The Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) is a research center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice. SIAP conducts research on the role of arts and culture in American cities with a particular interest in strategies for arts-based revitalization. Since 1994, SIAP has focused on developing empirical methods to study the links between cultural engagement and community well-being. This excellent web site includes a number of papers generated by the center reflecting these interests.   The Organization Profile for the Social Impact of the Arts Project can be

The 171-page book, Singing Our Praises, demystifies evaluation by highlighting glowing examples of how arts presenters have used it to learn about their success. Case studies tell the stories of presenters, artists and funders as they learned about the concept of participatory evaluation and put it into practice. These voices from the field provide real-life experiences, but they also reflect some of the more universal issues that will arise for other arts practitioners. The first case study, the Chicago Dancemakers Forum, is a multi-year project that provides support for the creative process

See, Say, Feel, Do from Fenton Communications helps practitioners track the performance of their communications and marketing tactics against the broader goals of their project or organization by using four discrete metrics. The first metric, "do" reflects a project's intended outcome or participant outcome; the second "see" metric indicates audience exposure; and finally, the "say" and "feel" metrics refer to two distinct stages of audience engagement. This four metrics model seeks to answer the following questions:

Since 2000, the Saguaro Seminar's mission has been both to improve social capital measurement and the availability of social capital data and to undertake analysis of building social capital in increasingly diverse communities. The web site includes extensive information on measurement of social capital including Putnam's 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, as well as evaluation tool kit, guide, and links to useful organizations and resources. The Saguaro Seminar is an ongoing initiative of Professor Robert D. Putnam at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University

Ripple Effect Mapping (REM) engages program and community stakeholders to retrospectively and visually map the "performance story" of their work.  The REM method, presented here by University of Minnesota, is a participatory group method for evaluating the impact of complex programs or interventions.

This paper reflects Animating Democracy co-directors' thinking following Working Group discussion of Chris Dwyer's "Arts and Civic Engagement: Briefing Paper for the Working Group of the Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative." The discussion got to the heart of the challenges of measuring the social impact of arts-based engagement and somewhat shifted the Initiative's theory of change. This "Reflections" piece addresses concerns related to the Initiative's focus and emphasis including: intentionality in terms of social impact; intermediate effects and outcomes of arts-based civic

A bible on the topic of qualitative inquiry, this book introduces the principles and methods of qualitative research and evaluation. Chapters cover conceptual issues in qualitative inquiry (including strategic themes and variety), the design of qualitative studies, fieldwork strategies and observation methods, interviewing, analysis, interpretation, and reporting. Important controversies are outlined, and key points are illustrated with examples. This text is a resource and training tool for applied researchers, evaluators, and graduate students. Patton offers the most comprehensive,

Public Art: A Guide to Evalution, is the culmination of ixia's work on public art evaluation as seen in the other items. Just published in January 2009, this is their most recent publication. Best used by professional evaluators, the authors assume a certain knowledge base and novices may be challenged by this. The guide has four main sections: one on why evaluation is valuable, the next on ixia's Matrix tool, the third on ixia's Personal Project Analysis tool, and the fourth on indicators. In making the case for conducting evaluation, the authors offer some reasons for evaluation and why

ixia, the public art think tank, is funded by the Arts Council England and aims to provide guidance on the role of art in the public realm. Through its activities, ixia identifies and challenges restrictive practices which result in limited and missed opportunities for artists working in the public realm. ixia works with artists, policymakers and implementers within the public and private sectors and conducts research, supports events, delivers training, and commissions publications. [Adapted from ixia's website.] A companion piece to Research on Public Art: Assessing Impact and Quality, this

A new take on bringing activism to life, Public, Imagining America's new online journal, empasizes dialogue between communities and humanitarians. The focus of this platform is to collect a variety of art forms including: performances, literature, design, sound, historical representations, videos, photography, interactive media, and texts in order to prompt discussion and further civic engagement by creating a forum to critique and asses issues. It's a unique method to a public dialogue in that it allows for input and interaction between professionals in the field, artists, policy makers and