Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative Activities

The Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative is working in four activity areas to:

How to measure and describe the arts’ social change impact has emerged as a dominant question for practitioners and funders. Anecdotal evidence is commonly given to substantiate impact, but many believe that quantifiable data is necessary. Although many arts practitioners want to better understand the impact of their efforts in order to improve and advance program goals as well as to make a case for support, they often don’t have the skill, staffing, funding, and tools needed to make evaluation practicable. Without more concrete evidence, the arts’ full contribution may be undervalued if not missed entirely.

Responding to these needs, the initiative’s activities are to:

Convene a working group. A small working group of practitioners, researchers, evaluators, funders, and other field leaders convenes to bring to bear the best thinking and experience in the field. This group has helped to:

  • ensure clear intent that focuses the collection of extant research;
  • analyze, interpret, and make meaning of the research that is gathered;
  • translate extant resources for their usefulness and application to the arts field;
  • ensure reach of the findings and case making where they will have greatest effect; and
  • identify opportunities and gaps in knowledge, resources, and tools that an extension of this or other efforts can address.

The Working Group includes: Mark Stern and Susan Seifert, Social Impact of the Arts Project/UPenn; Suzanne Callahan, Callahan Consulting for the Arts; Chris Dwyer, RMC Research; and Maria-Rosario Jackson, Urban Institute; Kelly Barsdate of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies; Denise Brown of the Leeway Foundation; Claudine K. Brown of the Nathan Cummings Foundation; Dudley Cocke of Roadside Theatre; artist Rha Goddess (1+1+1=ONE); Marian Godfrey, of the Pew Charitable Trusts; Leia Maahs and Roberto Bedoya, Tucson Pima Arts Council; artist John Malpede of LAPD (Los Angeles Poverty Department); Eulynn Shiu of Americans for the Arts; and Marc Vogl of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Coalesce research, models, and methods. Mark Stern and Susan Seifert of the Social Impact of the Arts Project at the University of Pennsylvania have collected, analyzed, and reported on extant research, impact reports, studies, and evaluations of arts for social change endeavors; and similar research from other fields (such as human services, sociology, urban planning, and community development). Objectives were to identify and synthesize relevant literature; identify relevant and useful methodologies and learnings from other fields; and draw upon leading edge thinking from international efforts in socially engaged arts. (See Research Reports, Professional Papers, and White Papers for more details.)

Create a robust central information resource. Consultant Suzanne Callahan is curating an online compendium of 50 evaluation tools, frameworks, and resources vetted specifically for their applicability and potential usefulness for arts practitioners working in civic engagement and toward social change. It will be structured as a searchable relational database. 

The compendium will be accessed via a user-friendly online framework that gives practitioners an overview of relevant evaluation considerations and ways to identify extant resources relevant to their own work and evaluation needs.

Support selected cultural organizations and programs in a Field Lab. The initiative’s Field Lab is supporting cultural organizations that demonstrate a true commitment to social change through arts-based civic engagement work. Three groups are receiving program support. Additionally they are being linked with evaluation professionals for cooperative investigation of how to gauge and describe social change impacts of their work and to contribute to a written profile documenting their social change impact. These groups also participate in Working Group convenings to share practitioner perspectives and on-the-ground experiences.

Two additional organizations whose projects are in planning or early implementation stages are applying a framework for systematically identifying outcomes and indicators and possible data collection methodologies toward developing effective messaging. (See Field Lab for more details.)

Increase knowledge for effective communications strategies. Move beyond anecdotal arguments and make a concrete case that the arts effect social change. Such strategies: 

  • Interpret success in the language of those to whom the case must be made; 
  • Demonstrate the “value added” contribution of the arts to addressing issues that decision-makers care most about; 
  • Develop common message points that make a consistent case; and
  • Support the field to get messages out where they matter.