction with life, functional status, and well-being can no longer be used interchangably.” Haas considered wellbeing to be one of a number of components of the larger concept quality of life, and contrary to Smith, she held that wellbeing should be reserved for subjective assessments of people’s lives.

A more recent attempt to disentangle the concept of wellbeing from that of quality of life from André Langlois and Dale Anderson defines both concepts as relationships between individuals and their environments. Quality of life is located in the objective realm, at the intersection of individual needs and external resources. Meanwhile, wellbeing results from the ability to take advantage of the available resources and experience satisfaction, which, again, places wellbeing in the subjective realm.

As of yet, it doesn’t seem that any of the attempts to tease out differences between wellbeing and quality of life and bring conceptual clarity to their definitions have had a lasting effect. In many instances the two terms continue to be used interchangeably. However, while there seems to be a general consensus that quality of life consists of both subjective and objective components, there is greater ambivalence about the meaning of wellbeing. Some authors use wellbeing as a synonym for quality of life and others use it in Haas’s sense to refer exclusively to self-reported, subjective assessments of people’s lives.

In the latter case, “wellbeing” might be said to function as shorthand for “subjective wellbeing,” another term that frequently appears in the literature. While there is controversy over the precise definition of “subjective wellbeing” as well (e.g., whether it refers to the affective experience of “happiness,” the cognitive assessment of satisfaction with one’s life, or a combination of both), the use of “subjective wellbeing” at least clarifies that objective measures (income, physical health, etc.) are not included in the mix.

“Standard of living” rarely appears in the controversies over the proper definitions and measurement techniques for wellbeing and quality of life. Indeed, there appears to be greater agreement about the definition of “standard of living.” The term generally refers to the wealth, material goods, and comforts available to an individual or a group, often simply measured as GDP per capita. In some cases, composite measures are developed to assess standards of living, but even then the constructs tend to be limited to objective measures, and primarily ones related to income and material wealth.

Studies of wellbeing and quality of life have garnered a lot of attention in recent years, in part because there is a growing consensus that the broad economic measures used to assess standard of living are unable tell the full story of how well people or countries are doing relative to others. However, standard of living has the benefit of conceptual clarity, and even crude measures such as GDP continue to be of significant influence in policy debates.

In drafting our article on wellbeing and the arts, we decided to treat wellbeing (in its broad sense) and quality of life as essentially equivalent, but to use wellbeing as the default term. However, since the article was published, we’ve come to understand that many readers primarily associate wellbeing with physical health and may have found our usage confusing.

Since we’re considering the improvement of overall wellbeing as a key function of a healthy arts ecosystem and thus central to Createquity’s mission, we’re likely to be discussing these issues in one form or another for years to come. Accordingly, we’re now considering reversing course and switching our terminology to quality of life, which may be more readily understood. Quality of life also has the advantage of clearly evoking a dimension of value that is complementary to measures like “lives saved.” Indeed, composite metrics like Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) provide an example of how quality of life has been used in very real and consequential day-to-day decisions (though not without controversy). As we contemplate this change, we’d appreciated input from Insider readers to get a sense of your interpretation of the terms.

References

BusinessDictionary.com, s.v. “standard of living.” http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/standard-of-living.html.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Wellbeing Concepts.” http://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/wellbeing.htm.

Dodge, Rachel, Annette P. Daly, Jan Huyton, and Lalage D. Sanders. “The Challenge of Defining Wellbeing.” International Journal of Wellbeing 2, no. 3 (2012): 222–35. Available at https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwiwkce3quLJAhUjzoMKHe7EASsQFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org%2Findex.php%2Fijow%2Farticle%2FviewFile%2F89%2F238%3Forigin%3Dpublication_detail&usg=AFQjCNF8fycR8DBb54bxf98Z4c4bd2s34A&sig2=zociomrBjOuNXVhuX8-Vdg.

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “How Do We Measure Standard of Living?” The Ledger (Winter 2003). Available at http://www.bostonfed.org/education/ledger/ledger03/winter/.

Fontinelle, Amy. “Standard Of Living Vs. Quality Of Life,” on Investopedia. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/08/standard-of-living-quality-of-life.asp.

Langlois, André, and Dale E. Anderson. “Resolving the Quality of Life/Well-Being Puzzle: Toward a New Model.” Canadian Journal of Regional Science 25, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 501–12. Available at www.cjrs-rcsr.org/archives/25-3/langlois.pdf.

Merriam-Webster online, s.v. “Standard of Living.”

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/standard%20of%20living.

Noll, Heinz-Herbert. “Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research: Background, Achievements and Current Trends.” In Advances in Sociological Knowledge, edited by Nikolai Genov, 151–81. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004. Available at https://books.google.com/books?id=Rt6tBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT2&dq=advances+in+sociological+knowledge+2004&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDhbDywMbJAhVMjIMKHekhAT4Q6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=advances%20in%20sociological%20knowledge%202004&f=false.

Scottish Government, St Andrew’s House. “Quality of Life and Well-Being: Measuring the Benefits of Culture and Sport: Literature Review and Thinkpiece.” Research Publications, January 20, 2006. Available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/01/13110743/0.

Wikipedia, s.v. “Standard of Living.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living#cite_ref-1.

Wikipedia, s.v. “Quality-adjusted life year.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year.

• A large and emerging literature on the topic of wellbeing has a lot to teach us about the arts’ role in society.
• Wellbeing is a way of grouping the various components of individual and societal health under a single conceptual umbrella. This is important because it opens up the possibility of understanding the relative value or benefit of those components as part of an integrated whole instead of treating them as completely separate.
• A number of large-scale international economic and social policy initiatives are grounded in wellbeing, including much of the global development work undertaken by the United Nations.
• Most wellbeing definitions do not explicitly include culture, but some do. In particular, a variation of a wellbeing framework called the capability approach recognizes the capacity for imagination and play as critical components of human wellbeing.
• Describing the benefits and costs of arts ecosystem outcomes in the language of wellbeing could earn the field a proper seat at the table in conversations about human progress without downplaying the so-called “intrinsic” benefits of the arts.

* * *

Photo by Flickr user Tim Jordan. Creative Commons license.

Quick! What’s the most important issue in the arts? Is it declining audiences? The fact that it’s so hard to make a living as an artist? Changing demographics and cultural equity? Unsustainable business models? New technologies? Government funding? Arts education? Gentrification? Creative placemaking? Where I can go to figure out what the heck I’m doing this Friday night?

Spend any time reading up on arts policy and philanthropy or attending conferences in the arts, and you’ll see plenty of attention devoted to all of these topics and more. To be sure, all of them have implications for the future of arts and culture in the United States, not to mention the rest of the world. The challenge is, with so many issues to track, and no way of comparing them to each other, we can’t know how to prioritize our limited energies in the areas that are going to make the most difference. We can’t even be sure that the biggest problems or opportunities in the sector are on our collective radar at all. What if the most impactful thing we could do is something that no one’s talking about?

At Createquity, we are trying to tackle that conundrum head-on by framing our work in terms of the broad language of social good and human progress. In this way we sometimes think of ourselves as a cause-specific analogue to the effective altruism movement, which tries to identify the highest-leverage opportunities to do the most good with the resources available to us, whatever they might be. Accordingly, when we developed our definition of a healthy arts ecosystem, we declared that all of the conditions and outcomes named in that definition should be understood in the broader context of “improving people’s lives in concrete and meaningful ways.” While that names a single yardstick of “life improvement” to measure every success against, without further elaborating on what it actually means to improve someone’s life, the concept is not very useful in practice. Fortunately, many smart people have been grappling with the same problem and have made significant strides towards adding specificity around such terms in recent decades. Our investigation of their work has led us to an exciting and emerging literature on the topic of wellbeing, a literature with roots in multiple fields outside of the arts.

Logo of the World Health Organization by United States Mission Geneva. Creative Commons license.

WELLBEING 101

While no consensus definition of wellbeing exists, broadly speaking, it is a way of holistically grouping the many components of individual and societal health under a single conceptual umbrella. The intellectual origins of wellbeing date back more than half a century to 1948, when the World Health Organization framed its definition of health not only in terms of the absence of troublesome physical symptoms, but also in terms of the presence of certain attributes that suggested “physical, mental, and social well-being.” This was a departure from the prevalent medical conception of health at the time, which narrowly focused on the presence or absence of disease and categories of ailments in individuals.

Before long, this holistic perspective began to infiltrate the study of whole communities and societies. An early theoretical work on “social indicators” in the United States was undertaken by Harvard Business School professor Raymond Bauer in the mid-1960s and sponsored (surprisingly enough) by NASA. With a large and visible public investment to protect, the space agency asked Bauer to quantify its effects on American life, but the professor concluded that the effort would not get far without an established way to quantify improvements to social conditions. To bridge that gap, Bauer and his co-authors pioneered the idea and early methods of developing statistical measures of social values and goals.

Bauer’s work coincided with a growing backlash against the then-commonplace use of economic measures such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to measure social progress in the national and international policy arena. While GDP is a broadly accepted way to measure the size of an economy, it is at best a flawed proxy for the outcomes that really signify how well societies are faring. In one of the more remarkable developments in the history of political economy, the teenage King Jigme Wangchuk of the small nation of Bhutan coined the term “Gross National Happiness” as a replacement for GDP in 1972. (Decades later, a fleshed-out version of GNH is in active use in the country and enshrined in its Constitution.) Around the same time, Richard Easterlin’s research on happiness levels in post-war Europe in suggested that increased material abundance did not necessarily yield increased happiness, which helped launch the field of happiness economics. By 2008, when the French government brought together a star-studded international panel of economists led by Nobel Prize winners Joseph E. Stiglitz and Amartya Sen to try to move beyond GDP once and for all, wellbeing was rapidly establishing itself as the dominant theoretical foundation of the global policy arena. The resulting Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission report is considered a major watershed in the mainstreaming of wellbeing.

Today, a large and growing field of study is devoted to wellbeing and its measurement, with its own peer-reviewed journals, leading experts, and esoteric controversies. Given that wellbeing scholars operate at the intersection of a number of different fields, it’s not surprising that the lexicon can sometimes get messy, with terms such as quality of life, standard of living, and livability variously standing in for the idea of a holistic measure of individual and community health. One of the more notable debates has centered around objective vs. subjective ways of conceptualizing wellbeing. Historically, a Scandinavian school of thought relied on living conditions such as income and physical health that can be observed directly, while an American “quality of life” approach focused on “subjective wellbeing” (i.e., asking people about their happiness, agency, and satisfaction with life). Advocates of the latter argue that subjective wellbeing is the most direct measure of an individual’s lived experience. Defining wellbeing solely in subjective terms may not tell the whole story, however, since people’s expectations for their own wellbeing may be affected by their context and past experiences. For example, individuals in societies with relative deprivation may rate their subjective wellbeing higher because their basis for comparison is different than people in relatively well-off societies, or a drug addict might report being very happy in the moment despite not leading a healthy life overall. These days, there is widespread agreement that a mix of objective and subjective measures is likely to provide the best understanding of wellbeing.

THE CAPABILITY APPROACH AND THE RISE OF INDICATOR SYSTEMS

The insight that neither objective nor subjective measures fully describe wellbeing on their own raises an important question: how does one account for people’s differing abilities or desires to make use of the resources provided them? Beginning in the 1980s, economist Amartya Sen began addressing this dilemma in earnest. His capability approach, refined in subsequent decades with philosopher Martha Nussbaum, frames wellbeing through the lens of social justice, taking the unique circumstances and choices of individuals into account. Among other things, the capability approach notes that:

Amartya Sen. Photo by Flickr user Stefano Corso. Creative Commons license.

• Individuals draw varying levels of benefit from the same resources. As a result, assessing wellbeing is much more complex than considering whether and how resources are distributed. It’s one thing to say, for example, that food is available to a particular population; it’s quite another to consider whether that food can actually nourish and sustain a pregnant woman or someone who is allergic to some of its core ingredients. As a result, the capability approach pays more attention to specific states of being (e.g., being nourished) and activities (e.g., learning) than to external inputs.
• Having the freedom to make choices matters. Whether or not people take advantage of the opportunities they have, their ability to make decisions about how they pursue their lives is vital to wellbeing. The physical state of a person who is starving may be similar to that of someone who is fasting, but the right of the latter to choose his/her condition in an informed manner is crucial. Through this lens, all human beings must have the knowledge, skills, and opportunity to lead a meaningful life — beyond mere survival, a life “that they have reason to value.” Having the “capability” to achieve various states is therefore more significant than whether or not one actually achieves them.

Economists and international development scholars were quick to seize on Sen’s capability approach in their quest to break from an over-reliance on the GDP. As disillusioned as they were with standard macroeconomic measures, they knew that alternative metrics were needed in order for wellbeing to serve as a viable replacement. This gap led to a demand for new indicator systems that researchers and policymakers could use to translate quality of life into something that could be measured. Indicators, as they saw it, were necessary for wellbeing to move beyond a theoretical construct into something with practical significance. Beyond providing a means to count whether certain conditions are present, indicators could inform judgments about the success or failure of particular policy decisions, be used to hold people in power accountable to the impact of their work, and provide a common vocabulary by which nations, regions, or specific groups of people can track how they are faring.

In 1990, the United Nations Development Programme (UDNP), led by Pakistani scholar Mahbub ul Haq, began producing Human Development Reports meant to “shift the focus of development economics from national income accounting to people-centered policies.” In the process, they worked on a numerical index that could capture non-economic elements of wellbeing. Amartya Sen was involved; while he initially fretted that the capability approach was too complex to be boiled down to numbers, Haq and others eventually convinced him that policymakers would only take the capability approach seriously if a single index number was provided. Thus, the Human Development Index (HDI) was born.

The HDI is relatively simple. Its three dimensions are “a long and healthy life,” “being knowledgeable,” and a “decent standard of living.” The indicators are life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling for adults over 25 and expected years of schooling for young children (calculated via a mix of UNESCO statistics and actual enrollment figures), and gross national income per capita. The geometric mean of numerical scores from these four indicators comprise the final HDI index score for any particular country.

The United States fares quite well under this system, ranking fifth out of 187 nations in 2012-13. UNDP’s Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), however, tells a different story. It adjusts the HDI score based on the extent to which resources are more available to certain segments of the population than to others. (It uses a long list of surveys, including a few distributed by the World Bank and European Union, to do this.) A country with perfect equality would have identical HDI and IHDI scores. Across all countries in the survey, however, scores are adjusted by an average of 22%. Under IHDI, the United States’s ranking falls by more than twenty, while the remaining countries in the top five either hold their spots or shift by one or two.

The Human Development Index is just one example of a number of impressive, large-scale wellbeing indicator systems that have been developed in recent years. Below are a few of the more interesting and/or well-known efforts:

Gallup-Healthways Wellbeing Index

Claiming to be the “most proven, mature, and comprehensive measure of well-being in the world,” the Gallup-Healthways Wellbeing Index was unveiled in 2008 as a high-profile partnership between an international health care provider and arguably the best-known public opinion polling firm in the United States. Dubbed the “Dow Jones of health,” the index has a national and international version. The former measures life evaluation, physical health, emotional health, healthy behavior, work environment, and basic access via a 55-question survey distributed to 1,000 Americans per day. Its ultimate ambitions are to be “a daily measure determining the correlation between the places where people work and the communities in which they live, and how that and other factors impact their well-being.” The international edition is more modest, measuring five factors (purpose, social, financial, community, and physical) via ten specific questions included in Gallup’s World Poll, a monster survey that claims to represent 95% of the global population. Its reliance on self-reported perceptions of wellbeing sets it apart from other wellbeing indicators, and the impact of this difference in approach is notable: top Gallup-Healthways performers include a number of Latin American nations and territories such as Panama, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Belize, Chile, and Guatemala that don’t tend to rank highly in the other indices.

Social Progress Index
The Social Progress Imperative

Billed as a “holistic, 21st century assessment of the health of society,” the Social Progress Imperative was launched six years ago by the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Philanthropy and Social Investing with the goal of “spur[ring] competition between nations to improve the environment for social innovation in the way the [Global Competitiveness Index] has done for enablers of economic growth.” With seed funding from Fundación Avina and the Skoll Foundation, it launched its first research project, the Social Progress Index (SPI), in 2013. The SPI examines a whopping 54 environmental and and social indicators that fall under three broad dimensions: “basic human needs,” “foundations of wellbeing,” and “opportunity.” Unlike the HDI, the index does not take economic indicators like income into account, and also privileges outcomes (like the number of people who have access to clean water) over inputs (like policies aimed at increasing that access). Each dimension has four components that all have equal weight in determining the country’s overall score. Components include nutrition and medical care, access to knowledge, information, communications, and personal rights and freedoms. The Social Progress Imperative’s website breaks down each score with colors that indicate areas of relative strength and weakness when compared with other nations with similar GDP.

OECD Better Life Index
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

In contrast to the previous examples with their fixed metric definitions and weights, OECD’s Better Life Index allows website visitors to manipulate the data on the agency’s 34 member nations according to their own personal definition of wellbeing. The Better Life index was launched in 2011 to put decisions about the most important aspects of wellbeing into the hands of the public. It’s not an entire free-for-all; the Better Life Index has eleven discrete topics taken from OECD’s other work on wellbeing indicators, split between material living conditions (including housing, income, and jobs), and the more nebulous quality of life (which in this case includes measures of community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work/life balance). Each topic is measured in turn by anywhere from one to four indicators, which run the gamut of statistics from the chance of workers losing their jobs in the last year to self-reported life satisfaction. Wellbeing scores can be broken out by gender, and each user can save his/her personal index and compare it with those of others.

Other examples of wellbeing and quality of life indicator systems include the Mercer Quality of Living Survey and two products from the Economist Intelligence Unit: the Global Liveability Survey and the Where-to-be-Born Index. The last of these, which is based on life satisfaction, is notable for its use of regression analysis to determine the relative weights of the 11 factors that make up the index, in contrast to the equal or user-determined weighting seen elsewhere. The Mercer and Global Liveability surveys rank quality of life in individual cities rather than entire nations; Vienna and Melbourne, respectively, take the top spots.

DESPERATELY SEEKING CULTURE?

These and other wellbeing indicator systems typically break down the general concepts of wellbeing or quality of life into a number of discrete domains like economic prosperity, education, or health. The domains are most often developed by experts working from theoretical conceptions of wellbeing, though a few cases draw heavily from definitions generated by the population being studied. There are a number of variations in the details, but a review of more than 20 indicator systems by a group of researchers led by Michael R. Hagerty identified seven domains that are common across nearly all instances:

• relationships with family and friends
• emotional wellbeing
• material wellbeing
• health
• work and productive activity
• feeling a part of one’s local community
• personal safety

You’ll note the absence of arts and culture from this list. In part, that’s because different societies have dramatically different ideas about what those words mean, and internationally comparable data sources relevant to culture are all but nonexistent. Robert Prescott-Allen, who in 2001 published a book detailing his own indicator system with an emphasis on the environmental impact of countries, originally set out to include culture as a top-level domain. Ultimately, he abandoned the idea, finding he could not identify cultural indicators that were consistent across a majority of nations included in his project.

Prescott-Allen is not alone; most indicator systems and other initiatives rooted in wellbeing have historically overlooked the role of arts and culture, and continue to do so. A recent advocacy campaign to integrate an explicit goal of cultural sustainability into the next iteration of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals appears to have failed, despite support from UNESCO itself and significant investment on the part of that agency in an indicator system to track culture’s role in sustainable development. Despite not achieving its primary objective, the advocacy campaign has yielded a useful set of ways to think about culture’s indirect contribution to wellbeing through priorities such as poverty reduction, education, and good governance.

Even so, a handful of individual countries have developed indices of wellbeing that include culture as a top-level concern. The aforementioned Gross National Happiness index adopted by the government of Bhutan is one example. The “Cultural Diversity and Resilience” domain of the index includes measures such as fluency in one of the regional dialects of Bhutan, expertise in one of thirteen traditional Bhutanese crafts (e.g. weaving, embroidery, blacksmithing, bamboo works, paper making, etc.), and knowledge of DriglamNamzha (the “expected behaviour [of consuming, clothing, moving] especially in formal occasions and in formal spaces”). In North America, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing includes the broad category of culture and leisure, which includes measures of leisure time as well as participation in activities such as camping, sports, or performing arts.

Another notable exception comes from the capability approach, or at least one particular version of it. Although Amartya Sen refuses to endorse “one pre-determined canonical list of capabilities” for the capability approach, his partner in crime, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, has had no such compunctions — and her definition includes multiple nods to arts and culture. [1]

In 2000, Nussbaum published a list of “central human capabilities” as follows:

• Life
• Bodily Health
• Bodily Integrity
• Senses, Imagination, and Thought
• Emotions
• Practical Reason
• Affiliation
  • living with and towards others
  • social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation
• Other Species
• Play
• Control Over One’s Environment
  • Political
  • Material

In her explanation of this list, Nussbaum draws the clearest ties to arts and culture through the two principles of “Senses, Imagination, and Thought” and “Play.” The former includes “being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing works and events of one’s own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth,” and the latter refers to “being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.”

“Imagination” by Flickr user Thomas Hawk. Creative Commons license.

PART OF Y/OUR WORLD

Examining the connection between wellbeing and the arts [2] promises to move Createquity’s work forward in two respects. First, it adds some clarity and definition to our rather vague notion of the “concrete and meaningful ways” in which the arts improve people’s lives. And second, it connects the ideas embedded in our healthy arts ecosystem definition to a rich and rapidly expanding body of literature, lending added legitimacy to our work and opening the door to a broader cross-sectoral dialogue. The former of these benefits comes into play whenever we find ourselves having to compare different problems, interventions, or opportunities within the arts ecosystem. Our previous framework of “improving lives in concrete and meaningful ways” was on the right track, but weak in that it left “improving” and “meaningful” undefined. While not completely solving that problem, jumping on the wellbeing bandwagon does allow us to hone in on a range of likely definitions for those terms. Put another way, this new lens clarifies that the conditions and outcomes generated by a healthy arts ecosystem must increase the net wellbeing of society in order to constitute meaningful improvement in people’s lives.

The second benefit is perhaps even more important than the first. Scholars, philanthropists, policymakers, and others have long struggled to articulate how arts and culture fit into a broader conception of public goods and charitable aims, with the result that social innovation initiatives frequently treat the arts by different standards or ignore them entirely. Newer philanthropic movements such as effective altruism have sometimes demonstrated outright hostility to the arts, associating them with headline-grabbing capital or endowment gifts to major universities and large museums. Naturally, that prompts angry and defensive responses from the arts world in turn. Crucially, this distrust and lack of understanding on both sides arises from the absence of a common language with which to judge the value and success of initiatives across sectors. If we can describe the benefits and costs of arts ecosystem outcomes using the language of wellbeing in a way that celebrates rather than subsumes the unique things that make the arts special, that would lay the groundwork for a dialogue about the role of arts and culture in human progress in which all sides have a genuine stake.

Overall, we find the capability approach to be the most effective bridge between our existing healthy ecosystem definition and the fast-growing scholarship on wellbeing. It is particularly worth noting that Martha Nussbaum’s take on the capability approach is the clearest example we’ve found of integrating what have been commonly understood as the “intrinsic” benefits of the arts, such as joy, captivation, etc., into a broader definition of wellbeing. [3] This approach allows us to think of the arts as influencing overall wellbeing both directly, through developing the capabilities of Play and Senses, Imagination, and Thought, and indirectly through, for example, their impact on the capability of Bodily Health. Such a framework improves on the traditional delineation of “intrinsic” and “instrumental” benefits of the arts by proposing a consistent way to value both.

The capability approach is particularly helpful for clarifying what we mean when when we say that human beings today and in the future have “opportunities” to engage in certain types of arts participation. (The same could be said for other efforts in the arts field to “improve access to” things like arts engagement or arts education.) Its emphasis on personal choice and freedoms rather than behaviors suggests that a narrow focus on things like participation rates in an arts class or attendance figures at a concert hall cannot tell us much about wellbeing. Choosing not to engage in a specific arts activity or a long-term aesthetic pursuit can be a well-informed decision that yields greater wellbeing than would otherwise be the case. Likewise, the capability approach reminds us that providing people with access to resources is not enough; they must have the necessary training, skills, and agency to make use of them. This latter insight is consistent with the position that proactive steps should be taken to provide basic arts education opportunities to all, even if not everyone will choose to engage with the arts throughout their whole lives. For all these reasons, although they have not been as widely adopted as the capability approach in general, Nussbaum’s central human capabilities arguably offer a more compelling theoretical rationale for arts and culture’s inclusion in wellbeing than simply slapping arts participation indicators on top of a wellbeing measurement index.

“Which way do we go?” by Flickr user yooperann. Creative Commons license.

WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

It’s important to remember that as much progress as wellbeing has made since 1948, this is very much a field that is still finding its way. Even the effective altruist community, with its self-assured rhetoric of doing “the most good possible,” is home to raging debates about what exactly that means in practice. So it should come as no surprise that as promising as we feel this direction to be for the arts, we have some thorny questions of our own:

• How does one weigh the benefits of art that is offensive to some people, but empowering to others? This is particularly tricky in cases when art is in direct dialogue — or conflict — with ideologies or belief systems that contribute to individuals’ subjective wellbeing. This push-pull appears particular to the field of arts and culture; it’s difficult to imagine how the health, social integration, or financial stability of one person could detract from that of another (beyond instances in which there aren’t enough resources to go around). In contrast, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which a culturally important but challenging artistic work has a negative (if short-lived) impact on the subjective wellbeing of the majority of a population. Yet that work may ultimately have a positive impact on future generations, which leads us to a second question:
• How does one account for changes in the value of arts and cultural products and experiences over time? This dilemma can play out both at the individual level, where cultural experiences that are not immediately pleasurable could nevertheless prove meaningful to the recipient later on; and at a societal level, where future generations may enjoy, appreciate, and/or use today’s cultural products in a very different way than their ancestors do. The latter situation is particularly vexing because there’s no defined time horizon for our definition of a healthy arts ecosystem, and thus a huge range of possibilities for how many people might be affected positively or negatively in the future by events taking place and decisions made in the present. Fortunately, that particular puzzle is mirrored in domains outside of the arts, and techniques such as discount rates have been established to deal with the issue, imperfect though they may be.
• How should different elements of wellbeing be weighed against each other? In theory, the only way to answer our opening question of which problems and interventions should receive top priority is to have a clear sense of how the holistic notion of wellbeing relates to its component parts. Yet the actual wellbeing indicator systems that have been put into practice largely seem to avoid this challenge, either declining to offer an overall wellbeing score entirely or weighing each component of the index equally — which, as many have pointed out, comes with its own set of problems. More interesting and intellectually defensible ways of determining weights exist, including expert judgments, crowdsourcing the personal opinions of members of the population under study, and statistical methods such as principal component analysis, two-stage factor analysis, or conjoint analysis. We aren’t in a position at this point to recommend a specific weighting scheme, but it seems like an important area for someone to explore going forward.

For all our never-ending debates about how and whether to measure the impact of the arts, our field may be well poised to contribute to this complex but fascinating dialogue that spans so many disciplines and decades. After all, if anyone is accustomed to making value judgments within an environment that resists quantification, it’s us! Committing to that conversation could open new doors as we contribute to a broader, shared understanding of human progress without having to downplay some of the arts’ more unique, intrinsic contributions. Entering those doors, however, will require leaving the arts cheerleading that many of us are accustomed to at the coat check. It will require contemplating what it looks like to offer the freedom to participate in arts and culture while simultaneously honoring those who decline the invitation.

Encounters between the arts and the capability approach have been both more recent and rare. The two examples we know of are Samuel Jones’s 2010 monograph Culture Shock for the British think tank Demos, which draws on the capability approach to reframe public policy goals relating to culture in England; and a more quantitative application of the capability approach to the arts undertaken by Mark Stern and Susan Seifert of the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact of the Arts Project. Stern and Seifert used a modified version of the capability approach as defined in the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission as a starting point for their investigation of cultural activity and social wellbeing in Philadelphia and other cities. Their analysis reveals some interesting–if not entirely conclusive–patterns of wellbeing and cultural participation in different parts of Philadelphia. They identify areas of concentrated disadvantage in multiple categories of wellbeing which coincide with racial and socioeconomic divides, and point to an increasing correlation over time between neighborhood economic prosperity and cultural access. Nevertheless, Stern and Seifert leave some of the most exciting theoretical implications of the capability approach for the arts unexplored. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, their analysis routinely measures the relationship between cultural activity and wellbeing as if they were separate concepts. This is partly explained by Stern and Seifert’s adaptation of the wellbeing domains from the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission, which do not include culture explicitly. By contrast, at Createquity we feel that there is greater potential to be drawn from Martha Nussbaum’s central human capabilities for reasons discussed in the main article.

[3] In our original definition of a healthy arts ecosystem, we had been drawn to the concept of as popularized by psychologist Abraham Maslow in his famous Hierarchy of Needs to serve this purpose. Our subsequent research, however, leads us to believe that while self-actualization still enjoys currency in American popular culture (particularly in the business world), in the social sciences it is seen as an increasingly dated and culturally-specific concept. Nussbaum’s central human capabilities may eventually fall prey to similar criticisms, but overall they seem to be a clear improvement over the framework initially proposed in our healthy arts ecosystem definition and a step towards both internal clarity and interoperability with other social innovation initiatives.

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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

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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

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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

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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

Langlois, A., & Anderson, D. E. (2002). Resolving the Quality of Life/Well-being Puzzle: Toward a New Model. Canadian Journal of Regional Science, 25(3), 501–512.

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

Noll, H. (2004). Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research: Background, Achievements and Current Trends. In N. Genov (Ed.), Advances in Sociological Knowledge (pp. 151–181). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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

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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

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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

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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.