94815
Arts and Social Justice: Searching for a Framework to Describe Quality
I’ve been engaged in planning and conducting evaluations for several decades now and I’m still intrigued by the intellectual puzzles involved even in the smallest evaluation project—especially the challenge of answering the related “compared to what?” and “how meaningful are the results?’ questions. Both are essential for determining the value (e-valu-ation) of the program or idea being evaluated.
94811
POWER AND AGENCY ARE WAITING FOR YOU: COME CLAIM WHAT'S YOURS
I recognize that for many artists and arts professionals the very language of “measuring impact” makes your skin crawl. That the highly personal, downright epistemological work you do is beyond the transactional input/output speech of “measurement.” That may or may not be so, but if we as cultural workers can’t articulate the significance of our work, we limit the full spectrum of support available to us. And if in aggregate we can’t name our impact as a field, we remain vulnerable to the persistent devaluation of arts and culture as frivolous at best and elitist and self-referential at worst.
So the question is How? How best to tell the story of our projects, our organizations, our purpose so that the meaning of our work is as transparent as the value it creates? And how to do so while negotiating the power dynamics of external standards driven by grant reporting requirements and an arts economy that regularly changes the mechanisms by which art is valued?
94810
Fathers, Felled Trees, and Memory as Innovation
When I was twenty years old, I had the great fortune of watching my father die. My dad and I were not close for most of my life, although when I found out he was dying of cancer, I saw an opportunity to reckon with the past by being with him for his final year on earth. Close to twelve months later, early one mild December morning, he died. I’ll never forget how far time stretched during the last minute of his life, how many possibilities I saw ignited in that room when we all said our goodbyes. Over sixteen years, the tremble of that one minute has never ceased its work on me, growing more influential by the season.
94809
Where Would I Be Without My Mentor?
As I reflect on my nearly twenty years spent in the arts integration field, I feel blessed to have had a trio of amazing mentors in my life. Without these three women I certainly would not have had the career I have had. As a first year music teacher in Buffalo, NY, without a mentor, I wished that arts organizations could do more to assist schoolteachers in preparing students for field trips, and to help provide deeper experiences for the students. I dabbled in creating an independent study in arts administration to start to understand what the role of arts organizations could be in arts education.
94808
Inclusion and Refinement Serving a Common Goal
The purpose of these words are not to debate a right or wrong musical pedagogy however to promote the convergence of musicians, music, and students approaching music from different places. For the purpose of this article I will refer to the two different approaches as the Social sphere and Refinement sphere and argue that marrying these two approaches is of best interest to all.
In the summer of 2015, 10 students from one of the most challenging neighborhoods in West Baltimore attended the prestigious, Interlochen Center For the Arts on merit based scholarships.
94807
Arts Organizations Thriving on Social Media: An In Depth Look at 3 Stunning Campaigns
Arts organizations should be benefitting from the rise of social media more than anyone – the arts are all about storytelling.
And the numbers emerging from social media research are astonishing. 65% of adults use social media, and according to one study, millenials spend 5.4 hours on social media daily.
Here are a few examples of recent social media campaigns that illustrate what social networking can do for us as arts marketers and advocates – you’ll be amazed at the fun you can have.
94806
Embedding creativity and values into evaluation
Evaluating the social and aesthetic efficacy of arts and social justice work requires disrupting mainstream evaluation practices that distort—or even undermine—the connections among art, culture, and social justice. We have the opportunity to embed creative, culturally relevant human-centered design into the way we evaluate our arts and social justice work. Our values and practices in our communities can be reflected in the way we evaluate our work.
94805
When the Buzz is Too Late
Just this October, our venue presented Orpheus in the Underworld (Virginia Opera) that got a rave review in a major newspaper. But, by the time the review hit, the set was struck and it was too late for those readers to see the production. This is our challenge every week. Our audience members leave feeling inspired. We receive fantastic feedback immediately about our programming. Presumably, they leave our venue and tell their friends about their recent arts experience. The word is spreading! But, the artist was only on our stage for one night or at the most one weekend. The buzz is too late to sell those tickets and engage more audience.
94804
ART AS SOCIAL JUSTICE
Here's a thought: what if we stopped thinking about art and social justice and instead looked at art as social justice? By keeping them separate, we are asked to value one over the other, or worse, we make one subservient, a mere tool that's in service of the other. I posit that maybe they can be one in the same.
I don't mean to imply that all can or should function as social justice. But there is a small and growing part of the field that is proving that the art itself can be a manifestation of social justice.
94802
Why Evaluation?
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Undoubtedly, we’re all familiar with this quote, which is popularly but erroneously attributed to Albert Einstein. (In fact, this statement first appeared in 1963 in Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking,” written by sociologist William Bruce Cameron.)
Whether or not Einstein said it originally, there’s irrefutable truth in the statement. And, this idea causes us to think about two key aspects of evaluation and assessment: what’s the best way to measure what we believe we can, and how to deal with the “unmeasurable.”
94800
Dispatches from the Evaluation Learning Lab
In 2014, Animating Democracy, in partnership with the Art x Culture x Social Justice Network (ACSJN) and the Nathan Cummings Foundation launched the Evaluation Learning Lab. The lab builds practical knowledge and resources in three areas as they relate to arts and social change projects and programs: measuring social impact, evaluating artistic/aesthetic dimensions, and equalizing power in evaluation.
Over the past year, guided by the Lab’s theory of change, we’ve gathered 20 artists, arts practitioners, funders, and evaluators in learning exchanges that combined case studies, presentations and discussion around existing evaluation theories and approaches, analysis of current frameworks, criteria, guidelines, and tools, and development of new tools for ethical practices.
