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Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative Research Reports, Professional Papers, and White Papers
Documenting Civic Engagement: A Plan for the Tucson/Pima Arts Council [PDF] As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, the Tucson Pima Arts Council wanted to know what quantitative measures are reasonable to use to understand the civic engagement effects of its agency work. Stern and Seifert propose five strategies: improving organizational data gathering, telling stories, documenting artists and the informal cultural sector, identifying institutional networks, and using geographic information systems to integrate data for analysis. These recommendations provide a plan for documenting civic engagement and the arts. Two-Way Mirror: Ethnography as a Way to Assess Civic Impact of Arts-Based Engagement in Tucson, AZ [PDF] by Maribel Alvarez, Ph.D. Finding Voice, an ongoing program supported by the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) and Every Voice in Action Foundation, helps refugee and immigrant youth develop literacy and second language skills by researching, photographing, writing, and speaking out about critical social issues in their lives and communities. Through the creative process, the program also aims to help young people develop a better understanding of their Tucson neighborhood and U.S. culture, and build a strong connection to their culture and family. As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, TPAC collaborated with ethnographer and evaluator Maribel Alvarez to learn how principles and practices of ethnography could be applied as qualitative evaluation strategies to better understand the social and civic effects of Finding Voices as well as help TPAC reconceptualize its role in and approach to assessing the civic impact of its work toward more effective casemaking with local civic leaders.
Making the Case for Skid Row Culture: Findings from a Collaborative Inquiry by the Los Angeles Poverty Department and the Urban Institute [PDF] by Maria Rosario Jackson and John Malpede Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a Skid Row-based theater organization, founded and directed by artist John Malpede. LAPD has distinguished itself by its longstanding commitment to making change in L.A.’s Skid Row community, particularly regarding the homeless, through theater-based civic engagement work. As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, LAPD and Urban Institute senior researcher Maria Rosario Jackson engaged in research to develop a foundation to recurrently identify, monitor, and assess the cultural infrastructure of the Skid Row neighborhood. The framework suggested by their research would enable Skid Row organizations and leaders who use arts and culture to see their work as part of a larger system and to create an asset-focused narrative for Skid Row that may help shift or expand the ways outsiders perceive the Skid Row community. Moments of Transformation: Rha Goddess’s LOW and Understanding Social Change [PDF] By Suzanne Callahan and contributing writers Jane Jerardi and Caitlin Servilio With Artist Reflections by Rha Goddess Artist Rha Goddess’s Hip Hop Mental Health Project (HHMHP) integrates performance and dialogue with the intent to: educate about the signs and symptoms of mental illness and tools for recovery; decrease the social stigma of mental illness, especially for those of lower incomes and of color; explore possible solutions to some of the life stressors that influence mental health; increase awareness of, and access to, mental health services and support; and influence public discourse about mental health. As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, Rha Goddess and evaluator Suzanne Callahan, of Callahan Consulting for the Arts, focused on the impact of the one-woman performance, LOW, and post-performance dialogues on audiences’ attitudes, beliefs and perceptions about mental health and illness by comparing two complementary studies that allowed comparison of research processes. Shifting Expectations: An Urban Planner’s Reflections on Evaluating Community-Based Arts [PDF] by Maria Rosario Jackson, Ph.D. Summary: Based on 13 years of national research on integrating arts and culture into concepts of healthy communities, Senior Research Associate with the Urban Institute Maria Rosario Jackson observes how sound and worthy community arts programs with social and civic intention are often saddled with unrealistic expectations about the impacts that they might have on a community and the ways in which such impacts might be proved. In this paper, Jackson argues for a shift toward more realistic expectations of social impact and evaluation of arts-based civic engagement both on the part of practitioners and funders. She cautions about common “traps” and suggests countermeasures such as getting clarity about the context and possible constraints within which funders work; gaining a good grasp about what the arts organization actually is poised to do towards the ultimate goal, rather than making claims for impacting conditions over which it has no direct control; and establishing correlation with an intended outcome rather than trying to prove causality. The paper also provides recommendations for practical ways of moving towards and operationalizing that paradigmatic shift.
Civic Engagement and the Arts: Issues of Conceptualization and Measurement [PDF] Summary: Based on a literature review drawing from the social sciences, humanities, and public policy, Stern and Seifert of the Social Impact of the Arts Project at the University of Pennsylvania suggest documentation and evaluation strategies that artists, cultural and community organizations, philanthropists, and public agencies could take to improve the quality of knowledge about the social impact of arts-based civic engagement work. Part 1 of the paper explores definitions, key concepts, and theories about civic engagement, the arts and culture, and the relationship between these two spheres of community life. The authors discuss three theories of action—didactic, discursive, and ecological—that is, ways that the arts could influence patterns of civic engagement. Part 2 offers practical considerations for evaluation in areas of methodological issues and data collection strategies based on a set of challenges in moving from theory to actual measurement of change. Stern and Seifert describe these challenges: unit of analysis—what or whom to study; causal inference, the relationship of the arts-based engagement activity to effects; selection bias or understanding compared-to-what; retrospective data, the limits of data gathering via methods that rely on the unreliable faculty of memory; and obtrusiveness, the impact of an intrusive methodology—such as an audience survey or pre/post-test—on one’s findings. The authors assess the major data-gathering strategies of social science and recommend that collectively these methods can be used to build a body of evidence on the role of the arts in civic engagement and social action. In Part 3, Stern and Seifert offer recommendations for evaluating effects of arts-based civic engagement at the program, regional, and initiative scales.
Arts and Civic Engagement: Briefing Paper for the Working Group of the Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative [PDF] Summary: The Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative is informed and guided by a Working Group of arts practitioners, researchers, evaluators, and funders with keen interest in understanding the social and civic impact of arts-based civic engagement work. This briefing paper, prepared by Chris Dwyer of RMC Research, offered the Working Group a “springboard” for discussion at the outset of the initiative, guiding examination of the “lived” experiences of Working Group members. For the purposes of the Initiative, the paper helped establish common terminology; surface core questions and interests in areas of social impact evaluation and case making for arts-based civic engagement work; fine tune purpose and focus; and prioritize the research agenda. The conceptual framework depicts a systematic way to examine how arts-based civic engagement endeavors actually influence or produce important effects and impacts—a working theory of social efficacy. The paper discusses the components of the framework that presents terminology and options from the perspective of measurement and case-making. It also includes an initial list of questions to guide research explorations; inform design of principles for case-making and communication; and surface the types of strategies and tools that would be useful for measuring effects and impacts. |
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