We are launching a project that has never been done before. And you are one of only 100 partners across the country joining together in the crafting of new methods and tools to understand the vitality and character of your communities’ cultural life. The work you are about to embark upon will result in gathering information, developing inventories and responding to questions that have never been asked before. What will this information tell you? Will it help you understand the landscape of your arts and culture community? This workbook is intended to provide a framework for answering those questions, and to provide the Local Arts Index partner agencies guidance in conducting local research on the primary indicators. Preparation of this guide incorporates a substantial amount of feedback from you, the local partners, on methodology, content and structure for collecting and recording the data. Each indicator has been finalized based on your observations, responses and feedback during the initial design phase.

The workbook is divided into sections with information on each indicator, including:

• definitions on the type of data to be collected;
• sample collection grids;
• step by step methodologies and recommended resources for collecting data (focused on efficiency and assuring consistency across all partner communities);
• websites to reference; and
• community resources to engage (such as a public or academic library reference desk). [Introduction, p. 4]

In January, 2010 Americans for the Arts launched the National Arts Index, an annual measure of the health and vitality of the arts in the U.S. The index provides an evidence-based look at key issues such as the growing number of artists and arts organizations, changing audience demand, the impact of technology, personal participation, and the relationship of the arts to the economy as well as some surprises such as the growing demand for arts education by college-bound high school seniors and the rapid growth in culturally and ethnically diverse arts organizations. While there is local relevance in these findings, we knew that to pull maximum value out of the data, we needed to develop a local index, one that tells the story of your community and places it in a larger national context.