This document sets forth the National Endowment for the Arts’ five-year agenda for research, but it does more than that. It provides a conceptual frame for planning and assessing research priorities so that the NEA can improve its ability to meet a core goal: To Promote Knowledge and Understanding about the Contributions of the Arts.

This goal appears in the NEA’s Strategic Plan for FY 2012–2016. The plan charges the Arts Endowment’s Office of Research & Analysis (ORA) with drafting a five-year research agenda with annual milestones for reporting to the White House Office of Management & Budget, Congress, and the American public. Thus, in 2011 ORA developed operating principles for the research agenda and presented them for feedback from a variety of stakeholders. (To view the presentation, visit arts.gov/research/Service-orgs-meeting.html.)

Concurrent with that process, the agency embarked on a series of in-depth dialogues —through interviews, webinars, and workshops—with leading thinkers in a variety of fields and sectors not exclusive to the arts. The goal of those consultations was to establish a feasible, testable hypothesis for understanding how art works in American life.

The rationale for this approach was two-fold. First, much of the NEA’s past research on arts and culture has responded directly to the availability of specific datasets; to that extent, such research has been largely descriptive and reactive, rather than theory-driven and pro-active. The second reason for attempting to outline “how art works” is that a theory of change would enable us better to study the arts as a complete system, and thus allow us more clearly to define the arts’ “value” and “impact.” Understanding those terms is crucial if the NEA is to track progress on achieving its strategic outcome for all research activity: Evidence of the Value and Impact of the Arts is Expanded and Promoted.

The result of the NEA’s deliberations and expert consultations was a system map and measure- ment model (shown in Sections Two and Three of this report) that can guide ORA’s annual milestone development process as part of its five-year research agenda. This report (in Section Four) lists priority research projects that have emerged from ORA’s own operating principles, but it also aligns those projects with key variables identified by the system map. The map organizes the research in a way that permits greater exploration of gaps and opportunities.

The NEA’s Office of Research & Analysis is indebted to a long list of bibliographical resources, interview subjects, and workshop and webinar participants for assisting its pursuit of a theory-driven map and measurement model to guide future work. (Those resources and individuals are credited in two online appendices, available here: arts.gov/research/How-Art-Works/index.html.) In particular, ORA relied on the expertise of Tony Siesfeld, Andrew Blau, Lance Potter, Don Derosby, Jessica Gheiler, and the Monitor Group. We now welcome broader public engagement with scholars, arts practitioners, and policy-makers so that the report can provoke fresh research and insights about the value and impact of the arts in America. [Preface]

How do you measure how art works - on people, on communities, or on society? It's a broad question, and the National Endowment for the Arts offers an ambitious plan to "map" the arts to better understand and measure this complex, dynamic system. How Art Works describes the agency's five-year research agenda, framed and informed by a groundbreaking "system map" and measurement model. The map is grounded in the theory that arts engagement contributes to quality of life in a virtuous cycle from the individual level to the societal level, and back. The map helps illustrate the dynamic, complex interactions that make up this particular system, from "inputs" such as education and arts infrastructure, to "outcomes" such as benefits of the arts to individuals and communities. The NEA developed the map through a series of dialogues with researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the arts, economics, education, health, and other fields.