Americans for the Arts

Eric Booth

In response to Mark Slavkin’s post...in the great gamble of arts learning, I see the issues your blog post raises, and raise you one.

Along with Mark, I not only challenge us to make sure we can walk our talk, and actually deliver the results we claim, but I think even our talk is problematic.

As Mark points out, we make a number of claims about the learning benefits we deliver to kids and to those who leave schooling and enter the workforce--benefits like “creativity.” I observe that we don't even know what we really mean with keywords we use. I have encountered very few arts educators who can give a good answer to this question: Tell me which specific skills of creativity you develop in young people, and how you are sure of your claim?

Few can even name the few key skills they prioritize, or present clear evidence of skill development, apart from some excellent individual cases they tend to cite.

Sally Gaskill

At the end of September, over 300,000 arts graduates across the U.S. and Canada will be eligible to complete the 2011 SNAAP survey.

SNAAP is the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project – an annual survey and data collection project that investigates both the educational experiences and career paths of arts graduates. The project–the biggest of its kind ever attempted–is based at Indiana University in collaboration with the Curb Center at Vanderbilt, and I serve as project manager.

The arts graduates who will be surveyed this fall come from 67 varied institutions, including specialized art schools, liberal arts colleges, large research universities, and even arts high schools.

Earlier this year, SNAAP released its first annual report, based on the responses of 13,500 arts alumni from all over the country who responded to the 2010 survey. You can see some nifty graphics that summarize some of our more interesting findings – we call it the SnaapShot.

So, what do we know about arts alumni?  Here are some nuggets gleaned from SNAAP 2010:

•    Arts graduates aren’t starving and bitter. They are in fact largely employed, satisfied with their careers, and would go to arts school again if they had it to do over.

Deb Vaughn

My husband and I are now expecting our first child. With both of us being arts educators, we feel like we’re in a good position to help our child experience the arts.

In fact, the little one has already been to see shows at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. (During the production of Pirates of Penzance I could have sworn I felt jazz hands in my belly.)

But, as much as we value the arts in our family, I know that when the time comes to send Junior off to school, we will have to be active, passionate, vocal, and unrelenting advocates. Here are some places we plan to start.

Stay Educated
Although I have plenty of stories about the importance of arts education, it is equally important for advocates to stay on top of the statistics too. Here are some recent data gems to keep handy:
• 72.5 percent of tenth graders from "high-arts" schools scored in the top half of standardized tests (verbal and math combined) compared to 45 percent from "low-arts" schools.
• A state of Missouri survey found that districts offering more fine arts classes have a one percent higher attendance rate. Attendance effects funding, so in a district of 12,000 students, a one percent increase in attendance equals an additional $430,000 annually.

Kristen Engebretsen

This week I got an email from someone concerned about the budget cuts to arts education and inquiring about what they could do to help keep the arts in schools.

In the spirit of my colleague Randy Cohen’s popular post (Top 10 Reasons to Support the Arts), I am presenting my own:

The Top 10 Ways to Support Arts Education

10. Volunteer your time, resources, skills: Many schools would appreciate your time as a chaperone, your skill as a teaching artist, or your donations of money, costumes, rehearsal space, etc.

9. Know the facts: Stay on top of current arts education research, trends, and news articles. Start with Reinvesting in Arts Education, which summarizes research on the topic. Use this data in your messaging when you speak to elected officials or school leaders.

8. Get involved politically: Tell your elected officials why arts education is important. Ask your members of Congress to keep the arts listed as a core subject during the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Narric Rome

Not long into my tenure at the U.S. Department of Education during the Clinton administration, I came to understand the limits of what the federal government can do for K-12 education.

At the time, the department boosted funding to support the hiring of 100,000 new teachers and the launch of a new national afterschool initiative that is now a $1.1 billion program.

Arts teachers were among the 100,000 new hires and many of the programs embraced the arts. Federal investment had an important impact, but many arts education advocates would not rank these two accomplishments as major successes. Why? Because a new arts teacher and a new arts afterschool program did not appear in every school in every community.

We need to remember that the federal share in total education spending is only 11 cents on the dollar. The remaining funds come from state and local sources.

Which brings me to federal policy.

Kristen Engebretsen

During our recent Arts Education Council meeting in San Diego, the council members suggested posting some blogs about the federal grant Investing in Innovation (i3) in preparation of the deadline for the next round of applications. So, for the next couple of days, Americans for the Arts will be encouraging a spotlight on the i3 program.

Expect to see some lessons learned from last year’s arts-focused grantees and links to helpful resources if you’re finishing up your application or wanting to resubmit your application from last year.

During that same meeting, the council had the pleasure of hearing Rachel Goslins, executive director of the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities (PCAH), speak via Skype about their recent Reinvesting in Arts Education report.

In today’s uncertain economic times, a college degree can be considered the key to success. In fact, a new study conducted by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce indicates that college graduates overall make 84 percent more over a lifetime than those with only a high school diploma.

Furthermore, the study proves that the age old question “What will I major in?” has become increasingly more important when making decision about undergraduate education, as the findings reveal that not all Bachelor’s degrees are created equal.

Jeanie Duncan

(Continued from Part 1 posted earlier this week)

Process: Constituency Research Yields Insight

As we surveyed our situation, we knew our approach could not be a typical strategic planning process. Board and staff discussion charted an outside-in strategy for data gathering. Our selected consultant was a branding, PR, and market research firm whose representatives reminded us from the beginning that “it doesn’t matter what you think. What matters is what your customer – the community – thinks.”

With the potential for change to be significant, it was essential that the United Arts Council of Greensboro (UAC) communicate openly, early, and often to the constituents who relied on our funding, as well as their core audiences and supporters. For some agencies,our investment comprised as much as 20 percent of their contributed revenue. Regardless of the percentage, the resource was critical; we wanted to mitigate negative impact while giving historically funded agencies ample lead time for planning and preparation. 

Patricia Martin

Open talk about new business models in the arts is a cultural signal. It’s a watermark that tells us the tides are shifting. Digital culture is eroding some of art’s traditional value proposition.

That’s not what worries me.

This does: Even if the arts can come to occupy a new role in people’s lives, will they will be able to communicate this role to attract new users—especially younger audiences?

Cultivating younger audiences will be important. They are the future. But using marketing messages and tactics from the past to reach them might mean that your organization—no matter what its business model, will not be around to see them join your ranks. 

Tim Mikulski

As previewed by Marete Wester last week on ARTSblog, this week has been chock full of data and recommendations from our own organization's National Arts Policy Roundtable (NAPR); the U.S. Department of Education's first look at national arts education from 2009-2010; and the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH) recommendations for the field.

The PCAH report, released today, seeks to put into practice President Obama's campaign commitment to arts education as the committee has spent the past 18 months assessing the status of the subject, conducting research, and identifying ways to improve and advance arts education.

Their report offers five recommendations to "clarify the position of the arts in a comprehensive, well-rounded K-12 education that is appropriate for all students; unify and focus efforts to expand arts education offerings to underserved students and communities; and, strengthen the evidence base for high-quality arts education."

PCAH recommends the following:

1. Build collaborations among different approaches - "move beyond internal debates in the arts education field about modes of delivery of arts instruction in order to address more pressing issues of equitable access and infusing more schools with a creativity-rich environment." 

Lynne Kingsley

If you were to untangle the unified, multi-layered rope that is arts education in public schools in this country, would you find equal amounts of art, music, theater, and dance strands?

Without thinking, most of us would say mildly, “well, not exactly.”

As a theater person, I realize this too, but it can’t be THAT unequal, right?

The Snapshot of Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 2009-10 (a first look at top level national data from the upcoming FRSS study), published on Monday reveals a huge gap between the number of schools that offer art (83 percent) and music (94 percent) instruction and those that offer drama/theater (4 percent) and dance (3 percent) instruction at the elementary school level. 

Last fall, 30 top-level decision makers and thought leaders from government, business, education, and the arts gathered at the Sundance Resort and Preserve for the Fifth Annual Americans for the Arts National Arts Policy Roundtable, to discuss this year's theme - The Role of the Arts in Educating America for Great Leadership and Economic Strength.

Their conclusions are profiled in a new report issued this week by Americans for the Arts that calls for individuals across the public and private sector to recognize the arts as the transformational tools they are for making schools stronger and students more successful.

The recommendations offer insights from this cross-sector group on how we can better work together to ensure policies and practices are in place to increase arts in our schools.

The business and public policy communities are building consensus that if the nation is to succeed, an education steeped in the 4 “C’s” (Creativity, Collaboration, Communication and Critical Thinking) is not a luxury, but a necessity.  

Washington's Gorge Heritage Museum

As part of the Local Arts Agency Listening Post we asked if folks had additional comments beyond the specific questions in the survey, and several members took us up on it.

I had the opportunity to speak with Leigh Anne Chambers, the Executive Director of the North Central Louisiana Arts Council in Ruston, LA.

The North Central Louisiana Arts Council serves the five parishes of Lincoln, Bienville, Claiborne, Jackson, and Union - one of Louisiana’s poorest regions.

The council used to receive funds from two separate grants from the state, but now they receive about half of that. They filled in the gaps with fundraising and memberships but they are still haven’t made up for the loss of the state monies.  

Randy Cohen

Editor's Note: For a revised list of 10 REASONS TO SUPPORT THE ARTS IN 2012, head over to Randy's latest ARTSblog post!

I was recently asked by a major biz leader for “10 reasons to support the arts.”

He needed the points to help him pull an 8-figure inve$tment for a new arts center...Make it compelling to government and business leaders, he asked.

Oh, yeah, he’s a busy guy—didn’t want a lot to read:  “Keep it to one page, please.”

So, apart from the 10-1 flip (and with apologies to David Letterman), this is what I delivered:

10. True prosperity...The arts are fundamental to our humanity. They ennoble and inspire us—fostering creativity, goodness, and beauty. They help us express our values, build bridges between cultures, and bring us together regardless of ethnicity, religion, or age. When times are tough, the arts are salve for the ache.

9. Stronger communities...University of Pennsylvania researchers have demonstrated that a high concentration of the arts in a city leads to higher civic engagement, more social cohesion, higher child welfare, and lower poverty rates. A vibrant arts community ensures that young people are not left to be raised solely in a pop culture and tabloid marketplace.  

With the local arts community facing many challenges, American for the Arts wanted to develop a current picture of trends at the local level.

So we developed the Local Arts Funding Listening Post: A Survey of Local Arts Agencies.

In late March, Americans for the Arts' Research Department distributed a very short survey in order to take the pulse of our field.

Here are the questions we asked:

Over the next 12 months, I expect that paid attendance to cultural events that take place in my community will...
•    Increase
•    Stay the same
•    Decrease  

Wendy Feuer

Wendy Feuer, Assistant Commissioner of Urban Design and Art, New York City Department of Transportation, will present her innovative program at the Built Infrastructure: Interdisciplinary Initiatives Public Art Preconference session in San Diego this June.

Feuer’s blog outlines proposal authored by the Transportation Research Board Subcommittee on Art and Design Excellence in Transportation. The study will examine art in transportation program, feasibility, art and design in transportation projects, proposed funding of programs, and assessing value and outcomes – to offer successful models for how more transportation agencies can incorporate public art.

Transportation infrastructure is one of the leading ‘shovel-ready’ programs of our nation’s agenda, let’s add art to the equation. ~ Liesel

Many communities are interested in public art programs to further their economic development, tourism, and place-making initiatives. Art programs can enhance the quality of public spaces, reflect local culture, and provide a venue for community engagement in project planning and design decisions.

In these ways, art programs can support the Livability Principles of the Federal Partnership of DOT, HUD, and EPA.

As public transportation agencies (sponsoring urban and rural public transit, high-speed and intercity rail, air travel, passenger boat and ferry travel, bicycling infrastructure, and walkable neighborhoods) respond to community interest and incorporate art in their projects, the need has been demonstrated for a resource booklet of successful public art processes and practices specific to the context of public transportation.  

Mitch Menchaca

A local arts agency (LAA) promotes, supports, and develops the arts at the local level to strengthen the daily fabric of community living.

Each LAA is as unique as the community it serves and they all share the goal of enabling diverse forms of arts and culture to thrive, ensuring that they are available to every member of that community.

A local arts agency can be a private enterprise or an agency of local government that presents programming to the public, provides services to artists and arts organizations, develops and manages cultural facilities, awards grants to artists and arts organizations, organizes and participates in cultural planning, and/or promotes and creates cultural policy.

Local arts agencies are referred to by an array of names: arts commissions, arts councils, arts and humanities councils, arts and business councils, arts alliances, cultural alliances, departments of recreation and cultural affairs, offices of cultural affairs, arts funds, etc.  

Tim Mikulski

By a mere 8 votes in the House of Representatives, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) FY2011 budget was cut down to $124.5 million yesterday-the same level of funding as FY2007.

Rep. Tim Walberg’s (R-MI) amendment passed 217-209, but it wasn’t a case of party line politics as 23 Republicans voted against the measure and 3 Democrats voted in favor of it.

The good news is that the two amendments to eliminate the NEA altogether were introduced, but never offered up for a vote by the sponsors on Thursday. That is a testament to the advocacy efforts  of the arts community and the strong supporters for the arts in the Congress, including Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), who gamely handed our Creative Industries maps out to House members on the floor before the vote.

Randy Cohen

On January 31, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman posted a blog about (1) the issue of supply and demand in the arts and (2) the ratio of arts administrators to artists.  I had the opportunity to augment the first point using additional data as well as clarify the second in my posting.  Because these are two issues that may arise for you, we thought it worth posting here so you have the facts at your fingertips.

An examination of years of trend data indicate that demand for the arts is indeed lagging supply. The good news is that it also indicates that audiences are not walking away from the arts, but rather broadening how they choose to engage in the arts.

There is also one noteworthy correction to be made in the Chairman’s numbers and thus, one of his points.

On the supply side:

In our annual National Arts Index report, released just two weeks ago, we track the Urban Institute’s count of registered nonprofit arts organizations as one of our 81 national-level indicators. In the past decade, the number of nonprofit arts organizations in the United States has grown 45 percent (75,000 to 109,000), a greater rate than all nonprofit organizations, which grew 32 percent (1,203,000 to 1,581,000). Or to take the more startling look, between 2003 and 2009, a new nonprofit arts organization was created every three hours in the U.S.

Emily Peck

In 1968, 7,000 companies were asked how much they give to the arts and why they give to the arts.  In the original BCA Survey of Business Support of the Arts which was conducted in partnership with the National Industrial Conference Board we learned that businesses give to the arts to improve corporate image, improve sales and services, aid employee recruitment, attract other industries to the area, encourage tourism and benefit employees, community and society.

Sound familiar?

In the current study, many of these same reasons still resonate with the business community.  79% of businesses say that the arts increase name recognition while 74% say that the arts offer networking opportunities and the potential to develop new business.  66% say that the arts stimulate creative thinking, problem solving and team building.  While half agree that arts support has the potential to increase their bottom line and slightly fewer believe that the arts can offer special benefits to their employees and that the arts can help recruit and retain employees.

The Creation of Adam, Bob Bosch, used with permission

I always dread the first day of classes. I’m currently getting my master’s in operations research and the first day of class is the time when I start to stand out. In every class, we start by going around the room and saying our name and what we do. It usually goes something like: Bob, military employee; Jim, government contractor; Pete, different government contractor… you get the point. Then comes my turn, “Meredith, Americans for the Arts.” Immediately, heads turn and everybody identifies me as the oddball.  

However, there is a growing and little known area of operations research known as “opt art.” This stands for optimization art and this field utilizes optimization algorithms (operations research technology) to make portraits, pictures, and designs. Some of the pictures are created using the classic “traveling salesman problem” where the goal is to reach every point (city) exactly once in the shortest distance. Others are created with knot problems or using a pointillism approach.  

Dr. Bob Bosch is applying this technology to make portraits using dominos. He has made several portraits of famous people (like Marilyn Monroe) and will even make you a customized portrait of your loved one.

What an adventure! When Randy Cohen and I started putting the National Arts Index together in 2005, we had little sense of how expansive it would become. At first, we hoped to find about 25 or 30 national and annual measures of arts and culture activity that we could report on annually. We knew of a few national service organizations that kept what we thought were pretty good and robust measures of annual activity in their fields – think symphonies, opera, and theatre. We knew of periodical studies by the NEA and the Census Bureau, as well as some measures at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Urban Institute. When we got going, we thought we could cobble these together into a pretty good annual picture of arts and culture in the U.S. over time.

These turned out to be only a fraction of the data that we ultimately found, as you can see in the full Index report on this site. Our final report, with 76 indicators, really shows a more diverse and multi-faceted system of the arts in America, one that we knew was there, but had not been able to get our hands around. No surprise: there are so many dimensions to the arts system: people, groups, institutions, artistic disciplines, artistic genres, businesses, nonprofit, and government, products, services, experiences, jobs, volunteers, and so much more. Not only “no surprise,” but also “no problem”: we wanted the Index to be as inclusive as possible, so we were happy to find all of the different measures.

Read More

At a time when the arts and culture community’s understanding of itself is shifting away from traditional conceptions of “arts participation” (i.e. attendance) and focus on publicly-supported business models, creating an empirical index such as the National Arts Index (NAI) is a daunting task. The challenge is that many arts-related data sources are anchored in conventional conceptions of the sector.  Consequently, the NAI makes huge steps forward by including both for- and non-profit indicators, by including indicators of personal participation, and by shedding light on lesser-utilized data sources (see pages 131-134 of the report).

The arts and culture sector seems to be moving toward a broader, more holistic, understanding of itself – one that spans a larger swath of the ‘cultural ecology’ – including professional arts, participatory practice and cultural literacy.  The cultural ecology framework developed by John Kreidler and Philip J. Trounstine in their 2005 Creative Community Index report (page 6) is a simple and elegant depiction of the cultural system. As we in the field continue to develop this broader self-definition, participatory practice and cultural literacy will need to be characterized at the same level of detail as indicators currently included in the NAI.

As Bill Ivey says, “policy accretes around bodies of data.” If we can develop commonly-accepted metrics for characterizing cultural vitality, then we stand a better chance of influencing policy. You can’t win the game if you don’t know the score. And, if you are filling a void of scorekeeping, then you get to shape the rules for scorekeeping, which means you can change the conversation.  I see the National Arts Index (NAI) as a major step forward on a longer pathway of developing a set of generally accepted standards for assessing cultural vitality in communities, regions and the country. The Urban Institute has already done a lot of forward thinking about the topic, which you can read about here. What matters the most, however, is not the data itself, but the conversation that happens around the data and the extent to which the NAI can be used to galvanize discussion amongst people who can actually change policy.

When the NAI was discussed at the Grantmakers in the Arts conference back in October, it was interesting to see how some people immediately looked through the list of the 76 indicators to see what was included and what was not included. For example, one person pointed out that the NAI includes just one indicator of arts creation (i.e., “participation in music making, painting, drawing, and/or photography”). There are no indicators, for example, of the numbers of people who sing in choirs, or who compose music on GarageBand, or who belly dance.  Those types of data points simply aren’t available, or would cost a lot to generate. But what is the cost of not including them in the national conversation about cultural vitality? This is the risk associated with any aggregate measure like the NAI.

The National Arts Index is the latest in a series of credible research reports to document the impact of arts and culture on a national and local level. Economic impact studies like the Arts & Economic Prosperity reports, employment data from the Creative Industries Report and other studies have all made significant contributions to our understanding of size and scope of the creative sector, helping to make the case for increased investment in arts and culture.

I know first-hand how valuable this information is to elected officials and policy makers when it comes to setting budget priorities. We continually reply on research from Americans for the Arts and other sources to keep civic leaders and the public informed and up to date on the health of our cultural sector. In difficult budget times like these, the NAI provides a new opportunity to engage in that conversation.

Galileo Galiliei once said, “Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” I congratulate Americans for the Arts and their partners for doing just that by developing the National Arts Index. In so doing they have ignited a crucial national conversation about the arts, their health and vitality, and that of our communities and nation.

Artists, arts administrators and arts patrons may ask, “Why is this Index necessary? Why must we quantify the arts?  The arts are important for their own sake and they are good for our souls, for our children, for the world.” They are, but unfortunately that message doesn’t get through to many policy makers. I liken the arts community’s failure to verbally articulate the value of the arts to a conversation between two people who speak two different languages. One yells louder, figuring sooner or later the other person will understand. We must be able to translate what we value into what the person or audience to whom we are speaking values.  The National Arts Index will be an important aid in this translation process.  

Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, the National Arts Index is a real game changer. By widening the frame to look at music royalties, movie screens, and personal creative practice, Americans for the Arts has basically said to the nonprofit fine arts, "You're now one of many; part of a sector but not the be-all and end-all."  This new reality, coming at us from the premier US cultural advocacy organization, will have profound implications for policy actors and community leaders all over the country. Do we pursue policies to help out record companies undermined by interenet sales of singles and non-paying file sharing? What's our position on extending artist and record-label performance royalties from the digital realm into terrestrial radio? How do we connect with the boom in social dancing, as documented by the Wolf-Brown California study?

Well, I for one think we do care about all these things and more. Now that we're talking about the entire cultural sector, and not just about the nonprofits, we've got a fighting chance at creating a policy arena important enough to get the attention of big-time Administration and congressional players.  Americans for the Arts has decided to care about public policy as it affects all of America's expressive life, and to me that's a great thing.  Now we need to move on to think about how Fair Use, the overall intellectual property environment, trade in movies and TV shows, and mergers in the arts industries shape the ways art gets created, distributed, and consumed.

On January 20, Americans for the Arts released the National Arts Index—a new framework to measure the vitality of the U.S. cultural sector based on 76 national indicators grouped by 4 overarching themes: Financial Flows, Organizational Capacity, Arts Participation and Competitiveness.  In a field where obtaining data can be like pulling teeth, assembling the breadth of this information is an accomplishment in itself.  For me, the real value is that we finally have in place an annual, national reflection of a creative sector that embraces a range of activity inclusive of both nonprofit and commercial cultural delivery models.

Reflections aren’t always pretty though. The National Arts Index shows us definitively over an 11-year period that the rules of engagement have changed. Buffeted by changing demographics, the economic business cycle, technology and increasing diverse cultural choices, traditional art forms that have been historic cornerstones of American public life and cultural identity are struggling to compete successfully to obtain the sources of financial support and the audience numbers they need to survive. By revealing long term trends and a key annual measurement of the vitality of the sector, the Index provides an additional incentive to seriously rethink how we support the development of creative expressions and access to the creative process through new models of engaging individuals and communities in the arts.