In “the real world,” 84% of working artists—defined by BFAMFAPhD’s controversial “Artists Report Back” study as people who make their primary living from their artwork—do not have degrees in the arts, and 40% have no college degree at all. (It’s important to note that due to data limitations, these figures exclude artists with master’s degrees or beyond in any field; however, the number of artists affected is relatively small.) If arts training programs continue to climb in popularity while budding artists from less affluence are deciding against studying the arts in college, does that mean the college-to-career trajectory is a myth? Has the arts degree become a luxury, or are artists from less advantaged backgrounds missing out on something?

Graphic by Shawn Lent for Createquity. Source: Artists Report Back

An Incubator of Artistry or a Waste of Precious Prime Time?

What can we make of the implication that higher education is not the golden ticket to creating or performing art for a living? It would be overstepping to say that arts degree programs provide students with no value at all: for one thing, they offer important time to refine one’s craft within a supportive but highly disciplined and similarly-skilled community of peers, critical mentors, and potential networks. Such credentials can serve as a signal of high artistic quality and capacity, a prerequisite for certain grant funding. We should note, though, that artists move freely between the nonprofit and commercial sectors in their pursuit of paid work and the value of a degree likely varies by context. It looks like a person doesn’t necessarily need a BFA or MFA to become a professional artist, but the degree could help an artist reach a higher level of industry success or make a full-time living as an artist.

At the same time, arts students may not have this expectation of working as artists. Across the board, most graduates (73%) work in a field outside their major. Arts students, in particular, might be prepared to thrive in other sectors, and they seem fine by that; the ongoing Strategic National Arts Alumni Project survey (which likewise has its limitations) finds that arts graduates are generally satisfied with their experiences and would do it again if they had the chance.

B.A. and Arts Double-Majors at Commencement 2016, UMD School of Theatre Dance and Performance Studies | Photo by Karen Kohn Bradley

For pro artists, the necessity or desirability of arts degrees may vary considerably by discipline. Although full-time symphony orchestra musicians are selected by audition, it is hard to find one these days without a degree in music. On the other hand, from the Oregon Ballet to Bally’s Jubilee, dance artists often delay or skip college because of the early retirement age in most dance forms (90.5% of working dancers and choreographers are under age 40, compared to 39.6% of working musicians). Examples like these leave arts degree programs vulnerable to the charge that they are building up a profession (academia) that isn’t necessarily serving artists. Sarah Anne Austin questions, “If opportunities in American modern dance are disappearing, and if being a tenured faculty member at a university is the only stable job available for dancers and choreographers, and having this job depends on being able to attract students… does this make American modern dance a pyramid scheme?”

One Option in a Long Line of Pricey Career Strategies?

Such questions wouldn’t be so charged were it not for the very real concern that arts degrees perpetuate inequality in the sector. Professional artistry has a lengthy and complex gestation period that is slammed with socioeconomic obstacles. Factors that may make, or break, one’s professional success as an artist include personal networks, the prestige of the teacher, portfolio materials, membership in a union/guild, affordable housing in a city with available arts jobs, and a myriad of other opportunities such as showcases, apprenticeships and internships.

Graphic by Shawn Lent for Createquity. Source: Playbill

Like aspiring athletes, emerging professional artists benefit from school and community members who identify and develop their interest, regular and rigorous private lessons, and pre-professional training. These present quite the financial hurdle for families: a recent calculation estimates that it takes $100,000 to raise a professional ballerina. Against this backdrop, the cost of college may only exacerbate what is already a yawning opportunity gap.

The Greatest Risk or the Great Arts Equalizer?

We may not know definitively whether arts degrees provide added value to aspiring artists, but we do know that they pose quite a bit of risk, particularly for artists coming from low socioeconomic status (SES). Although artists with bachelor’s degrees in any major earn more than artists who went pro after high school, new BFA holders quickly face the reality that artists experience lower returns to formal education than they would in other professions. Anywhere from 10-20% of artists with bachelor’s degrees report a “major impact” on their career decisions due to debt from higher education; this debt load comes on top of a heavy earnings penalty across the board for artists (8.4 percent lower than the rest of the labor market, according to 2000 Census data).

Graphic by Shawn Lent for Createquity. Source: U.S. Department of Education IPEDS Survey

Particularly on a discipline-specific basis, the conditions leading up to the decision to pursue professional artistry may represent disparities of access. If it were the case that high school graduates who aspired to artistic careers couldn’t pursue their dreams because of the risk aversion associated with low SES, that would be a major failing of a healthy arts ecosystem.

Given that, it’s probably a blessing in disguise that you don’t need an arts degree to become an artist. In fact, the preponderance of upper-middle-class students in programs offering those degrees might well indicate that poorer, emerging artists are making informed decisions that are in their best interests. Everyone’s situation is different, and statistics can only tell us so much about an individual case. But if you’re worried that an expensive four-year degree is your only way to the top of the arts heap, you can take heart in the knowledge that many, many creators and performers have made it there without one.

In the latest Createquity podcast series, Createquity and Fractured Atlas team members illuminate the major factors that contribute to artists (or prevent artists from) establishing successful careers. We also focus on some of the tools Fractured Atlas has developed to support artists, with the larger goal of helping create a more navigable and equitable ecosystem for professional artists. 

Cover image: “Hiram College Commencement 2015,” courtesy of Kasey-Samuel Adams via Flickr Creative Commons license. 

• The Future of Music Coalition has a great roundup of takeaways from a recent congressional hearing on copyright law and the technology sector. Big ones include the very different challenges posed by copyrights versus patents, and that for the most part, technology companies don’t see copyright restrictions as stifling their ability to innovate.
• A new arts center in New York City (and the whopping $50 million in city capital funding that’s making it possible) has Mayor Bloomberg’s fingerprints all over it.
• Reason #22 to think twice before moving into a glass house: the New York State Supreme Court has ruled that a artist was well within his First Amendment rights when he took and then exhibited photographs of his neighbors — including two small children — inside their glass-walled home from across the street. Upon recognizing their images in an advertisement for the upcoming exhibit, the neighbors had attempted to sue the artist for invasion of privacy and emotional distress.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Katy Locker will join the Knight Foundation as its Detroit-based program director; she is currently VP of Programs at the Detroit-based Hudson-Webber Foundation. In an interview with former ArtPlace CEO Carol Colletta, she lists the arts as one among several “levers to continuing Detroit’s turn around.”
• Lisa Hall will become VP for Programs at Houston Endowment. She comes from YES Prep Public Schools, where she was VP for Talent Support and General Counsel.
• KPAC, a classical radio station in San Antonio, has cut its five local hosts to reduce costs and will use a syndicated service from Minnesota. The station has offered the hosts part-time work; so far, only one, Dierdre Saravia, has accepted.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Newly-appointed Ford Foundation President Darren Walker offers three lessons on philanthropy: collaborate broadly, as the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation did in the Harlem Chlidren’s Zone; invest in due diligence into grantees to ensure leaders are both passionate and adequately supported by their organizations; and recognize that the kinds of metrics used to measure success in business won’t apply in many philanthropic contexts.
• Grantmakers in the Arts continues to take a more activist stance regarding cultural equity. Earlier this summer, the entire GIA board of directors underwent two days of anti-racism training led by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. A similar two-day workshop (though led by a different group) will be offered to grantmakers attending this year’s GIA conference in October.

BIG IDEAS

• Organized labor is declining, the nonprofit sector is expanding, and two may well meet in the middle. Employees at a homeless service nonprofit in San Francisco successfully unionized in June, signaling what might be the beginning of a broader trend.  And while unions have been getting a bad rap recently this article points out that “the mission-driven nature of nonprofits can prove to be an asset in providing an alternative model to the us-versus-them framework adopted in most private sector organizing.”
• Angie Kim shares two great examples (both arts-related) of nonprofit membership associations, typically ill-equipped to drive sector-wide change, assuming a leadership role at the risk of alienating members or compromising revenue streams.
• Half of Barry Hessenius’s “Dinner-vention Party” guests offer their thoughts on how the arts can address declining audience numbers and shifting participation in truly new ways. This first batch includes “briefing papers” by Laura Zabel, Kimberly Howard, Clayton Lord, Margy Waller, Tamara Alvarado, and Nina Simon.
• What happens when video-game designers become auteurs? In the case of Thatgamecompany’s Jenova Chen, the artists reworks his art many times before releasing it to get the “emotional impact right,” his company goes bankrupt as the project runs over schedule and over budget – and the final product becomes a critical darling, breaks sales record, and wins its creator a $5.5m venture-capital investment.

IN THE FIELD

• A new movement in the architecture and design field builds on LEED certification’s environmental standards, and calls for a triple-bottom-line approach that takes social factors into account as well.
• Amazon has launched Amazon Art, a partnership with more than 150 galleries that allows you to browse, purchase and review (or faux-review) fine art much as you would a kitchen appliance. At least one blogger isn’t impressed, noting, “Much as I admire [Amazon’s] shipping practices… why compete in a market where an awesomely speedy physical delivery network means next to nothing?” Speed might not matter here, but access to artwork—especially for people who don’t live in major urban centers – might.
• The community-supported agriculture model is being transferred to the arts in cities including Pittsburgh, St. Paul and Flint. Most of them are visual art-specific, with at least one performing arts version as well. And they never have to worry about getting too much Swiss chard…

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) has updated its annual survey of arts alumni. SnaapShot 2012 presents the results in attractive infographics, and SNAAP’s 2013 annual report interprets the data. The theme of the report is inequalities among graduates of diverse backgrounds. Findings include a lack of access to networks among black and Hispanic arts alumni, which disproportionately discourages these alumni from becoming artists; and persistent pay gaps between male and female graduates.
• The Australia Council for the Arts has released a new study of the Australian arts sector in 2012. The report is bullish: attendance at arts events is up by about 3.5%; box office across genres was up 16% (only theater box office declined); and private sector contributions held steady.
• GlobalGiving, GuideStar, the Foundation Center, and TechSoup are collaborating to create an international registry of philanthropic entities. The project, funded by the Hewlett and Gates Foundations, will develop a system of unique identifiers and establish a database for information like the nature and location of philanthropic work.
• A new paper from Yuan Ji, an attorney for Wilson Sonsini and recent Yale Law School graduate, examines the conversion of Burning Man from for-profit to nonprofit status.
• Do copyright laws “make books disappear”? A researcher examines the numbers of books available in print over the last two hundred years, and finds they tend to vanish quickly, only to reappear later when they fall into public domain.
• A new study found that undergraduates tended to like the paintings of the critically-respected 19th-century artist John Everett Millais more with repeated exposure – but they liked the work of the popular but less canonical Thomas Kinkade less the more they saw of it. This is in tension with previous research into the “mere exposure effect” that found that  familiarity just about always breeds affection, even for lesser Impressionists.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• Future of Music Coalition has a comprehensive rundown and positive comment on the Obama administration’s new 2013 Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement.
• Ouch: the Minnesota Orchestra will have to return nearly $1 million in state grants because of its never-ending labor dispute.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Some big changes are coming to Philly this year! Just a week after we found out about Tom Kaiden’s departure from the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, Gary Steuer has announced that he is leaving his post as the City of Brotherly Love’s first Chief Cultural Officer to take a position as President of Denver’s Bonfils Stanton Foundation. Here’s Gary in his own words talking about the shift.
• Margaret Ayers is retiring as president of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation after 38 years (!) of service. Clark supports cultural exchange and cultural diplomacy. As part of the transition, Roslyn Black will direct the foundation’s International Arts Engagement program.

BIG IDEAS

• Adrian Ellis lays out his case for the importance of global cultural districts, and Michael Rushton immediately pokes holes in it. (In fairness, Adrian’s piece is really more about the importance of doing cultural districts right and takes the idea that they’re happening at all as a given. But Michael’s question – how much does the district part of cultural districts matter – is still an important one.)
• A very smart essay by Barry Hessenius on the importance of information-sharing around failure. Here’s a quote:
  

  One thing that seems clear to me is that – at least in the arts field – there may be a tendency to seek a solution to a given problem or set of problems, without fully trying to understand the root causes of the problem.  We identify a problem (e.g., declining audiences) and we develop seemingly rational theories about how to address the problem (content with more transformational potential, more engaging efforts et. al.), but often without spending enough time or pouring adequate resources in the harder part of identifying the cause of the problem (i.e., why are the audiences declining).

  I have no idea how much money we have invested in the last 20 years to support audience development efforts, but unless you believe those efforts have helped slow down the rate of audience decline (and that can be defined as “success“), then, in the main, those efforts have failed. The audiences continue to decline.  Why is the question.  We need to know the answer, and to the extent foundations that fund the arts are more willing to ask that question and attempt to answer it, the better off we will all be.

  And, before we settle on what the causes of the phenomenon on the declining audience are – arrived at by research and study – we need to make sure that research and those studies are credible and reliable and not just attempts to skew evidence to support a pre-determined theory of how to address the challenge.  I know we have spent energy in surveying our audiences, but there is credible evidence that people do not always respond forthrightly to surveying.  We have to dig deeper.

  Indeed. And I would add that, if you want to understand why audiences are declining, you need to study people who aren’t your audience.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• More about social impact capital for arts organizations, from the estimable Michael Hickey.
• A new service called Audiam allows musicians be compensated when their work appears on YouTube videos.

IN THE FIELD

• RIP LA’s Reprise Theater Company, most notable perhaps for the fact that it was directed by Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander.
• First bookstores, then music and electronics stores. Is Amazon about to disrupt the gallery business next?
• Colleen Dilenschneider makes some salient points about success stories not being the same thing as models for success.
• MoMA curator Paola Antonelli dishes about the museum’s new collection of video games.

RESEARCH CORNER

• For those who didn’t know (I didn’t), the GRAMMY Foundation offers grants for “organizations and individuals working to research the impact of music on the human condition.” The examples given focus on psychological and health-oriented studies.
• The latest edition of Giving USA is out, and giving to the arts rose 7.8% over last year’s figures – faster than any other cause area. The arts received a total of $14.4 billion in private philanthropic contributions, comprising 5% of the $316.2 billion total.
• Consistent with trends reported previously regarding corporate philanthropy as a whole, a new survey from Americans for the Arts reports that corporate giving to the arts is back on the rise.
• I’ve always liked working in the dark, and people have always thought I was a weirdo for it. Now, according to a new study, “those in the dimly lit room solved significantly more problems correctly than those in the brightly lit room. They also felt freer and less inhibited than their intensely illuminated counterparts.” Told you so, ma!
• A new “data brief” from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project looks at differences between majors, and notes that, interestingly enough, arts education majors are the least likely to be unemployed in the survey sample. (Media arts brings up the rear by that metric.)
• A couple of analyses are out on the recent NEA/EEOC data release on artist employment. However, a colleague pointed out on Facebook that the NEA’s tabulation inexplicably doesn’t seem to include the employment code for “composers and music directors” (27-2041). [UPDATE: I got a note from the director of the NEA’s Office of Research and Analysis, Sunil Iyengar, who writes: “As it turns out, we DID include composers and music directors in our data for all musicians, but, inexplicably, we neglected to list the relevant code (27-2041) on the part of the web page that lists all the artist codes. So we’re correcting that bit, thanks to you.”] All in all, the boundaries are drawn kind of strangely, with the massive “designer” category including “commercial and industrial designers…floral designers…merchandise displayers…and other designers such as…memorial marker designers.” Creative workers for sure, but if you’re going to include people like that, where are the chefs and software programmers?

ETC.

• Congratulations to Nathan Yau on six years of Flowing Data.

This is a condensed version of my full Arts Policy Library write-up on the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). Please check out the latter for a more comprehensive discussion of their report. 

Is an arts degree worth it or worthless? Many an art or art history major has had to defend the value of her studies. Indeed, in a Kiplinger article that used data from payscale.com and Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce to determine the “Worst College Majors for Your Career,” fine arts, studio arts, film/photography, graphic design, drama and theater arts all made the list. The article claims that recent arts graduates have higher unemployment rates and are more likely to wind up working in retail than those who chose other majors. But the recent Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) report, “A Diverse Palette: What Arts Graduates Say About Their Education and Careers” indicates that post-graduation life is not so bad for arts alumni. SNAAP’s report found that:

• The unemployment rate for arts alumni is less than half the unemployment rate for all Americans, and about equivalent to the unemployment rate for college graduates.
• The overwhelming majority (92%) of SNAAP respondents reported either a “good” or “excellent” experience at their alumni institution and most would “do it all over again” if given the chance.
• More than three-quarters of currently employed arts alumni are “somewhat” or “very” satisfied with their primary job.
• More than two-thirds of arts alumni remain active in the arts community by creating, exhibiting and performing.
• Arts alumni are significantly more likely than the average American to have volunteered their time or donated money to an arts organization or artist in the past year.

However, when we look further into SNAAP’s research, the following stand out as issues:

• The possibility that SNAAP’s respondents aren’t representative of arts alumni as a whole, for the following reasons:
  • the survey only reaches graduates who have maintained valid contact information with their school or who can be located using a service called Harris Connect
  • the survey is exclusively online and takes 20-30 minutes to complete, possibly rendering it less attractive for alumni who lack consistent internet access in their homes or don’t feel strongly about their relationship with their alma mater
  • institutions pay to participate in SNAAP, which may indicate that participating institutions are already paying above average attention to their students and alumni
  • a disproportionate number of the participating institutions appear to have top-ranked arts programs, based on an analysis of visual arts fields; graduates from these programs may be better-off and happier with their education than the average arts alumni
• The potential conflict inherent in using data from paying institutions to create a field research report
• SNAAP used different measures than the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce study or the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to collect employment figures; SNAAP’s method includes intermittent work as employment, making accurate comparisons impossible
• The survey does not ask its respondents to consider their opportunity costs when making subjective judgments about the value of their education

Ultimately, the SNAAP report is largely inconclusive, in large part due to the questions about its representativeness and because one of the few metrics that could potentially serve as a common yardstick with other fields of study is complicated by SNAAP’s alternative approach to measuring employment status. Still, SNAAP is the most comprehensive data resource available for pre-professional arts education, and reminds us that an education should be valued for more than the average earning potential of its graduates.

(For a quick summary of this post, see “Strategic National Arts Almuni Project: The Condensed Version.” SNAAP has responded in the comments.)

Is an arts degree worth it or worthless? Many an art or art history major has had to defend the value of her studies. Indeed, in a Kiplinger article that used data from payscale.com and Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce to determine the “Worst College Majors for Your Career,” fine arts, studio arts, film/photography, graphic design, drama and theater arts all made the list. The article warns college students who are tempted to major in fine arts that the unemployment rate for recent grads is 12.6% (almost twice the national average of 6.8%) and they are 1.8% more likely to work in retail than the average college graduate.

The employment situation for recent art-school grads is anything but aesthetic. Slow job growth and an abundance of fine-arts majors means unemployment is high – the second highest on our list. When fine-arts majors do find jobs, they generally don’t pay well. Even experienced artists can expect to make 20% less than their college classmates. While few people have ever gone into art for the money, the East Village isn’t as cheap as it used to be.

So the recent Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) report that finds that the unemployment rate for arts alumni is less than half the unemployment rate for all Americans is heartening, but surprising. Moreover, the report claims that most arts alumni “are satisfied with the opportunities their ‘primary job’ affords to demonstrate their creativity.” The sunny outlook that SNAAP presents in “A Diverse Palette: What Arts Graduates Say About Their Education and Careers” seems to be in conflict with both the aforementioned Kiplinger article and conventional wisdom. But is it? Let’s analyze what the SNAAP report actually has to say about the prospects for arts alumni.

SUMMARY

SNAAP, based at the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, was founded for the stated purposes of providing a comprehensive look at artist development in the United States, and identifying how best to connect arts education and training to artistic careers. SNAAP defines “the arts” and “art” as inclusive of

 a broad range of creative activity including performance, design, architecture, creative writing, music composition, choreography, film, illustration, and fine art.

Since 2009, SNAAP has distributed a yearly report based on the results of an annual online survey that it gives to alumni of participating institutions. These institutions include arts high schools, comprehensive colleges and universities, liberal arts colleges and special-focus arts institutions. Institutions pay to participate in the project, with fees for post-secondary schools ranging from $3300 to $7800, depending upon the size of the arts alumni population. The survey comprises eighty-three questions and takes 20-30 minutes to complete.

The most recent 2012 report, based upon results from the 2011 SNAAP survey, presented many positive findings, or at least findings that appear to be positive. Most SNAAP respondents are currently employed. In fact, for the past two years, the SNAAP respondent unemployment rate is less than half the national unemployment rate for all Americans. What’s more, 87% of currently employed SNAAP respondents are “somewhat” or “very” satisfied with their primary job. Even most of those who are working in non-arts fields report general work-satisfaction, and most also say that despite working in an area outside of the arts, their arts training is still relevant to their work.

When asked if they would “do it all over again,” 77% of SNAAP respondents said that yes, if given the chance to go back in time, they would make the same choices as they originally had in terms of institution and major. Indeed, 92% reported that their overall experience at their institution was either good or excellent, and 88% would recommend their school to other prospective students.

Furthermore, arts alumni are also likely to participate in the arts outside of work. The report explains why this is meaningful:

One of the arguments for public support for the arts is that the presence and contributions of artists add depth and meaning to the human experience, thereby enhancing the quality of life for all. Thus, it’s important to know how arts graduates contribute to the arts and their communities independent of their income-producing work.

More than a quarter of SNAAP respondents have volunteered for an arts organization in the past year, and 45% have donated money to an arts organization or artist in the past 12 months. These are significantly higher rates than those in the general population, where just 2% of Americans volunteer for arts, cultural or humanities organizations, and only 6% of US households with incomes under $100,000 have given money to the arts. Moreover, in their leisure time, 72% of SNAAP respondents remain active in the arts community by creating, exhibiting and performing.

But it isn’t all coming up roses for arts graduates. Despite the encouraging employment data, 50% of survey respondents were “somewhat” or “very” dissatisfied with the career advising they received at their school. Nearly half were unhappy with the opportunities for degree-related internships and other work that their institutions provided, and 41% found occasions to network with alumni lacking.

Additionally, 40% of currently employed respondents have two or more jobs, which may be a sign that  they are unable to find full-time work or that their primary job does not provide enough income to live on. In fact, the majority of respondents from all arts majors except architecture earn less than $50,000 per year in their primary job.

Still, the 2012 SNAAP report concludes:

For many of these graduates, going to an arts training institution was “worth it”; they gained invaluable skills that they continue to draw upon whether or not they work as professional artists—both at work and in their non-work time.

ANALYSIS

Certainly the value of an arts education must be measured as more than the average earning potential of its graduates. Even so, the SNAAP report findings are inconsistent with data reported in the Kiplinger article, which states that there are higher unemployment rates for arts graduates. Why might this be? Let’s analyze the methodology of SNAAP’s research.

Respondent Representativeness

The 2011 SNAAP Questionnaire is only available online, and SNAAP relies on the individual institutions to disseminate information about the survey. This means that SNAAP survey respondents maintained valid email and/or mailing addresses on file with their alumni institutions, or had been active enough on social media to be located either directly by their schools or by Harris Connect, the “people finder” service contracted by SNAAP. Respondents who take the time to remain in email contact with their alumni institutions may be more likely to think favorably about those institutions than those who haven’t. And of the alumni contacted, those motivated to respond to the 20-30 minute survey may have been more likely to hold positive viewpoints about their institutions and present career situations.

The exclusive online availability of the survey, as well as the fact that information about the survey is primarily disseminated online, means that respondents most likely have regular internet access, and that they’re comfortable navigating the web. The survey delivery method may skew toward a more well-off demographic who are able to pay for internet in their homes. The questionnaire takes 20-30 minutes to complete. If you’re using your local coffee shop’s internet to look for work and e-mail resumes, you may not be as inclined to use a half hour of that time to complete an alumni survey as someone who is sitting at home after work watching hulu and cruising Facebook.

Anecdotally, I often hear of individuals from well-off backgrounds enjoying success in the arts, in part because they are able to afford to take unpaid internships, or participate in residencies where they generate no income for months at a time. These opportunities may lead to greater things. Additionally, these are pleasurable experiences, and although one may not be earning a large income, a SNAAP respondent may still reflect on them positively, especially if paying rent and buying food isn’t a concern. Thus, it’s possible that the SNAAP respondents are more financially comfortable in the aggregate than arts alumni as a whole, and if so we might expect to see this bias reflected in the responses. (Unfortunately, while the SNAAP survey asks the age, gender and ethnicity of each respondent, it does not ask any questions about the socio-economic background of the respondent, or whether he or she has additional financial support or means beyond his or her income.)

Danielle J. Lindemann and Steven J. Tepper’s recently published follow-up report on SNAAP’s 2010 survey, which was structured and delivered in the same way as the 2011 survey, acknowledges the survey’s potential response bias: “It is plausible that more financially successful arts graduates are more likely to fill out a survey about their experiences.” However, they counter that results from an earlier study indicate that the SNAAP results are not skewed in this respect. In 2009, SNAAP conducted a shadow study using a variety of incentives, such as a $15 gift card and inclusion into a lottery for a $100 award, as well as different modes of delivery, including paper, web and phone. Their report explains:

We found that there were no meaningful differences in the characteristics of the graduates in the high response rate group compared to the low response rate group. Related to the question of employment, for example, respondents from the higher-response rate sample indicated that they were currently doing paid work an average of 31 hours per week. Comparable individuals from the full SNAAP sample in 2009 indicated that they were doing paid work an average of 34 hours per week.

Still, even if alumni who are financially better off weren’t more likely to respond to the SNAAP survey, the issue of what alumni the SNAAP survey reached remains. More than 36,000 alumni responded to the survey, for an average institutional response rate of just over 20%. But, alumni who have updated their institution with current contact information may already be more inclined to respond positively about that institution than those who haven’t.

Even if there is no bias among respondents to the survey, however, the selection of institutions participating in SNAAP is not random. The 2011 SNAAP survey was sent to alumni from 183 programs in 66 institutions, including 8 arts high schools, 20 private nonprofit postsecondary schools, and 38 public postsecondary schools. These postsecondary institutions include colleges and universities with top-ranked arts programs, such as Maryland Institute College of Art, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, University of California – Los Angeles and Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as a number that are less known for their arts programs. At first glance, this seems like a reasonable cross-section of higher arts education across the nation. Still, these institutions have all chosen to participate in SNAAP, and paid a fee for the privilege of doing so. This suggests that they are already paying above average attention to students and alumni of their arts programs. What’s more, of the 58 postsecondary institutions, more than 30% have art programs in disciplines that include fine arts, ceramics, graphic design, multimedia/visual communications, painting/drawing, photography, printmaking, and sculpture, ranked in the top 20 by US News. To put this in perspective, the College Arts Association’s directory of Graduate programs in Studio Art and Design includes almost 250 individual institutions. These arts graduates, with degrees from esteemed institutions, may be more financially successful and happier with their arts training than arts alumni from second- and third-tier schools.

SNAAP’s efforts to increase and test response rates, through its use of Harris Connect and the shadow survey, are commendable. Still, the report repeatedly uses “arts alumni,” “arts graduates” and “SNAAP respondents” interchangeably. Are respondents to the survey representative of arts alumni as a whole? Unfortunately, there is no way for us to know.

Conflicting Interests

As mentioned earlier, participating institutions pay to have the survey sent to their alumni. This potentially creates a bias, if not in the survey’s responses, then in how this data is ultimately interpreted in the final SNAAP report and “packaged” to a broader audience. SNAAP explains why it requires fees from participating institutions:

…as a self-sustaining research project, institutional participation fees underwrite the cost of survey administration, data analysis, and school reports.

In other words, SNAAP needs these fees in order to remain viable. Although the individual institutions’ reports aren’t made public, schools might understandably be hesitant to participate in a study that openly casts doubt on the value of an arts education. In turn, that lack of participation could mean the end of SNAAP. Indeed, the SNAAP report does include negative statistics, but they are always countered with a positive statement, so that the overall tone and takeaway is optimistic. For example, the following passage from the SNAAP report came after a list of mixed results about alumni satisfaction with various aspects of their education:

While the results suggest a variety of strengths and weaknesses for institutions to consider, they also indicate that despite any less than stellar experiences alumni may have had, most who obtained an arts degree have few regrets. When asked if they would still attend their institution if they could start over again, over three quarters (77%) say definitely or probably yes. Furthermore, when asked if they would recommend their institution to another student like them, 88% say yes.

Although the 2011 report findings are not drastically negative overall, it’s unclear whether SNAAP would be in a position to draw attention to a significant and sustained deterioration in these numbers in the future.

Data Comparability

SNAAP reports that the SNAAP respondent unemployment rate is less than half the national unemployment rate for all Americans, which in 2011 was 8.9%.This figure becomes less impressive when compared with the unemployment rate of college-educated Americans, which most SNAAP respondents are. The 2011 national unemployment rate for college graduates is 4%; for SNAAP respondents with a bachelor’s degree, it’s also 4%, and for those with a master’s, it’s 5%. Still, it would appear that arts alumni are not significantly better or worse off than college graduates with non-arts majors, which conflicts with the Georgetown research cited in the Kiplinger article. How could this be?

SNAAP explains that unlike Carnevale, Cheah and Strohl’s Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce study, its employment figures are based upon different measures than those used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The difference in employment numbers between data from SNAAP and from other sources may be due in part to SNAAP’s employment measures, which include intermittent work—not uncommon among professional artists—as among the ways of being employed. The U.S. Census, for example, would label such people as unemployed.

In particular, SNAAP may be counting severely underemployed respondents as employed because they identify as self-employed/ freelancers. Freelancers are often more affected than traditional employees during a recession, from which the US continues to recover. When pockets are tight and businesses aren’t growing, customers are more likely to view purchases of goods like art as luxuries, see participating in a continuing ed or community art class as optional, and need services like design less. In fact, BLS projects that employment opportunities for craft and fine artists will grow by 5% over the next decade, which is slower than the average 14.3% projected for all occupations.

Because of the nature of SNAAP, the project only collects data about arts alumni. However, in order to truly draw conclusions about the value of an arts degree, we would need to see data collected in the same way for a cross-section of majors. Unfortunately, one of the few metrics that could potentially serve as a common yardstick is complicated by SNAAP’s alternative approach to measuring employment status. SNAAP could easily have designed its survey to enable analysis of unemployment figures comparable to BLS statistics alongside numbers derived from the alternative method. It’s unclear why this path wasn’t taken.

Considering the Alternatives

Many of the questions in the SNAAP survey ask alumni about subjective impressions, like these:

In your opinion, how much did [INSTITUTION] help you acquire or develop each of the following skills and abilities?

Please describe how your arts training is or is not relevant to your current work.

Describe how your arts training at [INSTITUTION] is or is not relevant to your participation in civic and community life.

Certainly most arts alumni value the arts—that’s why they chose an arts major—and the SNAAP survey provides them with the opportunity to opine about the importance of the arts. But for most arts alumni, the choice was not between pursuing an arts degree or doing nothing. Instead, the choice was between studying the arts and studying something else. Or perhaps it was between pursing an arts-related graduate degree and gaining additional experience in the workplace, or investing in a home. Respondents weren’t asked to reflect upon the sacrifices that they might have made in choosing their field of study.

I have no doubt that the education that arts alumni received contributed to skill sets that are relevant to their primary employment and civic engagement. But it’s also possible that alumni may have developed equivalent or better skill sets related to their current employment with an alternative course of study. Still, it is encouraging to learn that most SNAAP respondents have found work “congruent with their values and dispositions” that affords them the opportunity to “demonstrate their creativity.”    

IMPLICATIONS

So what does this mean? Certainly not that the SNAAP study has no value, nor that arts education is worthless. But the SNAAP report is largely inconclusive. SNAAP respondents are not necessarily reflective of the larger pool of arts alumni. A significant proportion of the participating institutions have top-ranked arts programs. It’s possible that a sample with alumni from a greater range of arts programs would produce the same results, but it’s also possible that SNAAP’s sample is biased. The report also presents an alternative way of measuring employment data, which could be valuable in creating a more accurate view of the employment situations of those who freelance or are self-employed, regardless of whether that work is arts related. Unfortunately, absent a comprehensive employment survey across fields using SNAAP’s method, it tells us very little about arts alumni as compared to holders of college and graduate degrees as a whole.

As an artist, arts educator, and arts administrator, I want to believe that an arts education is always worth it. Certainly the median salary of arts alumni should not be the sole factor in determining its value. However, with the average student loan debt for recent college graduates at over $26,000, and many borrowing beyond that to pursue graduate degrees, financial considerations shouldn’t be eliminated from the equation entirely. As I read the SNAAP report, I found myself thinking about Vanderbilt University Law Professor Herwig Schlunk’s groundbreaking 2009 academic essay, “Mamas Don’t Let You Babies Grow Up To Be… Lawyers,” in which he calculates opportunity and out-of-pocket costs for law students, and the likely return for different types of students, depending upon their class rank and the prestige of their program. He concludes that for many, particularly average students graduating from second and third tier schools, law school is a losing proposition.

It’s not possible to determine for whom an arts education is a worthy investment because no similar study has been done for art students. The difficulty for SNAAP is that its first responsibility is to analyze data for paying customers, not to  use that data as field research to draw larger conclusions. Still, at this time SNAAP is the most comprehensive data resource available for pre-professional arts education.

Few people go into the arts for the money. It’s likely that most of us instinctively knew that the median salary of an arts major would be significantly less than that of an engineering or business major, even before Georgetown released their report. SNAAP’s report does tell us that although a career in the arts may not be incredibly lucrative, not all artists are starving. But it also reminds us that an education should be valued for more than the average earning potential of its graduates.

… the worth of an arts degree must be measured by both pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. Much has been made of recent reports using national income data showing that arts graduates have lower than average earnings… Tangible economic benefits are unquestionably important, but calibrating the success of arts graduates only by how much they make does a disservice not only to those who practice their art and apparently derive great satisfaction from doing so, but also to the communities they enrich with artistic contributions through sharing their artistic creations, teaching, and supporting other artists.

FURTHER READING

For those who would like to dig in to SNAAP’s data in more detail, the 2011 Aggregate Frequency Report is what you’re looking for.

The 2011 SNAAP Annual Report covers the 2010 survey, along with the 2010 Aggregate Frequency Report.

Danielle J, Lindemann and Steven J. Tepper’s SNAAP special report, “Painting With Broader Strokes: Reassessing the Value of an Arts Degree” addresses potential bias issues and further analyzes the 2010 survey findings.

SNAAP publishes nifty interactive visualizations of its survey data, called SnaapShots. Here is the SnaapShot of the 2011 survey data, and the previous version, SnaapShot 2010.

Daniel Luzer critiques the SNAAP survey bias in Washington Monthly.

The Kennedy Center discusses the survey.

SNAAP manager Sally Gaskill blogs about SNAAP’s findings for Americans for the Arts.

• The Detroit Institute of the Arts, having convinced residents in three counties to pass a property tax supporting the institution in exchange for free admission, is facing a lawsuit on the basis that the deal doesn’t include special exhibits.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Richard Dare, the head of the Brooklyn Philharmonic (previously profiled here on Createquity) and controversial blogger, has taken the top post at the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
• Glenn Lowry, the famously well-compensated director of the Museum of Modern Art, has been elected to the board of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

IN THE FIELD

• RIP Orchestra Nova, a 29-year-old chamber orchestra in San Diego.
• Ouch: the locked-out St. Paul Chamber Orchestra recorded a nearly $1 million deficit last season, its first in a decade. Looks like Sarah Lutman got on the lifeboat just in time.
• The Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University is hosting what looks like a bangup creative placemaking symposium on April 12. And Man About Town Michael Hickey reports on a creative placemaking panel he moderated in New York City.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Interesting and entertaining perspective on collective impact and the need to support direct-service and backbone organizations simultaneously, with response by FSG’s Emily Gorin Malenfant.
• More examples of transparency in action: Kevin Bolduc and the Center for Effective Philanthropy are revamping their flagship product, the Grantee Perception Report, in response to feedback from customers – and blogging about the process.
• Peter Singer (author, The Life You Can Save) on donating to the arts:
  

  “Philanthropy for the arts or for cultural activities is, in a world like this one, morally dubious,” he writes in his book.

  He has heard two counterarguments repeatedly since the book came out in 2009. One points to the work that, say, art museums do with disadvantaged children. “I can see how that would be a worthwhile thing to do,” he said. “I’m not sure how well it compares with saving kids from dying from diarrhea or malaria.”

  Then, there are the crumbling buildings again. “I’m certainly not suggesting that when the roof of the Met starts to leak that you don’t repair it,” he said. “But I would not give a penny to the Met to buy another painting.”

BIG IDEAS

• Clayton Lord (can I still call you Clay?) is upping the ante with a couple of recent blog posts about support for the arts at the federal level, including this lovely graph showing the NEA’s appropriations history in real and nominal dollars along with percentage of the budget and party in control of the White House and Congress. It seems that who has the House of Representatives may be a bigger driver of the NEA budget than previously acknowledged. Be sure to check out Clayton’s analysis of framing vis-a-vis the charitable deduction as well.
• Meanwhile, the “new models”/future of the arts discussion is flaring again, with a post by Michael Kaiser spurring another round of response by Diane Ragsdale and Adam Huttler, and lots and lots of discussion in the comments.
• Watch a museum exhibition go up before your eyes (in slow motion) at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. Also: Attendance is not the only measure of demand, museum version.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), an annual survey of arts training program graduates, has published “Painting with Broader Strokes: Reassessing the Value of an Arts Degree,” a supplementary report on the 2010 survey results by Danielle Lindemann and Steven Tepper.
• Maribel Alvarez offers a review of Maria Rosario Jackson’s latest for LINC, “Developing Artist-Driven Spaces in Marginalized Communities.”
• The James Irvine Fund has released a report on the its Arts Innovation Fund grants (undertaken under its previous program strategy last decade), conducted by Slover Linett Strategies. The report is accompanied by a nifty tablet-friendly interactive highlighting key findings.
• The Future of Music Coalition is leveraging its Artist Revenue Streams data to engage in some mythbusting regarding how musicians make (or don’t make) money.
• Arts education data in Los Angeles shows a complex picture of trends over the past 15 years.
• Wow. Did you know that more than half of the US patent lawsuits in 2012 were brought by “non-practicing entities” – also known as patent trolls? These companies obtain patents with no intention of actually using them for inventions, but instead to “threaten young companies with lawsuits as soon as they obtain funding; or hamstring older companies, forcing them to divert cash into costly licenses for absurd patents rather than pay for costly defenses in uncertain, patent-friendly jurisdictions.” Good to know for anyone (such as Richard Florida types) relying on patents issued as a measure of innovation. Yuck.
• As mentioned here previously, the Twin Cities is currently suffering a symphony drought, with both the Minnesota and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras shut down in the midst of labor strife. This probably isn’t the most empathetic response imaginable, but my first thought upon reading the headline “Orchestra fans getting restless” in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune was, wouldn’t this be a great natural experiment for measuring the value of orchestras to a community? I mean, you don’t realize how much you appreciate something until it’s gone, right? The evidence presented in the article suggests that some audience members are finding substitutes (“a few classical groups have noticed a spike in ticket sales”), but a substantial number are staying home. Independently organized concerts by locked-out members of the Minnesota Orchestra are selling out quickly, though obviously in an environment of substantially reduced competition. I could imagine all sorts of possibilities – a rare economic impact study that actually takes into account opportunity costs, for example, or a more scientific survey of orchestra subscribers to find out what they’re doing with themselves at night.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• Congratulations to the South Carolina Arts Commission, whose funding was preserved when elected representatives overrode Governor Nikki Haley’s veto of the commission’s entire budget. An additional veto that would have invalidated a one-time $500,000 increase for the commission was also overturned, so all in all the Arts Commission will see a significant bump in its budget this year. It’s the third time in three years that the Arts Commission has staved off an elimination threat from a South Carolina governor.

ART AND PLACE

• Hot on the heels of ArtPlace’s similar announcement, the 2012 Our Town grants have been announced. The geographic distribution is striking, and quite literally all over the map. In contrast to last year, there were no grants to New York City, Los Angeles, or any of the nation’s other largest cities with the exception of Dallas, and more than half the grants are going to communities with fewer than 50,000 people. The NEA also held a series of webinars about the awards, which have been archived and are available here.
• Richard Florida, Darren Walker, Rocco Landesman, and Dennis Scholl participated in a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival called “Making Cities Sing.” Partial video from the event is here.
• In the wake of debates about whether Portland, Oregon is truly a creative class success story or not, Barry Johnson offers an interesting perspective on the role of the creative economy in that region.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Congratulations to Jacob Harold, program officer for philanthropy for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, who has been appointed the next president of GuideStar (succeeding Bob Ottenhoff). Harold had previously been on GuideStar’s board of directors, as well as a funder.

IN THE FIELD

• The Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, a first-of-its-kind amalgamation of the region’s SOBs (symphony, opera, ballet) into a single organization, is officially live. Good luck to them – it’ll be interesting to see whether the arts scene finds it easier to coexist with one performing arts behemoth instead of three.
• Congratulations to Americans for the Arts CEO Bob Lynch for being named one of the NonProfit Times’s Power & Influence Top 50 for the first time. Lynch is the only 100% arts person to make the cut, though Lisa Paulsen, president & CEO of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (which supports social and medical causes), as well as the leaders of the arts-supporting foundations American Express, Pew, and Knight, are on there as well.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

•  The Philadelphia-based William Penn Foundation will retain its local focus, despite a recent infusion of money that has made it one of the largest foundations in the country.
• Barry Hessenius has an interview with the Knight Foundation’s VP of the Arts and man about town, Dennis Scholl.
• An interview with outgoing Hewlett Foundation Vice President (and #2 under Paul Brest), Susan Bell.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project, or SNAAP, has released its annual snapshot of arts graduates and their careers. SNAAP’s Sally Gaskill has more at ArtsBlog.
• Americans for the Arts held a blog salon for its Arts & Economic Prosperity IV report earlier this month. I tweaked the premise of AEP IV in the last Around the Horn, but I don’t want to take away from the fact that a lot of work on the part of many, many people went into creating it. Ben Davidson tells some of the behind the scenes tales, Maria Munoz-Blanco draws a picture of impact, and Createquity superfan Paul Tyler describes the power of mapping in Kansas City.
• Data alert: Nina Simon dissects her museum’s attendance growth over the past year.
• “Simply put, price seldom impacts demand in the arts.”

ETC.

• Stanford Social Innovation Review has an article about the value of “backbone organizations” in a collective impact context, based on the experience of FSG consultants working with the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. The article is in four parts: I, II, III, IV. It’s not the sexiest topic, but if you believe in the relevance of infrastructure to the arts, as I do, it is worth a read.
• More on the Collide@CERN project that Shane Crerar wrote about for Createquity earlier this year.

Executive Director, South Arts

South Arts seeks a dynamic, multi-talented executive director to build on its exceptional 37-year track record of strengthening the south through advancing excellence in the arts, connecting the arts to key state and national policies, and nurturing a vibrant quality of life. South Arts, a nonprofit regional arts organization based in Atlanta, GA, was founded in 1975 to build on the South’s unique heritage and enhance the public value of the arts. South Arts’ work responds to the arts environment and cultural trends with a regional perspective. The organization works in partnership with the nine state arts agencies of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, and is funded by those member states, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), foundations, corporations, and individuals.

Deadline: Accepting applications through April.

[NEW!] Program Manager, General Operating Support Program, Cuyahoga Arts & Culture

Cuyahoga Arts & Culture [ed – in Cleveland, OH] seeks a creative, energetic, and detail-oriented manager for its General Operating Support (GOS) program. The program manager will oversee the day-to-day management of CAC’s GOS grantmaking program, which in 2012 awarded $14 million to 66 arts and cultural organizations. S/he will work closely with the director of grant programs to develop and implement program strategy.

No deadline provided.

Project Coordinator, Strategic National Arts Alumni Project, Indiana University

Job Summary: Prepares annual application, amendments, and reports, and monitors compliance of the SNAAP project with the IUB Institutional Review Board. Prepares documents for internal SNAPP use, including survey response rates and analyses, and makes recommendations to improve survey procedures and protocols.

Serves as a liaison between SNAAP and its partner institutions, responding to requests for information and recruiting institutions to participate in the annual survey. Works closely with the SNAAP analyst team throughout the survey process, including the development of institutional reports and in management of any requests for special reports from institutions. Serves as primary liaison with the IU Center for Survey Research.

Deadline: April 26.

• The National Endowment for the Arts has spearheaded the formation of a new coalition of private funders to support its creative placemaking agenda. Called ArtPlace, the collaboration features Carol Coletta as its fearless leader, and has the backing of such significant national funders as the Ford, Knight, Kresge, Rockefeller, and Mellon Foundations. Grants and a $12 million loan fund are administered through the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a nonprofit lender and financial consulting organization. ArtPlace has already made a set of 34 grants in “record time” totaling $11.5 million to a range of projects in the Our Town vein (including one to Coletta’s former employer, CEOs for Cities, in an cool-looking collaboration with GOOD Design.). Thankfully, after a closed-door process for this first round, ArtPlace is opening up next year’s grants through a letter of inquiry which is due November 15. Coletta has more at the Art Works blog.

PHILANTHROPY

• A couple of weeks ago, Sean Stannard-Stockton asked a seemingly innocent question: who should be the Hewlett Foundation’s next president? I was surprised to see Sean wrote a follow-up in which he shares that “emails I’ve gotten from very senior members of the philanthropic community – people whose opinions I respect very much – suggest that my hosting this discussion is far more controversial than I might have guessed.” Apparently, according to these Very Senior People (none of whom, Sean notes, are Hewlett employees), speculating about who might ultimately be the driving force behind the distribution of hundreds of millions of tax-exempt philanthropic dollars a year should be off-limits to plebes who are not on the Hewlett Foundation Board. Thankfully, Sean elected not to listen to this silliness and has gone ahead and published the suggestions that have come in, which include some very interesting names.
• Speaking of Hewlett, Emiko Ono will be the new Program Officer for the Foundation’s Performing Arts Program, replacing Marc Vogl. Ono was Director of Grants and Professional Development for the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
• Duke’s Fuqua School of Business has announced a first-of-its-kind “Initiative on Impact Investing.” Officials at the school’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) will be developing a new course, case materials, and working with practitioners to explore impact investing in more depth in an academic setting.
• Ouch: the Center for Effective Philanthropy reports that community foundation leaders are far less strategic in their work than their rhetoric would suggest. In particular, “CEOs who are strategic in their donor work focus explicitly on how donor contributions will benefit the community. In comparison, nonstrategic CEOs focus on how donor contributions will continue to flow to the foundation.”

IN THE FIELD

• After a decade of planning and building, Kansas City’s $326 million Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts has opened – one of the last products of the performing arts building boom of the 1990s-2000s.
• Doug Borwick, the Association of Arts Administration Educators president who has a new blog on ArtsJournal called Engaging Matters, writes a love letter to the much-missed Community Arts Network.
• And here’s an inside look at Yerba Buena’s personalized membership program, YBCA: YOU, with more from Borwick.
• Words I’d never thought I’d write department: congratulations to Philly’s Mural Arts Program, which landed a cover story…in AAA New York Car & Travel magazine!
• Composer Nico Muhly offers an insider’s perspective on the byzantine restrictions faced by orchestral composers seeking access to recordings of their own work.
• Sally Gaskill, who runs the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project at Indiana University, interviews Angela Myles Beeching, director of the Center for Music Entrepreneurship at Manhattan School of Music, about preparing musicians for careers outside the academy.
• And speaking of professional training degrees for artists, excuse Poets & Writers magazine for trying to give people some sense of how to choose a creative writing MFA program. According to an angry group of writing faculty, the fact that the rankings take financial aid too heavily into account is enough to break out the pitchforks.

THOUGHT BUBBLES

• A very interesting interview with John Kreidler about his cultural policy simulation game, Medici’s Lever.
• Cool true-life story of the birth of an internet meme, conceived by the arts blogosphere’s own Chris Ashworth.
• Clay Lord offers a rare look at the neuroscience of audience response to theater.
• Arlene Goldbard offers her vision of how the arts could play a role in a new stimulus.
• Plagiarism appears to be on the rise in the internet age, even among doctoral students: a study of 120 dissertations in psychology turned up instances of plagiarism (defined as using 10 or more words from another source verbatim without attribution) in a shocking 80% of them. If even the future teachers are plagiarizing, what does that mean for the long term trend?
• Surprise, surprise: when you raise prices 60%, you might lose some customers.
• Two months ago, shoemaker Converse opened up a free recording studio in the ultra-hip neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The New York Times spends a day there talking to the artists taking advantage of the service. A competitive process is used to identify musicians, and as with Kickstarter’s “Projects We Love” (see below), artists are chosen “less for their talent than for their viral energies — their presence on MySpace or Facebook, their hustle in pursuing their careers.”
• I found this live improvised playwriting experiment between Neil Labute and Theresa Rebeck kind of cool, despite the hokey setup.
• I’ve never understood why anyone would want a tattoo, but it seems buyer’s remorse is at an all-time high. Unfortunately, tattoo-removal-seekers are finding that it’s not so easy to turn back time.

RESEARCH CORNER

• In connection with the Artist Revenue Streams project, Future of Music Coalition and the Field are co-hosting (along with a boatload of other organizations including Fractured Atlas) a workshop for musicians on “accounting for creatives” in NYC on Monday, September 19. Check the link for info.
• Nice to see an organization that just released a research report (the Center for Effective Philanthropy, in this case) openly discussing how response bias might have affected the results. We need to see more of this kind of transparency in reporting research results.
• I was intrigued to hear of the formation of a new music research and composition e-journal series on the Social Science Research Network database, led (mostly) by Boston University faculty.
• Andrew Taylor points us to a new book by the Curb Center’s Steven Tepper on protest and the arts.
• Two economists estimate the “psychic value” of a work of art (as distinct from its investment value) at 28% of its overall price.

LOOKING BACK

(the following are some “retro” links from the past 12 months that for one reason or another didn’t make it into the around the horn wrap-ups the first time around.)

• Joshua Phillips lays out a very serious and detailed proposal (and justification) for a public policy game show.
• It’s not too often that I see a coherent conservative case against arts funding, but here’s an example for those who might be curious. Main arguments: the evidence of the arts’ economic impact is flimsy, and government funding makes for worse art.
• It was hard to suppress a wry smile upon learning that Leona Helmsley’s precious dog Trouble, to which she left $12 million in her will (disowning two of her grandchildren in the process), has passed away. The funds held in Trouble’s trust have reverted to Helmsley’s charitable foundation, which is one of the largest in the world.
• Wondering where our nation’s sudden income inequality came from? Since 1992, super-wealthy Americans’ effective tax burden has plummeted by more than a third. Over the same time period, the effective tax rate for all taxpayers has dropped only 6%.
• Is subway pop-up theater the new flashmob-chorus/dance/opera-in-a-mall?
• I found this quote worth mulling over, from the NYTimes Magazine’s writeup of Kickstarter last month:
  

  I sat in on a meeting where the [“Projects We Love”] newsletter picks were made. During the half-hour or so Strickler and the team discussed the choices, I was struck by how often they talked not about the projects but about the pitches. “His video is so boring.” “What are the rewards?” “Why is this cool?” They were focused on the project ideas through the filter of “the Kickstarter project” as a form. “We have values,” Chen told me, and they boil down to prizing creators who respect its proc­ess. They favor creators who think through the rewards for backers, get the word out and engage an audience. In other words, the process doesn’t shape the aesthetic. It is the aesthetic.

• Remember that debate a while back about whether video games qualified as art? Well, the NEA just declared it over by including support for “digital games” in its new Art and Media program.
• To Scott Walters’s everlasting chagrin, however, the NEA is still providing funding to organizations in New York, LA, and Chicago disproportionate to the population level. Scott has more here and here. I think this is helpful and important analysis; the one thing to keep in mind is that it focuses only on grants in one discipline of one round of one the NEA’s grant programs.
• The Library of Congress, in partnership with Sony Music, has unveiled a “National Jukebox” of early sound recordings – and it got a million page views in the first 48 hours.
• Kudos to the Future of Music Coalition for staying on top of the potential implications of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger for artists. And speaking of mergers, don’t miss FMC’s collaboration with Fractured Atlas looking back at the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger, one year later.
• A window into Finnish cultural policy.
• So now Congressmen want to micromanage the Smithsonian’s gift shops?

COMINGS AND GOINGS

• Rahm Emanuel has announced that Michelle T. Boone, formerly of the Joyce Foundation, will serve as the next Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
• Marc Vogl is out as program officer for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and in as executive director of the Bay Area Video Coalition.
• Heather Hitchens has quit as director of the New York State Council on the Arts to take the top job at American Theatre Wing, which presents the Tony Awards. NYSCA’s budget has declined from $55 million to $35 million over the past four years.
• Blueprint Research + Design, a major consultant to foundations, is being bought out by Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors. As part of the transaction, Blueprint founder Lucy Bernholz will become a half-time managing director of Arabella, spending more time on writing and in her partnership with Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society.
• The Sloan Foundation, whose main focus is science and technology, is now getting into arts funding.

MULTI-PART BLOGSTRAVAGANZAS

• ARTSBlog has a great-looking discussion on tap this week about new business models, the 501(c)(3) legal form, and potential alternatives. The lineup of bloggers is stellar, including Diane Ragsdale, Adam Huttler, and Janet Brown.
• The indefatigable Barry Hessenius was blogging up a storm earlier this month at the 98th Arizona Town Hall focusing on arts and culture. The convening, which included addresses from Marian Godfrey and the suddenly ubiquitous Rocco Landesman, comes at a poignant moment for the state, given recent cutbacks in public funding for the arts in Arizona. Here are Barry’s reports from Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and the final wrap-up. There’s also a 268-page background report in case you’re looking for some further light reading.
• The staff at GiveWell, the charity rating agency, spent three months living and working in Mumbai last year. They have now posted thoughts and impressions from the visit, which provide an interesting check against their working assumptions going in. Here are the notes from staff members Holden Karnofsky, Elie Hassenfeld, and Natalie Stone, as well as thoughts on evaluating local charities in India.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The long-awaited Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) study has finally been published. The press release puts a positive spin on the findings, noting that 92% of alumni of arts training programs who responded to the survey have work (of any kind) and that two-thirds indicated that their first job after school was a close match for what they wanted. However, I’m more intrigued by the stat that only 57% of the over 13,500 respondents have ever been a professional artist, and only 41% currently are (keep in mind that most of the survey pool graduated within the past five years). We’ll be taking a closer look at this one.
• Meanwhile, last August, student loans surpassed credit cards as the largest source of debt in the US.
• The NEA has a new research note applying data from the American Time Use Survey to the performing arts industry.
• At ARTSBlog, Lynne Kingsley reports on the unequal distribution of arts education programs by discipline (a lot more visual art and music than theater or dance). And Tim Mikulski shares recommendations from the new report on arts education from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
• The Alliance of Artist Communities has a new study on support for dance through artist residencies.
• Rosetta Thurman reports on a new study of perceptions of diversity in the nonprofit workplace.
• Americans for the Arts aren’t the only ones doing economic impact estimates. Google says that it benefits the American economy to the tune of $64 billion – in pure profits. Take that!

CONFERENCE CRANNY

• The Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago has been on fire lately, and held a great-looking Emerging Practice Seminar last month. Materials from the session (including lots of video!) are available here.
• Matthew Guerrieri provides a dispatch from the Rethink Music Conference in Boston.
• Beth Kanter reports from the Center for Effective Philanthropy Conference.
• Trista Harris has video from the “Philanthropy On Trial” event at the Council on Foundations Conference.

TRENDWATCHING

• Wow. For the first time since 1992, the rate of television ownership in American households has declined. To 97%.
• Crowdfunding isn’t just for donations and loans anymore; MicroVentures is now taking tiny equity investments for new startup companies.
• The Daily Beast on Amazon.com and the future of book critics.
• Composer Jeff Harrington offers a personal history of his reliance on free content distribution as a career strategy, and relates it to the issue of class in the arts.

ETC.

• Really fascinating indictment of today’s urban planning field and the (unintended) legacy of Jane Jacobs.
• Barry Hessenius interviews Kristen Madsen, Vice President of the GRAMMY and MusiCares Foundations.
• I have to say (and no, I am not being paid for this), I am so glad I signed up for the free trial of the New York Times’s digital subscription service sponsored by Lincoln when I had the chance, and I will certainly be renewing when it runs out. Without it, I’d be missing out on great reporting like this piece on a “pop-up” restaurant that served a six-course lunch to a dozen passengers on the L train, and this exposé of some shady-sounding business practices on the part of Columbia Artists Management promoting foreign orchestras who aren’t what they seem.