People with lower incomes and less education (low-SES) participate at lower rates in a huge range of activities, including not just classical music concerts and plays, but also less “elitist” forms of engagement like going to the movies, dancing socially, and even attending sporting events.
General
The Cultural Lives of Californians
For many years, arts nonprofits have been tracking a downward trend in arts attendance. By looking beyond the typical events used as benchmarks to reflect traditional measures of participation, the NORC study reveals a seemingly contradictory takeaway: The new narrative is not entirely about decline! Californians actually have a deep interest in the arts and lead active cultural lives. People want to engage, in art-making and arts-learning in particular. Emerging technologies, expectations and cultural norms mean art is happening in new places and ways. At the same time, this updated narrative comes with elements of urgency for the nonprofit arts sector — for example, California’s largest and growing demographic groups do report lower overall arts participation and they are less likely to attend benchmark arts events.
Bridging the Capacity Gap: Cultural Practitioners’ Perspectives on Data
In the summer of 2013, the Cultural Data Project (CDP) partnered with Slover Linett Audience Research to engage leading researchers in a virtual dialogue about cultural data and its role in supporting the long-term health, sustainability, and effectiveness of the cultural sector. The resulting white paper, New Data Directions for the Cultural Landscape: Toward a Better-Informed, Stronger Sector, identified six key challenges that appear to be inhibiting the field from more strategically and effectively engaging in data-informed decision-making practices (see p. 3).
With that report as a starting point, the CDP sought to expand the conversation to include the perspectives of arts practitioners, artists, service organizations, and funding agencies working on the “front lines,” by hosting a series of town hall-style meetings in five cities across the country. At these meetings, participants discussed the challenges identified in the New Data Directions report, articulated other challenges they’re facing, and began to suggest solutions.
Minding the gap: Elucidating the disconnect between arts participation metrics and arts engagement within immigrant communities
A growing gap between national metrics of arts participation and the many, evolving ways in which people participate in artistic and aesthetic activities limits the degree to which such data can usefully inform policy decisions. The National Endowment for the Arts’ Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) is the primary source of arts participation data in the USA, but this instrument inadequately evaluates how members of minority and immigrant communities participate in the arts.
Measuring and Improving Social Impacts: A Guide for Nonprofits, Companies, and Impact Investors
You’re investing your money, your time, your reputation in worthwhile causes, but are you really making a difference?
National Center For Arts Research Annual Report
The inaugural NCAR Report shares evidence-based insights from our first exploration into the health of U.S. arts and cultural organizations. There is no one-size-fits-all performance measure or objective for such a diverse field, only answers to relevant questions that provide an array of useful measures and vantage points. Some anomalies also point to additional questions to explore.
NCAR 2013 Report – Highlights
A sampling of highlights from the study:
- Arts and cultural organizations earned an average of $22.26 per person who participated in the organization’s program offerings, with a wide spectrum when broken down by sector: from a low of $4.10 for community organizations to a high of $53.72 for opera companies, reflecting the differences in operating models.
- The larger the organization, the higher the percentage of its operating revenue that goes to pay for artistic and program personnel compensation, and the greater the tendency to run a deficit.
- The smaller the organization, the higher the level of expenses it covers with contributed revenue.
- San Francisco had the highest arts and culture dollar activity per capita—$895—followed by New York City and Washington, D.C., at roughly $610 each.
- Organizations in the Los Angeles area have the highest levels of unrestricted contributed revenue covering total expenses, the highest program revenue per attendee, and spend more in marketing expenses to bring in each attendee than other clusters, while Chicago organizations spend the lowest amount to bring in every attendee, followed by New York.
