CultureLab is an online learning environment for the arts and culture sector. Built by WolfBrown, the site is a next-generation “social library” to facilitate the sharing of knowledge among consultants, researchers, students, funders, and practitioners. It features a wealth of arts-related research and information, including case studies of grant-funded projects, research reports, strategic plans, feasibility studies, evaluations, and discussion forums. Through our partnership, Createquity’s capsule reviews — easily digestible analyses of studies and reports we encounter through our core research process — currently posted on Createquity Insider, will be re-published on CultureLab, bringing our investigation of research in the arts and culture sector to a broader audience.

As a component of its 2015 contribution to Fractured Atlas, the Howard Gilman Foundation has generously agreed to commit $5,000 in general operating support to Createquity. As a proponent of robust, innovative, and promising arts organizations, the Gilman Foundation’s support will help make our regular content possible. A lot of work goes into our research, writing, and news sharing behind the scenes, and the Gilman Foundation leaves us better equipped to advance our understanding of research in arts and culture.

We are grateful to CultureLab and the Gilman Foundation for their commitment to our work and look forward to seeing these collaborations unfold!

Museum Camp is a creation of Nina Simon and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Createquity readers might recognize Nina and her fantastic work at Santa Cruz MAH from such Top 10 Arts Policy Stories posts as 2012‘s, not to mention many shout-outs before and since in blog posts here and there. Nina used to be a rockstar experience design consultant in the museum field and earned a measure of fame at the beginning of this decade as the author of The Participatory Museum, which you can read online for free. A couple of years ago, she decided to take the job as director of the Santa Cruz MAH, and she and her team have been up to amazing things since then, including a previous version of Museum Camp that sounded like pretty much the most fun anyone has had in a museum ever.

All that fun ultimately adds up to something significant, though, and it’s important to be able to describe what’s meaningful about what we do effectively and convincingly to people who weren’t there – not to mention ourselves. So my colleagues at Fractured Atlas and I are happy to be helping Nina bring a new edition of Museum Camp to life focused on social impact assessment, a three-day event in which small teams of people will develop creative ways to evaluate the work that diverse organizations are doing to transform communities. Our focus is on social impact in communities, and we will encourage teams to look at complex outcomes–like safety, cohesion, compassion, and identity–that are not commonly covered in standard evaluative practices. This is a learning experience with a heavy focus on actual doing throughout the event. In addition to representatives from Fractured Atlas and MAH, we’ll have “camp counselors” from the United Way, WolfBrown, Harder & Co., Animating Democracy, and more on hand to help attendees navigate the conceptual and practical issues associated with measuring what matters.

If you are interested in attending, you can fill out an application through February 28. Space is extremely limited, so the sooner the better. We look forward to seeing you!

• The even playing field that is the Internet might be about to tilt in the favor of the powerful, in this case AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and the like. Net neutrality is in the hands of the DC Circuit Court.
• The National Initiative on Arts & the Military has released a new advocacy white paper on arts and health in the military context, just as the NEA has announced that it will expand its Creative Arts Therapy Program through a new three-month pilot at the Department of Defense’s Fort Belvoir Community Hospital.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Ralph Remington is stepping down as the NEA’s Theater/Musical Theater Director to become the western regional director and assistant executive director at Actors Equity Association. He had been at the NEA since 2010.
• Los Angeles has a new mayor, and will soon have a new head of cultural affairs. Olga Garay-English, who served as Executive Director of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs since 2007, announced she is stepping down January 4.
• Kenneth Foster, former Executive Director of the Yerba Buena Center for Arts, has kicked off his tenure leading the new Arts Leadership Program at the University of Southern California and offers some words of wisdom on how funders can best serve the performing community, and why  “best practices” aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
• Continuing a string of recent layoffs of classical-music radio staff, Houston’s KUHA has cleaned house. The station claims that the move will actually lead to more coverage of local arts groups.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Consider arts crowdfunding thoroughly kickstarted. Crowdfunding raised more than half a billion dollars for the performing and recording arts last year, almost 20% of the total money raised for all purposes through crowdfunding platforms, according to industry research. Lucy Bernholz is interested in investigating the small but increasing role U.S. foundations seem to be playing in driving this trend.
• Risë Wilson, the new Director of Philanthropy at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, makes the case – and offers a model – for arts grants as risk capital in an interview about the Foundation’s SEED grant program.
• Like many other downtowns, Philly’s is booming these days. But residential developer Carl Dranoff attributes the revitalization of the South Broad Street area to the Avenue of the Arts project, and insists that “anyone who says it would have happened anyway has a very short memory.”

IN THE FIELD

• In his coverage of last month’s 2013 Future of Music Summit for the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot describes a frustrated yet resolved music industry, “Music is generating a ridiculous amount of money, none of it flowing to the people who create it.” Check out the write-ups from day one and day two.
• Nina Simon responds to the backlash that her novel programming at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has generated in recent months locally and, to a lesser extent, nationally. The contention is that encouraging active participation so strongly erodes the traditional museum environment of quiet contemplation, distracting the MAH from its historical charge. Simon argues that the new approach allows for both kinds of experiences, while “balancing priorities, embracing creative tension, including diverse voices, and staying true to our mission.”

BIG IDEAS

• The ambitious Sustain Arts project aims to bring the wonders of Big Data to the cultural sector over the next three years, ultimately strengthening the nation’s cultural infrastructure. The first wave of work is happening now in the San Francisco and Detroit regions; Marc Vogl, Bay Area Field Director of the initiative, explains what he’s up to and how Bay Area folks can get involved.
• New Bonfils Stanton Foundation president Gary Steuer weighs in on the “is ‘innovation’ a nefarious buzz-word” debate (which is really the ongoing argument over how funders find the sweet spot of nurturing, not hindering, their grantees) and provides other thoughtful comments on the recent National Innovation Summit for Arts + Culture. (All 27 talks from the Summit, by the way, are now available online.)
• Google has launched Helpouts, a service that provides live on-demand chatting with experts in fields ranging from the arts to cooking and electronics. Udi Manber, VP of engineering, believes Helpouts will offer users a more “precise” mode of online learning.

RESEARCH CORNER

• WolfBrown is out with a multi-pronged report on how to engage college students in the performing arts. It includes case studies of best practices and a survey of student attitudes toward the performing arts across seven different schools.
• The Wallace Foundation has released new research on the challenges of after-school arts programs in low-income urban neighborhoods. The study draws on hundreds of interviews with young people, their families, program leaders and others to provide some answers, including ten principles for developing effective programming.
• More evidence that art therapy helps patients with Alzheimer’s.
• Elizabeth Merritt reviews a new report from European consultancy Arup on Museums in a Digital Age.
• The U.S. may be out of UNESCO, but the work continues: the international cultural agency and the United Nations Development Program have just released a Special Edition of the United Nations Creative Economy Report concluding that world trade of creative goods and services more than doubled from 2002 to 2011, to $624 billion. Unlike the 2008 and 2010 editions, many of the case studies and recommendations this time around focus on the role of culture in sustainable development at the local level, especially in poorer countries.
• So many charts, so little time! The Foundation Center has launched the eminently clickable Foundation Stats, where you can find “the answer to almost every basic statistical question about the collective work of U.S. Foundations.” Emphasis on the “basic” here, but as an added bonus the data is open and free. Meanwhile, A new report from the Foundation Center, Media Impact Funders, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation shows that foundations are stepping up in a big way to support traditional media organizations struggling to adjust to the digital age.
• As cultural asset mapping projects continue to gain popularity, this quick overview of where to get spatial data, and what you can do with it, is particularly timely. And speaking of cultural asset mapping, Philadelphia’s massive CultureBlocks initiative is barely six months out of the gate and there is already an academic paper on it.

• Twitter, Facebook, and now the Minnesota Orchestra: everyone’s going public these days. State legislators announced a bill last week to save the troubled ensemble and gauge public support for its continuation by making it “a community-owned entity in which any individual or group could buy stock.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Robert Vagt, the President of the Heinz Endowments, has announced his resignation, not long after two staff members were fired amidst controversy over Heinz’s support for the Center for Sustainable Shale Development. Vagt himself had faced criticism for his connections to the energy industry.
• Expanding his reach outside of the arts field, Americans for the Arts President & CEO Bob Lynch has been elected to Independent Sector’s Board of Directors.

IN THE FIELD

• Here’s an arts organization that talks about “combining resources” and sounds like it really means it: the Las Vegas Shakespeare Company is rebranding and revamping its building as the “Cultural Corridor Theater Center,” sharing its costume and scene shops with other companies and bringing in commercial tenants to boot.
• Fractured Atlas has launched Artful.ly, a cloud-based platform that helps artists and arts organizations sell tickets, take donations, and track their fans.
• Hoping to replicate the success of the Met Opera, London’s Royal Opera House is simulcasting a portion of its 2013-14 season in movie theaters across the United States.
• A new “due diligence” company has been founded to serve potential investors in art. The good news is you can hire The Art Compliance Company to verify the provenance of that Pollock you’ve been eyeing. The bad news is you may need to.
• DePauw University is making big changes to its music school with the help of a $15 million contribution used to establish the 21st Century Musician Initiative (21CM). DePauw hopes the new program will “better meet the needs of students entering a rapidly changing music industry.”
• Brooklyn-based community art center and co-working space 3rd Ward unexpectedly shuttered its doors last week, leaving artists and members without access to studios and supplies. Hyperallergic details its rise and fall of the financially troubled center and the sometimes “uneasy alliance between businessmen and the ‘creative communities’ they cultivate.”

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Chalk one up for data-driven grantmaking: after the First Peoples Fund issued a study showing that training in entrepreneurship and financial management makes a real difference to the economic self-sufficiency of Native artists (a category that includes nearly a third of Native people), the Northwest Area Foundation announced it will give $1m over three years to support a pilot of just this kind of intervention.
• Consultant Marc Vogl argues that more of the millions of philanthropic dollars donated by the tech industry in the Bay Area could make it to the arts with a slight change in tack from arts organizations.
• High demand and low supply have driven housing costs in San Francisco to extremes and sparked migration to places like Oakland. Both cities made the list of top ArtPlaces in 2013.

BIG IDEAS

• As the vaguely Soviet-sounding National Innovation Summit for Arts & Culture gets underway in Denver (attend virtually here), the arts blogosphere is abuzz with meditations on the “i” word. Howlround hosts a three-part series on the importance of organizational innovation; Isaac Butler one-ups them with what he claims will be a four-part series questioning that importance; and Culturebot has a six-part series problematizing the “innovation agenda.”
• Two thoughtful reflections on what could be lost as our cultural landscape is transformed by technology and commerce: Nancy Levinson on print vs digital and the fate of “serious” publishing, and Ben Davis on Big vs Small contemporary (visual) art and the fate of little galleries.
• The bookworms at Fractured Atlas are back with a review of Mission in a Bottle: The Honest Guide to Doing Business Differently – And Succeeding, by Honest Tea co-founders Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff (the latter of whom happened to be Ian’s entrepreneurship professor in business school).

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven has published a data-driven overview of the state of the nonprofit sector in the area, compiling information from the Nonprofit Finance Fund’s State of the Sector report; the Foundation’s own giveGreater database; IRS data; and survey results.
• Major players like JSTOR and the University of California system are starting to offer low-cost or even free access to academic articles and research.
• Charity Navigator released findings from an in-depth study of CEO salaries at 3,929 mid- to large-sized charities around the U.S. On average, a CEO earns about $125,000 annually and Charity Navigator cautions donors to “be skeptical of charities that pay salaries hovering near or above one million dollars.”
• If you feel like studies on the “creative economy” have been all the rage, you’re right. At least 27 reports on the topic were released between 2003 and 2012, and The National Creativity Network went ahead and analyzed them. Seems like we’re all defining the creative economy/industries in slightly different ways, and while “a case for a national data-based definition of the creative economy can begin to be constructed,” we’re more interested in focusing on our own specific regions.
• Researchers examining an 1814 change in British copyright law have determined that extending copyright protections caused payments to authors to nearly double.
• This nifty study on novelty in film from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York suggests that creativity in film peaked in the 1960s, following the demise of the “Big Five” studio system.
• WolfBrown has published a summary of its four-year evaluation of a New World Symphony initiative to develop new concert formats appealing to younger, inexperienced, and more diverse classical audiences.
• Media Impact Funders has released a new report exploring the in-house media efforts of cultural organizations and the funding that supports it. The report, Molto + Media; Digital Culture Funding, profiles nine organizations including Fractured Atlas and Sundance Institute and summarizes funding trends.
• The Future of Music Coalition scours the NEA’s new Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (which we covered in the last edition of Around the Horn) and finds that music has avoided the declines in participation seen in other genres, with nearly a third of all adults attending a musical performance last year.
• Speaking of FMC, a new survey suggests that artists are uninsured at twice the national average and, when they do have insurance, as six times as likely as others to pay for it themselves. All the more reason to get the exchanges working…
• A chorale a day keeps the gerontologist away? Building on previous studies on the benefits to older people of singing in choirs – among other quality-of-life indicators, “choir membership can also reduce snoring, ease emphysema, [and] soothe irritable bowel syndrome” – the NIH is funding a five-year clinical trial in San Francisco.

Research Fellow, Fractured Atlas

Does Big Data give you big chills? Do you have long conversations with family members about hypothesis testing? Are you considering getting a causation vs. correlation tattoo? Then you might be just the kind of nerd we’re looking for. Fractured Atlas is accepting applications for a Summer 2013 Research Fellowship. We’re seeking individuals with a background or interest in the arts who are prepared to bring hard-nosed quantitative analysis skills to creative and strategic challenges in our field.

Deadline: May 6.

Intrinsic Impact Program Manager, WolfBrown

The Intrinsic Impact Program Manager is a new full-time position that will oversee the national rollout of WolfBrown’s Intrinsic Impact product line. This is both a sales and client service position, with a focus on marketing and sales to arts organizations who wish to license and use WolfBrown’s proprietary impact assessment tools. The position will report to Alan Brown, principal of WolfBrown, and will collaborate daily with other WolfBrown staff in a highly integrated work environment. Preferred candidates must be able to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area, although we will consider alternative situations for extraordinarily qualified applicants. This is a highly entrepreneurial position for a gregarious, early-career individual with a track record of successful marketing and communications work.

Deadline: May 13. This is the slickest job announcement I’ve ever seen – it has its own microsite!

Program Director, Carmago Foundation

The Camargo Foundation, a private, tax-exempt operating foundation chartered in the United States and operating in Cassis, France, seeks a full-time Program Director. Founded in 1969 by artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill (1905-1972), The Camargo Foundation operates a residential and cultural center in Cassis, France, to advance the work of scholars and artists from around the world.  The Foundation supports a residency program for scholars in the humanities and social sciences working on projects related to French and francophone cultures and for artists creating innovative work in all disciplines.  It also welcomes group residencies, seminars, conferences, workshops, and festivals.  The Foundation provides contemplative and interactive time and space for residents and visitors. The Program Director of the Camargo Foundation is responsible for managing the program of the Foundation to fulfill its mission, current and evolving.  The Program Director works with the Administrative Manager and other staff, handles administrative duties, and reports to the President of the Camargo and Jerome Foundations.

Deadline: May 15.

General Manager, Stonehenge

For the first time in its 5,000-year history, the owners of Stonehenge are seeking a general manager, whose responsibilities will include liaising with Druid leaders and maintaining the “dignity of the stones”. Only the “brightest and the best” need apply for the £65,000-a-year job to manage the famous attraction, which draws Druids and daytrippers to the prehistoric monument each year.

Deadline: May 5. Yeah, it’s a little outside the Createquity wheelhouse, but c’mon, it’s Stonehenge!

• Two bills under consideration by Congress would adjust the music licensing rates paid by internet streaming radio services like Rdio, MOG, and Spotify to match what cable and satellite providers pay.

IN THE FIELD

• Artists often neglect to realize that crowdfunding campaign money isn’t free – in addition to the fees you have to pay Kickstarter or one of its competitors like Indiegogo or RocketHub, the perks offered to donors often cost money as well. This handy web toy from Reuben Pressman helps you think through how much money you really need to raise if you’re thinking about starting a Kickstarter campaign (or really any crowdfunding operation).
• Still not seeing a ton of post-recession nonprofit mergers, but here’s one in New York City: the Urban Arts Partnership has acquired the operations of the Manhattan New Music Project, which had recently won several large Department of Education grants for arts residencies for special-needs students.
• Nina Simon takes on public voting for winners in art competitions, noting that only a small percentage of those eligible actually take the time to vote. She sees positive implications for engagement but possibly negative ones for artistic integrity; I see further evidence for the need for a hybrid approach.
• Typical: just as games (including video games) are being touted as the next big new thing in arts circles, in the rest of the world their business model is collapsing.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Barry Hessenius has a short interview with Regina Smith, Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the Kresge Foundation and Board Chair of Grantmakers in the Arts.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Creative placemaking giant ArtPlace has been busy lately. Now accepting applications for its third round of grants (letters of inquiry are due tomorrow, November 1 UPDATE: deadline has been extended to Monday, November 5), the funding collaborative released a short thought piece detailing thirteen “principles for successful creative placemaking” in late summer.  And earlier this month, ArtPlace “soft launched” its vibrancy indicators, a research effort accompanying its two-rounds-and-counting of creative placemaking grants. While the indicators aren’t totally done yet – data points covering value creation and racial/economic diversity have yet to be fully defined or published, and a promised website showing vibrancy in various corners of the country has not yet materialized – these two documents provide the most detail available to date on ArtPlace’s efforts to understand and measure creative placemaking. Andrew Taylor and Linda Essig offer initial reviews, and stay tuned to this space for more in-depth analysis from a special guest.
• The fall issue of the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader has a very interesting feature taking a look back at historical research studies that, in the opinion of guest editor Alexis Frasz, deserve a second look. One of the studies in question is a re-release of 1988’s “Autopsy of an Orchestra: An Analysis of the Factors Contributing to the Bankruptcy of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Association” by Melanie Beene, Patricia Mitchell, and Fenton Johnson, now available for the first time in digital format. Each study comes with two responses, one from an “established” and one from an “emerging” grantmaker. Other studies (re)considered include Gifts of the Muse (Createquity’s take here), “Art and Culture in Communities: Unpacking Participation,” “Crossover: How Artists Build Careers Across Commercial, Nonprofit and Community Work,” and “Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning.”
• WolfBrown researcher Jennifer Novak-Leonard declares crowdfunding the fourth mode of arts participation (the other three being arts creation/performance, arts engagement through media, and attendance at arts events). Quoth she: “I also suggest that this information [about the relationship between crowdfunding activity and other modes of arts participation] would be valuable to each of the platforms currently helping crowd-funding grow and thrive. This is a shameless pitch to these platforms to engage in dialogue with me about how to get this research effort underway… ideally in a timeframe that would inform and expand the conversations that will begin in 2013 as we begin to see the results from the 2012 [Survey of Public Participation in the Arts].”
• The Foundation Center’s march toward establishing a data standard for grants continues, with 15 foundations now having signed on to share their grants data publicly via the Glasspockets website. Among the arts supporters participating in the initiative are the Annenberg, Getty, Hewlett, MacArthur, and Rockefeller Foundations.
• The UK’s Mark Robinson offers his take on the NEA’s new “system map” and research agenda, “How Art Works.”
• Cool social network visualization here: the Seattle Band Map illustrates connections between musical acts via shared band members or project collaborations.
• Direct mail advertising campaigns are getting a bad rap, and research shows that they’re surprisingly effective at reaching consumers, says TRG’s Will Lester.
• William Baumol has a new book out summarizing his decades of thinking on cost disease. Joe Patti has more.
• “Back in 2001, when it started, economists would not have predicted Wikipedia’s success; nor can they really explain it now.“
• Great Q&A with Nate Silver (one of my blog heroes) about his upcoming book about forecasting. A couple of choice quotes:
  

  Q. When predictions involve human ‘systems’ & behavior (social, economic, political etc) that are by their very nature ‘adaptive’, how do you deal with the tricky “Heisenberg Principle” — like effect where the very act of predicting itself becomes a factor that adds information that alters the system and influences individual and/or collective behavior? –John

  A. This is a gigantic problem. In the book, we discuss how consumers, politicians, and businesses make plans based on economic forecasts that can have a host of problems. We also look at how this manifests in disease modeling. If you accurately forecast a very bad flu, it may cause people to stay home, which is good but cancels your forecast. But, the forecast served its purpose because it made people aware of their circumstances.

  and

  Q. What’s your assessment of economics as a discipline, judged in terms of its ability to make politically useful predictions? For example, can economists predict with any reliability what the economic impact of a tax cut or a government spending program will be? –Dan Schroeder

  A. The view of macroeconomic prediction in the book is pretty harsh. Economists have shown no real ability to predict a recession more than six months out. See the Wall Street Journal panel that predicted there would be no recession in December, 2007. It’s hard to measure the economy. Revisions can be as substantial as 5% in some quarters. Therefore, it is hard to predict and judge what the right policy is and what the implications of any policy are. So, we should be skeptical of anyone who predicts the impact of policy with a high degree of certainty. Humility is key.

SUMMARY

WolfBrown’s 2008 Cultural Engagement in California’s Inland Regions, commissioned by The James Irvine Foundation and written by Alan Brown and Jennifer Novak (now known as Jennifer Novak-Leonard) with Amy Kitchener, aims to provide a broad view of how residents in California’s Inland Empire and Central Valley regions engage with the arts. These regions are similar to many parts of the U.S. that boomed during the aughts and were subsequently hit hardest by the 2008 recession. The Inland Empire (San Bernardino and Riverside counties) blends slowly east from metropolitan Los Angeles and Orange counties to the mountains and desert, and is a rare region of cheap housing in Southern California. Meanwhile, the Central Valley makes up a huge geographic area that includes the cities of Bakersfield, Fresno, and Modesto, the majority of California’s farmland, and a growing cadre of commuters to job hubs like Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. Despite the recession, they continue to be rated the fastest-growing regions in California, and are home to approximately 10.5 million residents out of the state’s 38 million.

This study diverges from previous research on arts engagement in that it explores a much wider array of formal and informal settings for the arts, and more forms of participation. The home, churches, parks, and other community spaces are measured against museums, theaters, and concert halls, and the authors also start to look at activities like stitchery, social dancing, and digital photography. Differences among racial/ethnic cohorts, ages, and education levels are also parsed.

WolfBrown divided the study into two phases. In Phase 1, researchers under the supervision of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts conducted an initial door-to-door survey of 150-200 randomly-selected households in each of three Fresno area neighborhoods and three San Bernardino/Riverside neighborhoods, for a total of 1,066 households surveyed. The results from this phase were used primarily to develop hypotheses and to cross-check data from Phase 2, a non-random sample of approximately 5,000 respondents who were surveyed for the “California Cultural Census” via online and on-the-ground intercept surveys at cultural events. Phase 2, the primary focus of the Cultural Engagement study, isolated data from four racial/ethnic cohorts (White, Non-Hispanic; African-American, Non-Hispanic; Hispanic; and Native American, Non-Hispanic) and five focus samples (Hmong; Culturally-Active Latinos; African-American Faith-Based; Latino Faith-Based; and Mexican Farm Workers). Finally, the data was also viewed through the lens of Alan Brown’s five modes of arts participation below, a framework developed for a previous study on behalf of the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.

Cultural Engagement’s major finding is that the home is a hugely important setting for arts and cultural activities across genres, and yet funders and nonprofit service providers have completely overlooked it as an arts space. Other “alternative” spaces loom large: places of worship, parks, and community centers figure prominently across genres as locations for artmaking and creativity. The wide variety of venues parallels the study’s documentation of the immense range of artistic activities. In several instances, racial/ethnic identity resulted in significant variances in venue and type of participation; I’ll highlight some of this specific data.

The responses to questions regarding arts venues revealed the significance of alternative venues for several of the genres investigated: music, theater and drama, dance, and visual arts and crafts. Two genres, reading/writing and what the authors term the “living arts” (which involve a range of informal/amateur activities like preparing traditional foods, gardening, or taking photographs) were not surveyed for venue variation, presumably because the study’s authors assumed those activities take place outside formal venues by nature. Some of the more interesting findings here include:

• The home ranks as the most common location for three of the four arts genres measured: music (70%), dance (34%), and visual arts activities (51%). Eleven percent of respondents said theater activities took place at home, and a range of alternative venues were ranked similarly.
• The Internet is a significant venue for music activities. Thirty percent of the total adult population experience music online, and 46% of 18-24 year-olds download music, a sign that the figures for online engagement will continue to grow (and have undoubtedly already done so since the publishing of Cultural Engagement in 2008). Visual arts show the next highest online activity level at a relatively low 8%.
• Traditional venues still hold power. The theater ranks as the best-used venue type for drama activities (31%), museums and galleries second-highest for visual arts (26%), and theater and concert facilities third-highest for music (32%, about the same as the Internet).

Within the broader venue results, a number of variations by race/ethnicity also surfaced:

• Different racial/ethnic cohorts show a preference for certain types of venues. African Americans tend to prefer places of worship as venues across genre, with the exception of visual art. Hispanics and Native Americans are twice as likely as whites and African Americans to use nontraditional spaces for theater, likely in part because they also practice informal dramatic activities (like acting out stories) more frequently. The home dominates as a setting for dance activities for non-white populations (38-47%), compared to only 18% of white populations taking part in dance activities at home.
• Racial/ethnic differences in participation exist for reading and writing activities. For example, three quarters of whites reported reading books or poetry for pleasure, compared to 45-55% for the other three racial/ethnic groups.

Responses to a series of open-ended questions on active arts participation (inventive and interpretive on the Five Modes of Arts Participation scale) demonstrated an incredibly wide variety of activities within each genre. For instance, musical instruments played include the autoharp, beatbox, computer, and gamelan; theater/drama activities include improv theater, skits, and Renaissance Faires; and arts and crafts activities include scrap-booking, woodworking, and creating floral arrangements.

Brown and Novak note that this variety might point to the increasing fragmentation of artistic tastes, and also describe some findings that indicate unfulfilled interest in arts participation in a number of genres:

• Approximately a fifth of adults have some music background, but are no longer active, about as many as are currently active. The authors argue that this finding may show a reservoir of unfulfilled interest in musical participation.
• In the visual arts, 19% indicated an interest in visiting museums and galleries more frequently, and a massive 49% would like to take part in more participatory activities like painting, making quilts, or taking a class.
• While one third of respondents dance socially, the same number wanted to take dance lessons, more than in other genres. (Only 16% indicated an interest in music lessons, for example.)
• Eleven percent of respondents reported an interest in taking part in a book club, in contrast to 6% who currently do it.

As with the venue measures, the data for participation and unfulfilled interest in participation reveal some significant disparities by race/ethnicity and education levels:

• Respondents without college degrees showed higher levels of interest in inventive and interpretive modes of participation. The authors note that most public and private investment tends to focus on observational modes of engagement, and support the idea of expanding funding for the more active forms.
• Hispanics and Native Americans showed high levels of unfulfilled interest in informal/participatory theater and dance activities compared to whites and African Americans, who indicated a much greater interest in observational engagement.
• Spanish-speakers have a higher level of unfulfilled interest in reading, versus 20% for whites (who, according to the study, presumably don’t speak Spanish as their primary language).
• Within visual arts and crafts, the Hispanic cohort reported the highest level of interest in making quilts and other types of needlework at 21%, with even higher levels seen in the Hmong (34%) and Mexican farmworker (48%) focus samples.

Finally, to ensure as broad a coverage of participatory arts activities as possible, Cultural Engagement included questions addressing what Brown and Novak term the “living arts.” Living arts, in the authors’ estimation, are activities that are potentially undertaken without artistic intent, do not necessitate formal education or expensive materials, fall outside activities typically labeled as “art,” and may involve easily-accessible digital tools. The list of activities they wanted to include, but could not due to limits in the study scope, is instructive: body decoration like tattooing and hair weaving, a longer list of culinary and food preparation activities like cake decorating, engagement in genealogy, more writing activities, a more detailed breakdown of digital imaging activities, and various forms of household decoration. What they were able to include, however, indicates strong engagement in several “living arts” forms:

• Sixty-four percent watch movies, a level of engagement only exceeded by figures for listening to music on the radio and reading newspapers and magazines, and 52% of those surveyed take photographs. In both cases, whites were somewhat more likely to do so than other racial/ethnic cohorts. Forty-two percent prepare traditional foods, with relatively even participation across racial and ethnic groups.
• Twenty-nine percent reported gardening or landscaping activities, an activity most popular among whites (42%) and Native Americans (41%).
• Fifteen percent reported making videos, an activity least popular among whites (11%), with the other three racial/ethnic cohorts showing about 20% participation.

ANALYSIS

Overall, Cultural Engagement both challenges the traditional arts infrastructure and provides encouragement for the expansion of arts services to traditionally underserved places. The data shows that a great deal of arts engagement falls well outside the traditional boundaries of arts nonprofits; at the same time, it also indicates relatively high levels of unfulfilled interest in the activities currently provided by these organizations. However, the fact that the study relies heavily on a non-random sample of people already interested in the arts makes it difficult to extrapolate conclusions to the wider population, undermining one of the study’s five major goals. In addition, surprising results for some of the racial/ethnic cohorts indicate some interesting opportunities for further analysis.

Brown and Novak reason that the use of two data collection phases–the smaller, randomized sample from Phase 1, and the larger, non-randomized sample from Phase 2–allows them to eliminate a great deal of pro-arts bias from the report. Indeed, most of the questions from the two phases are nearly the same, and one might assume that the Phase 2 dataset is strengthened by similar results in Phase 1. They also weighted the Phase 2 data according to known characteristics of the surveyed counties in an attempt to eliminate potential bias. However, a close look at the report raises questions as to how effective these strategies ultimately were in eliminating pro-arts bias from the study.

First, the randomized Phase 1 component may include some pro-arts bias of its own, weakening its usefulness as a control. Brown and Novak mention in quite a few places that the door-to-door Phase 1 survey asked the respondent to reply in reference to any adult in the household, not simply him/herself. It’s unclear whether this instruction led people to respond for multiple arts participants as a single person with a high level of arts interest (as in the case of a someone who plays an instrument, but lives with a brother who attends plays), and if WolfBrown researchers accounted for this issue by filling out multiple forms for each represented person. In addition, even though data collection was attempted from a randomized sample pool, the respondent set might have suffered from some selection bias—the report refers to some difficulty in attaining cooperation from neighborhood residents, and in one neighborhood researchers had to abandon efforts to conduct door-to-door surveys and send mail-reply questionnaires instead. Those who did respond may have had more of an interest in the arts than those who did not.

Second, some of the Phase 2 results don’t stack up with arts participation figures from the NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), which does use a random sample. While most of WolfBrown’s measures cannot be compared with those in the SPPA, many that do show significantly higher levels of activity. For instance, 30% of Cultural Engagement respondents said they “regularly” attend stage plays; only 12.5% of SPPA respondents in the Pacific region claim to have done so even once in the past year. Six percent of Cultural Engagement respondents perform dances, but just 2.1% of Pacific region SPPA respondents do. Meanwhile, 14% of Phase 2 respondents indicated they earn some income from their art, a data point that was not collected in Phase 1 or in the SPPA. This figure strongly suggests pro-arts bias, since the NEA’s estimate of 2.3 million full- and part-time arts workers in the United States represents only about 1.5% of the total labor force.

The survey bias may significantly undermine one of the five goals of the study, to “measure levels of cultural engagement, broadly defined” in the Inland Empire and Central Valley. Given that both Phase 1 and Phase 2 display signs of pro-arts bias, it’s difficult to take the reported levels of overall cultural engagement at face value. The four other goals don’t require as broad a view of the data, and Cultural Engagement serves them much better. They include exploring and defining what arts engagement means for the target regions; understanding differences in engagement across demographic cohorts; investigating the settings in which people engage with the arts; and developing recommendations for how Irvine can more effectively support arts and culture. Even if the report’s numbers for the general public represent an already arts-interested population, results showing an expansive definition of arts and culture, differences in engagement among racial/ethnic cohorts, and a wide variety of arts settings are likely relatively unaffected. WolfBrown’s recommendations to adjust Irvine’s funding to reflect these findings seem to rest on a fairly strong foundation.

The results for two subgroups merit further exploration in future studies: the Asian/Pacific Islander ethnic group and the Mexican farmworker focus sample. Surprisingly, the researchers were not able to survey enough Asian/Pacific Islander respondents to include them as an independent racial/ethnic cohort, other than the Hmong focus sample, despite the fact that Asian/Pacific Islander residents make up a significant population group in many surveyed counties. Because the Hmong are a minority ethnic group in several Southeast Asian countries, and maintain a unique set of traditions and cultural activities, it is potentially misleading to rely on the focus sample results to describe the tendencies of larger, mainline Asian populations in California.

The Mexican farmworker focus sample results were reported along with all other subgroups, parsed by arts activity and mode of engagement. Looked at as a single group, however, a number of surprisingly high engagement results indicate that this cohort may be ripe territory for further, more detailed study. They report higher arts engagement than the general Hispanic population in several areas:

• A much higher frequency of reading books or poetry for pleasure, at 68%, compared to the general Hispanic population, at 49%.
• A higher level of participation in many dance activities, including performing dances as part of a group (28% vs. Hispanic population at 6%), going to community ethnic or folk dances (28% vs. 13%), and social dancing at night clubs or parties (65% vs. 42%).
• In the visual art sphere, 48% responded that they make quilts or engage in other needlework, vs. 21% of the wider Hispanic population.
• In the living arts, they also reported by far the strongest participation among all focus samples or racial/ethnic cohorts for almost every category: 32% reported making videos, 42% design clothes, 77% prepare traditional foods, and 49% garden or landscape.

IMPLICATIONS

Cultural Engagement takes a big step toward recognizing the multitude of ways in which people engage with the arts. By including activities like preparing traditional foods, making videos, home decorating, and social dancing, the study expands the definition of an arts activity to include almost anything that involves some level of creativity on the part of the participant. The living arts section, in particular, hints at the massive range of activities that could conceivably be considered art. In light of the pro-am revolution, amateur and hybrid forms will likely continue to come to the fore.

Cultural Engagement records high levels of unfulfilled interest across a wide range of activities and racial/ethnic cohorts, but because no questions were included asking why people don’t participate as much as they want, we are left to speculate. Some sections of the report seem to imply that if only arts organizations can provide the right kinds of services, the one third of adults who desire dance lessons will come around. But why haven’t they already? Arts organizations might be tempted to dramatically re-imagine the types of activities they support on a broad scale, but perhaps it’s of more utility to think about how to expand their work to include amateurs without losing focus. For instance, an organization might move to support amateur drama activities by providing a venue free of charge, or send budding visual arts curators to tour decorators’ homes and provide advice to help them realize their visions. At the same time, if a gardening-specific arts organization appears, perhaps funders should consider supporting it, rather than rejecting it for falling outside traditional guidelines.

The James Irvine Foundation has responded to the results of Cultural Engagement with a few funding initiatives. Most recently, it created the statewide Exploring Engagement Fund, designed as risk capital to help nonprofit arts organizations produce programs outside traditional venues, for underserved audiences, and better utilize participatory forms. The foundation also cites the Inland Empire and Central Valley as priority regions, thereby aiding the growth of arts organizations within these communities. Irvine recently announced its first round of grantees, which includes support for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics’s effort to launch a new format for traveling exhibitions, Memoir Journal’s memoir-writing workshops hosted in nontraditional venues, and many other projects focused on experimenting with new forms of engagement.

But there’s plenty of room to discuss how to expand on Irvine’s work. Given that so many arts activities take place outside of the nonprofit arts, it’s worth considering how other foundations might support these activities more directly. For instance, a funder could create a micro-grant program directed towards things like book clubs, online video production, in-home crafting and decorating groups, or community-based folk dancers. This type of program would certainly seem risky from a foundation perspective, but what grantees lack in institutional knowledge regarding funder requirements, they might make up for in direct community connection and authenticity. Programs that expand funding eligibility beyond traditional 501(c)(3) organizations would allow foundations to respond more nimbly to an arts landscape that continues to grow more diffuse with every passing year.

Further Reading

• WolfBrown, Philadelphia Cultural Engagement Index, 2009
• Kelly Dylla, Arts Policy Library: 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, Createquity, 2012
• Diane Ragsdale, A New Conversation About Culture, Grantmakers In the Arts Reader, 2009
• Andrew Taylor, The Audience Around Us, ArtsJournal, 2009

Between 2009 and 2011, arts participation “increased” from 35% of the population to nearly 75%. Clearly we should have witnessed a paradigm shift in the arts comparable to the Renaissance in these two years, but sadly that’s not what happened. Instead, the National Endowment for the Arts, faced with a mountain of disappointing news about the rates of participation in its 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), commissioned 3 separate monographs and wrote several notes of their own to explain the data, which led to a broadened definition of arts participation that covers three-quarters of the population. Because the SPPA data has been discussed in numerous other research documents and blogs, I will keep the summary of the original report to the most highlighted bullet points and spend more time outlining the history of the analysis.

SUMMARY

The SPPA has been conducted five times by the by the NEA since 1982 in partnership with the United States Census Bureau (with the exception of the 1997 survey, which was administered by a private research firm and is not comparable to other years). The report presents detailed findings from the 2008 SPPA alongside data from prior years. To allow data to be compared with previous years, the survey questions remain relatively stable.

The survey tracks the following kinds of participation:

• Attending arts events
• Experiencing recorded or broadcasted live performances
• Exploring arts through the Internet
• Personally performing or creating art
• Taking arts-related classes

The key indicator for participation for this and all previous versions of the SPPA is attendance at “benchmark“ events:  jazz, classical music, opera, musical plays, non-musical plays, ballet, and visits to art museums or galleries. In addition to the core benchmark activities, four modules within the survey included questions about internet and other media use, arts learning, reading, and leisure activities. To increase the response rate for the 2008 SPPA, respondents were only asked about 2 of the 4 modules. New questions focused on Latin Music, attendance at outdoor festivals, and technology. Sections on trips away from home and desire to attend more events were dropped. The response rate was 82%, for a total of 18,444 adults interviewed over two weeks in May 2008 by phone.

The report itself describes the results as “disappointing.” The percentage of adults attending at least one benchmark arts activity declined from 39% in 2002 to less than 35% in 2008, the largest drop recorded in any survey interval. Just as striking is the long-term trend; participation levels never dipped below 39% since the first survey in 1982 and even rose in 1992 when participation reached 41%. Exceptions to the recent declines are musical plays and art museums, which are both flat from the 2002 SPPA, as well as literary reading, which is also up from 2002.

Attendance at Benchmark Activities

In contrast to the population more generally, most audiences at benchmark activities held at least a college degree and/or pulled in an annual income of $75,000 or greater. Latin music, outdoor performing arts festivals, and art museums drew younger audiences than other genres, while arts and craft festivals, parks and historic sites, and jazz were more successful in reaching lower- and middle-income audiences. These profiles may not be surprising, but what has people concerned is that those aged 45 to 54, historically a large component of arts audiences, showed the steepest declines in attendance, and even the most educated Americans are attending benchmark activities less often than reported in earlier surveys. One possible factor is the economy, which had been in a recession for six months at the time of the survey. This might help explain findings that low-cost, low-travel activities such as researching art over the internet and reading rose compared to the previous survey.

Arts Creation, Performance, and Learning

Since 1982, the number of adults reporting that they had taken arts lessons at any time in their lives has been declining, and substantially fewer young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 have had lessons. For example, in 1982 61% reported having had music lessons of some kind, but only 38% reported the same in 2008.

However, the study shows some forms of participation and creation on the rise, with 10% of respondents reporting participating in at least one of the art forms within the past 12 months. Singing in a choir or vocal group drew the most participants, with 11.6 million adults, or 5.2% of the population, participating. Photography and film‐making increased from 12% in 2002 to nearly 15% of all adults.  Classical music performance or creation increased to 3.1%, after falling to 1.8% in 2002 from 1992 levels  (almost all forms of creating and performing dipped between 1992 and 2002). On the other hand, dancing, weaving/sewing, and pottery/ceramics continued to see long-term declines.

Media Participation

More Americans engage with performances through broadcasts or recordings through radio, internet or other electronic media than attend live arts events. Overall, 41% of adults watched, listened, or explored the arts through some form of electronic media, and the total number of adults watching or listening through broadcast media is double the number that attend performances. Only live theater still attracts more audiences than broadcasts or recordings of its equivalent, not including television or movies. Online, 39% of all Internet‐using adults, or 62 million Americans, viewed, listened to, downloaded, or posted artworks or performance at least once a week. (Keep in mind that this study was conducted four years ago.)

State and Regional Patterns

There are regional differences in how communities choose to participate in the arts. For example, the New England and Pacific regions reported high levels of attendance at most benchmark activities. The East South Central region, which includes Kentucky down to Alabama, reported the lowest participation rates in benchmark activities, but also showed the highest participation rates in choral singing.

History of Analysis

Soon after reviewing the SPPA results, the NEA commissioned independent researchers to mine the SPPA data for details on the following topics: arts education; the personal performance and creation of artworks; and the relationship between age and arts participation.

Case against Demographic Destiny

In Age and Arts Participation: A Case Against Demographic Destiny, Mark J. Stern of the University of Pennsylvania reports that it’s not the audiences that are greying, it’s our country. It’s true that Generation X and Millenials are participating in benchmark events at lower rates in their young adulthood than previous generations. But overall, age and generational cohort accounts for less than 1% of the variance of the total number of arts events that Americans attended between 1982- 2008. Other influences, particularly educational attainment, have a much stronger role in explaining arts participation. Although WWII and Baby Boomer generations do attend a broader array of benchmark events and attend more often, Stern argues that younger generations also have an appetite for diverse arts experiences and that “the ability of established or emerging arts groups to attract participants will have less to do with the age distribution of the population than with their ability to connect to the creative aspirations of their potential audiences.”

Beyond Attendance

WolfBrown’s Beyond Attendance: A Multi-Modal Understanding of Arts Participation suggests that the current participation numbers do not accurately reflect how Americans are choosing to participate in the arts. Using a broader definition of arts participation, Jennifer Novak-Leonard and Alan Brown conclude that three out of four Americans participate in arts activities. The new definition includes a fuller variety of artistic genres, including participation via electronic media, and personal arts creation. Interestingly, approximately 23% of U.S. adults participate in the arts, but do not attend arts events or institutions in person, suggesting there is an opportunity for arts organizations to engage communities through arts creation and performance without expecting that they will ever attend a performance or exhibition at a traditional venue. Finally, although arts attendance at benchmark activities has declined, rates of arts creation have remained stable at 41% between 2002 and 2008. This stable rate is sustained by the increase of online participation.

Arts Education in America

Nick Rabkin and E.C. Hedberg from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) conclude in Arts Education in America: What the Declines Mean for Arts Participation that the most significant predictive factor for arts attendance at benchmark activities is arts education, rather than educational attainment or income. While it is not surprising that adults enrolled in art classes or lessons are most likely to have also participated in benchmark arts activities, it is important to note that most Americans who had arts education as an adult also had had arts education as a child. It’s clear from the data that childhood arts education has been declining over time, and Rabkin and Hedberg argue that reversing this decline will be necessary if arts education is to play a significant role in stemming the erosion of adult arts participation. Perhaps most notably, the report suggests that we need to know more about what kinds of arts education experiences inspire people to continue participating in the arts as adults.

NEA Research Notes and Audience 2.0

Three research notes and an additional research report from the NEA further analyze the geographic, community, and technological contexts of arts participation.

The first research note, “Art-Goers In Their Communities,” reports that Americans who attend arts performances, visit art museums or galleries, or read literature are particularly active members of their communities. For example, while more than half of adults who attended art museums or live arts events volunteered in the past year, only a third of the general population did so.  While it’s not possible to draw a causal inference based on this observation, it suggests that arts, literary, sports, and civic organizations may benefit from the creation of innovative partnerships to reach a larger shared audience.

The second note, “State and Regional Differences in Arts Participation: A Geographic Analysis of the 2008 SPPA,” takes an in-depth look at the regional differences already explored in the original report, including a detailed analysis for 32 states. For example, Oregon consistently ranks among the highest in attendance of the performing arts, including opera, jazz and classical music concerts.  Nebraska ranks high in the number of adults pursuing creative writing.

“Come as You Are: Informal Arts Participation in Urban and Rural Communities” focuses on the differences in participation patterns between rural and urban areas. The analysis reinforces the finding that arts participation in benchmark activities is greater in urban areas, but when “informal arts” (arts activities that are self-initiated, community-based, and often occur in homes, schools, and churches) are added to the mix, urban and rural areas participate at the same rates.  In addition, the study found that arts participation does not increase with metropolitan size beyond 250,000 people.

Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation reported that people who engage with art through media technologies are two to three times more likely to attend a benchmark activity.  Older adults, rural, and  minority groups are more likely to use media technologies to access certain art forms  than attend a live event. For example, more than half of Latinos used electronic media to engage with Latin music, and 20% of African Americans, more than any other ethnic group, used media to explore jazz.

Other Perspectives and Reactions

In 2009, the League of American Orchestras conducted its own study with McKinsey and reversed a long-held assumption that audiences will replenish themselves. The League’s “Audience Demographic Research Review” confirmed that participation is declining within and between generations and “we cannot assume that people will attend more as they enter the 45+ age group.”

Also in 2009, the NEA publicized a press release that used the survey results to declare the success of its Big Read literacy program.  For the first time in the survey’s history, literary reading increased from 46.7% in 2002 to 50.2% in the 2008.  Then Endowment Chairman Diana Gioia remarked in the press release that “this dramatic turnaround shows that the many programs now focused on reading, including our own Big Read, are working. Cultural decline is not inevitable.”

ANALYSIS

The SPPA’s high response rate (82%) and large sample size makes it the most reliable and representative longitudinal audience survey available to us. Because longitudinal analysis has been so essential to the implications of the data, though, it is worth taking a second look at the methodology from a historical perspective.  The first three surveys were conducted as a supplement to the Census Bureau’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and the 1997 edition was conducted by a private consulting firm as a standalone survey. It was only starting in 2002 that the Bureau conducted the SPPA a supplement to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS), and although both the NCVS and CPS are based on a random sample of households, the two sampling designs do differ.  However, the impact of these differences have already been measured by the Census Bureau.

Other differences should be noted when comparing the surveys. Earlier surveys were conducted in person, rather than over the phone. This could increase the rate of affirmative answers as people may be more inclined to try to please the interviewer than over the phone. Furthermore, some earlier versions were conducted over a period of a year, rather than just a few weeks, which could impact either seasonality of attendance. Lastly, the fact that spouses or partners were used to collect data in 2008 could contribute to slightly more erratic attendance reporting (if spouses inaccurately report frequency). Taken individually, these are only minor differences, but collectively, could all of these changes lead to lower  reported rates of attendance? Possibly, yet it seems likely that all of these minor differences can be taken into account in a detailed statistical analysis and that there is very little, if any, impact on the participation numbers.

Given the strong correlation between arts education and participation, it would be helpful if the questions surrounding early arts experiences could be further developed. In Arts Education in America, Rabkin and Hedberg highlight that “participants were not asked about the depth, intensity, or longevity of their study in the arts, nor were they asked about their subjective experiences — how much they enjoyed or cared about learning in and about the arts. Private weekly piano lessons for 10 years and recorder lessons in a class of 30 second-graders for a few months are equivalent in SPPA data and recorded as childhood music education, provided that those experiences are remembered and reported.” Future versions of the survey might address this deficiency by asking about respondents’ early arts experiences in more depth.

It’s surprising that actually the reverse has occurred – arts education questions have been eliminated as others were added to keep the survey at a manageable length. Eliminated questions asked about arts lessons during specific age brackets and about in-school vs. out-of-school learning. Although Sunil Iyengar points to the Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) for K-12 arts education as a tool for learning more about arts learning in the country, it doesn’t help us to cross-tabulate early education experiences with adult participation.

IMPLICATIONS

Given the “disappointing” results of the 2008 SPPA, should we be as concerned as we are about the future of the arts?  With the exception of museums and musical plays, attendance is declining, subscriptions are down, and ultimately sustainability is in question for arts organizations large and small.  This year’s Americans for the Arts Convention was titled “The New Normal,” suggesting the financial difficulties artists and art institutions currently face won’t disappear with an uptick in the economy.  As the 2008 SPPA research notes and monographs point out, current trends in arts attendance are beyond the scapegoats of demography or the economy.  It seems these downward trends in attendance stem from deep changes in how we choose to engage not only with the arts, but  nearly all kinds of information, entertainment, and culture.

The flip side of The New Normal is that other kinds of arts participation, including active participation and engagement through technology, are at least remaining stable, and photography and filmmaking are showing significant increases. Furthermore, it’s important to note that more Americans engage with performances through broadcasts or recordings than attend live arts events.

So if The New Normal has an upside, why do we continue to give so much weight to attendance numbers? Is it productive for us to focus on “benchmark” percentages? I would argue that it’s only productive if we are convinced other modalities are not equally valuable within the spectrum of arts participation. It’s not enough to value live attendance over other kinds of participation because of institutional models that yield significant earned revenue from ticket sales. If Americans are showing an interest in participating through choirs or viewing art online, then arts organizations have an opportunity to connect with their audiences through active participation and through online media. Perhaps if we could find a way to monetize participatory arts experiences, arts organizations wouldn’t be as concerned about the effect of dwindling ticket sales on the bottom line.

Regardless of how we value the various participation modalities, we still need to have audiences for America’s best theater, dance, and opera. Nick Rabkin’s and E.C. Hedberg’s monograph Arts Education in America asserts that the most significant predictive factor for arts attendance at benchmark activities is arts education, rather than educational attainment or income.  Furthermore, Jennifer Novak-Leonard and Alan Brown in Beyond Attendance find that “having had any arts lessons increases the likelihood of arts creation by 32%.” Meanwhile, Novak-Leonard and Brown report that 23% of adults participate but do not attend, indicating that there may be certain kinds of participation that do not necessarily lead to attendance. All of this suggests that the SPPA should ask more in-depth questions about the kinds, duration, and intensity of individuals’ arts education, including formal and non-formal types of learning. We could then learn more about which types of educational experiences might lead to attendance and which will not.

Overall, it seems like the real story here is not about the decline in arts participation, but the shift in how we choose to participate. If Americans are still seeking a deep a personal relationship with art, perhaps our increased demand for personal involvement and social connectivity are creating new demands for participatory arts experiences. New research from the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance shows that increased active or online participation can “be a gateway” to attendance, and this shift to participatory arts may point toward a broadening of consumption of the arts rather than a decline. Online, 39% of all Internet‐using adults, or 62 million Americans, viewed, listened to, downloaded, or posted artworks or performance at least once a week, and 45% participated in some form of creation or performance activity. It’s time for the SPPA survey to reflect this shift in participation through development of a new survey protocol, rather than continue to rely heavily on questions that are now over 30 years old.

Fortunately, the NEA agrees. Recently, the agency announced that it was revising the 2012 SPPA, noting that “it seemed time to revisit the way we ask about the arts in America.“ The primary purpose of the survey will be “to create baseline rates of arts participation inclusive of both traditional and non-traditional modes of participation.” The new survey questions will improve the ability to measure participation in emerging art forms and modes, including electronic media and non-formal learning opportunities. It will also ask more specific questions in regards to arts learning, asking specifically about informal modes of learning and whether early learning took place in our out of school. In perhaps the biggest shift in language, questions relating to attendance will not be tied to venue; the SPPA will ask if respondents attended an art exhibit, and if so, where. To maintain some ability to compare this study with previous ones, the 2012 SPPA will have two sets of core questions – the old core will be the benchmark attendance questions, and the new core will include the emerging art forms and modalities. By 2017 the old core will be completely replaced by the new core questions.

The 2012 SPPA will capture arts participation patterns in the aftermath of the biggest recession in 80 years, the heyday of social media, and the mainstreaming of the mobile web. Kickstarter, which arguably has helped democratize access to arts creation, didn’t exist in 2008, nor did the curatorial social media network Pinterest. Etsy, part of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement where artists and artisans sell their wares online, has been profitable since 2009 and has raised $51 million in capital. Meanwhile, we know that arts attendance is down, but the 2008 survey does not prove that other types of participation are increasing. We shall see more clearly when the 2012 edition comes out (sometime in early 2013) if those who are participating online and in active art-making are at the vanguard of a long-term shift in participation away from attendance.

Further Reading:

• Sunil Iyengar, Taking Note: Accounting for Audience Impact — What Were They Thinking (and Feeling)!? (Art Works)
• Greg Sandow, Dire data (ArtsJournal)
• Webinar: Preview of Three New SPPA Reports 
• Betty Farrell and Maria Medvedeva, “Demographic Transformation and the Future of Museums“
• Molly Sheridan, And the Survey Says: Considering the NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (NewMusicBox)

Alan Brown and Rebecca Ratzkin in a recent report, Making Sense of Audience Engagement, define audience engagement as:

A guiding philosophy in the creation and delivery of arts experiences in which the paramount concern is maximizing impact on the participant.  Others refer to this vein of work as “enrichment program­ming” or “adult education.”

In their view, an audience engagement philosophy:

• Encourages each audience member to be a co-creator of meaning
• Respects the many pathways that people take through the art form
• Appreciates that not everyone relates to art on an intellectual basis
• Integrates ‘engagement thinking’ into artistic planning
• Values audience feedback as a means of engagement

As Richard Evans notes in his response to Michael Kaiser’s blog, many who are truly entrenched and committed to audience engagement do not even use the term. They “describe the pursuit of broader reciprocal relationships with community members – expressive relationships created through, and embodied in, art.”

This notion is reflected in Nina Simon’s book The Participatory Museum, which is all about audience engagement, yet doesn’t regularly use the term (if at all):

I define a participatory cultural institution as a place where visitors can create, share, and connect with each other around content. Create means that visitors contribute their own ideas, objects, and creative expression to the institution and to each other. Share means that people discuss, take home, remix, and redistribute both what they see and what they make during their visit. Connect means that visitors socialize with other people—staff and visitors—who share their particular interests.

So if audience engagement is about utilizing the work of art to facilitate authentic, personally-relevant connections with others and the work of art itself, it seems we have an army of individuals waiting in the wings to be asked to the party. Teaching artists, still frighteningly in the margins of our quest to reinvent arts institutions, are experts in audience engagement. They do the following things exceedingly well:

• Teach cognitive skills needed to think artistically and creatively
• Teach aesthetic education, or the ability to make sense of art, not skills-based art-making
• Understand how to create questions and activities that are relevant to diverse ages and levels of arts education
• Work across the community, from performing and presenting works for discerning adult audiences as well as in schools in rural and low-income neighborhoods
• Understand that what they do is spiritual in nature, and help create a link to individuals’ higher selves.

This is a distinct discipline from learning one’s art form to produce finished works of art. A teaching artist is not just an artist or an art teacher; they study and are inherently interested in how others experience art. They are able to craft lesson plans, events, and performances that help facilitate deeper intrinsically-motivated experiences for all types of audiences.

Historically, teaching artists have been relegated to education departments across the nation. In Eric Booth’s The History of Teaching Artistry, the “first national marker of (a) teaching artist commitment was the 1970 launch of a modest Artists-in-Schools Program at the recently established National Endowment for the Arts.” Since then, educational departments and professional development for artists working in public schools have grown tremendously. There is now a generation or two of experienced, highly-professionalized teaching artists who are clawing their way into artistic conversations at large institutions and creating their own non–profits to work with adult audiences.

Programs such as Carnegie Hall’s songwriting program for homeless shelters, led by master teaching artist and composer Tom Cabaniss, are rich with experiences for participants that deepen their relationship with music and each other. (It’s not surprising that Sarah Johnson, director of the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, began her career as a teaching artist.) Classical Jam, a young ensemble led by NY Philharmonic teaching artist Wendy Law, performs orchestral works with the audience as performer – in this video the connection between the school audience and performers during the performance is palpable.

The point here is not that teaching artist work exists – it certainly does and has been around for at least a couple of decades. The point is that teaching artists can offer the kind of thinking needed for core artistic decisions and even market strategy to help develop truly innovative programming. Designing the experience with a work of art is now as important as the work of art itself, and we need new kinds of talent making key decisions if arts organizations are to survive.

In August, the Seanse Art Center in Oslo, Norway will hold The World’s First International Teaching Artist Conference. With teaching artists from all over the world convening to discuss this still-emerging discipline, I am eager to see how they view teaching artists’ role in the equally adolescent field of audience engagement.

Folklorists are uniquely suited to bridge the gap between these two worlds. Their research methods address uncovering artists outside the nonprofit arts infrastructure, a factor essential to building a sustainable local arts network.  If foundations and arts policy decision makers want to build such an environment for the arts, folklorists can aid them in taking steps towards authenticity and sustainability.

The Importance of the Informal Arts

Several studies over the last ten years have emphasized the importance of informal arts as well as nonprofit arts organizations, commercial arts, arts education, government, and businesses, in creating a healthy environment for the arts.

Cultural Development in Creative Communities (2003) came out right after Richard Florida published The Rise of the Creative Class. Published by Americans for the Arts, it cites Portland, Oregon as an example of the new creative city, having “an especially large number of mid-sized and smaller organizations . . . [where] informal arts activities thrive . . . [and] many arts spaces sponsor project based collaborations . . . .” The authors (among others, Bill Bulick and Carol Coletta, current ArtPlace spearheader) continue: “Community asset mapping must encompass this breadth [commercial, nonprofit, and informal] in order to ferret out nodes and catalysts of cultural vibrancy, synergy, and impact.”

The authors recommend developing funding for project-based creative work with individuals and informal groups. They conclude,

The opportunity for our field is to broaden our definitions of culture, maximize participation and engagement, develop a climate that encourages creativity among all citizens, and channel that creativity towards building-and sustaining-our communities.

One of the key findings of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Research into Action: Pathways to New Opportunities (completed as part of a study of culture in Philadelphia in 2009) is that “Personal practice (including creating music or dance, painting or drawing, and sharing photos, music or videos online) is a gateway to attendance.“ The report goes on to cite Steven Tepper’s book Engaging Art, in which he predicts that “the twenty-first century will be shaped by the Pro-Am Revolution.”

In Informal Arts: Finding Cohesion, Capacity and Other Cultural Benefits in Unexpected Places (2002), Alaka Wali and colleagues make a convincing case that there is mutual benefit and reinforcement flowing between the informal and formal arts. The formally trained teachers and group leaders often derive benefits from teaching, such as new ways of thinking about techniques or ideas and hands-on experience in organizing and administrating. The students and less skilled artists benefit from the formal training of their teachers and gain inspiration from performances and exhibitions at formal arts institutions. Informal activities can also serve as incubators for experimental ideas in the arts.  Wali et al. recommend that the informal arts be incorporated into community development, that institutions that already intersect with informal arts be supported in expanding that activity, and that arts advocacy be built across informal-formal divides.

Barriers between Theory and Practice

It’s clear that many grantmakers and arts agencies agree that the path to a healthy, sustainable local arts ecosystem will necessarily include informal artists. Yet, their strategies by and large remain focused on nonprofit arts organizations. Research into Action hammers home the need for more programming that encourages personal participation in the arts, but it doesn’t even mention informal arts groups. A recent solicitation of perspectives from of regional arts councils participating in Americans for the Arts’s Local Arts Network yielded several examples of individuals who happened to be amateur artists serving on planning and advisory committees, but little targeting of “informal” artists specifically. Although many informal groups are led by professional artists, it is important to focus on the activity of the informal arts and their amateur practitioners, not simply viewing them as another source of revenue for practicing artists.

To be certain, there are significant barriers that have up to now kept funders from partnering with the informal sector.

• Visibility Barriers

In the Informal Arts report, Wali et. al. found that informal arts activities tend to fly under everyone’s radar. Activities occurring in “artsy” neighborhoods were more visible in the media than activities occurring in neighborhoods lacking that reputation. Additionally, researchers found no widespread recognition of informal arts practice as a concept within the informal arts world.

This means that it takes considerable effort just to find these groups. Combined with the economies of scale offered by larger nonprofits (enabling them to reach a larger number of beneficiaries), it should come as no surprise that informal artists often seem to escape the notice of arts leaders engaging in cultural planning and policy development efforts.

• Structural Barriers

The informal arts are—by definition—informal. Most groups are casual in attendance, unselective in ability required, and run by volunteers. They come and go according to availability of resources, popularity of the activity, and dedication of volunteers.  Some have organized leadership and discrete financial accounts, but many do not.

These factors make informal arts groups challenging to work with, especially for funders. Grantmakers are under heavy pressure to show exactly where their grants went and what kind of impact they had. This is difficult if not impossible to do with a group that may or may not exist from year to year. No wonder that when grantmakers do get involved with participatory arts, they often end up “formalizing” the group—building it into another institution.

• The Quality Barrier

Many, if not most, of the funders that support the arts have the word “excellence” in their mission statements or program guidelines. They want to support, and be associated with, high-quality art. The problem is that high quality participation and high quality art can’t be measured by the same factors. Some informal art is amazing, and some is amateurish in every sense.  If the goal is to create a more sustainable arts ecosystem, however, that means encouraging more people to experience the process of art-making, not just consume amazing art.

Barriers of structure, visibility, and perceived quality keep the informal and formal arts from collaborating at a strategic level.  The result is that informal artists’ voices are rarely heard in discussions about regional development, robbing grantmakers and arts agencies of the valuable information they could contribute about regional culture and what resources they need to thrive.

Folklorists Can Bridge the Gap

As Brendan Greaves points out, folklore is all about process—both the research process and the artistic process. Folklorists first locate practitioners of traditions and ask them about their involvement, in a method known as fieldwork. Some of this fieldwork is structured—that is, a folklorist will start with a list of persons of interest and gradually grow that list by ending each interview with “Who else should I talk to?” Unstructured fieldwork, by contrast, involves exploring an area through any means possible: attending festivals and talking to people, perusing community bulletin boards, and shuffling through the stacks of business cards at gas stations and talking to the attendants. The first result of such investigation is a list of arts practitioners, making that which was previously invisible, visible.

The second step in this process is to articulate why this tradition is practiced (the artistic process). What motivates the artist? Through interviews, folklorists get the answer to this question in the practitioner’s own words. This is extremely important because it ensures authenticity of the study.

Most often, folklorists have been asked to document cultural traditions that are rooted in community identity. However, the skills and methods described above don’t have to be limited to the realm of folk art. The North Carolina Arts Council demonstrated this when they worked in collaboration with the North Carolina Folklife Institute to map the cultural assets and needs in Wilmington, NC. Folklorists Sarah Bryan and Sally Peterson conducted structured and unstructured fieldwork, along with academic research and a public survey, resulting in a series of documents that outlined existing informal arts groups and distinctive regional traditions and recommended steps to be taken to grow these assets. Notably, this work uncovered informal arts practice across the spectrum of creative activity, including a network of artists employed in the film industry and a genre of music called “holy hip hop.”

Wayne Martin, Senior Program Director for Community Arts Development at the North Carolina Arts Council, explains that involving folklorists in this project enabled the Arts Council both to identify and begin engagement with artists outside the nonprofit infrastructure, and to understand community culture in an authentic way. “Folklorists are trained to seek out and recognize creativity in a variety of forms,” says Martin. “Folklorists understand how artistry is a window onto a community. They are able to articulate how the art that is produced there reflects the values of that community and makes it distinct.”

As beneficial as folklore research is, it has its own set of advantages and disadvantages relative to other methods of community research. This is a labor-intensive method that takes adequate time and human resources to be done well, and some communities that are extremely cosmopolitan might be too overwhelming to take on comprehensively. Furthermore, while folklore research can paint a rich picture of a subset of the community using qualitative data, quantitative data can be more useful for seeing the “big picture” in a region. That being said, folklorists can aid grantmakers and arts agencies in collaborating with informal arts groups by addressing the barriers of structure, visibility, and perceived quality.

–          Research addresses barriers of visibility

Through structured and unstructured fieldwork, folklorists uncover informal artists and groups that don’t have the resources to advertise themselves, making them visible and bringing them to the attention of grantmakers and arts agencies.

–          A collective approach addresses structural barriers

Instead of asking informal arts groups to propose projects that will fit a foundation’s mission, folklorists ask what resources they need to operate and grow and who they collaborate with.  By approaching the informal arts as a collection of individuals and groups, folklorists could help foundations and arts agencies identify resources the sector needs as a whole, instead of trying to work with each specific group.

–          Focus on process and participants addresses the “quality” barrier

The informal arts place more of an emphasis on the process of creating and experiencing art, not only on the “excellence” of the finished piece. A folklorist’s focus on the artistic process (why art is created, how it is created) as well as the process by which it is shared and experienced with others, gets at the reasons people participate, and how and why they bring their art to their community. It is imperative to know why and how people participate in these informal arts if foundations and arts policymakers seek to encourage such participation.

The Irvine Foundation’s new Exploring Engagement Fund, accompanied by a white paper written by WolfBrown, is an exciting step towards foundations supporting participatory and informal arts. The study points out various projects being undertaken by arts organizations around the world that embrace and encourage participatory art  (e.g., the Art Gallery of Ontario’s In Your Face open submission art exhibit;  inviting community members to create, perform and witness Headwaters, produced by the Sautee Nacoochee Community Association in rural Georgia; enabling anyone to learn to dance, together, at The Big Dance (2012) in London and the Bal Moderne in Brussels). Although the informal arts are certainly nothing new, it is novel for a leadership institution like the Irvine Foundation to actively encourage this kind of arts participation.

In the 21^st century, technology continues to make it easier to learn and practice art. The Pro-Am Revolution has blurred the lines between audience and artist, making arts participation more important than ever to the strength of the arts as a whole. The problem is that funders operate in a wholly different world from the informal arts. Because folklorists already work with the informal arts subgenre of folk arts and music, they are uniquely suited to seek out and find informal artists and groups, learn from them, and report back to grantmakers. Funders and arts policy leaders would do well to turn to folklorists to help them work with and strengthen the informal arts for the benefit of the sector as a whole.