This fusion of cultural and artistic expression with food and agriculture is both a new strategy for some communities and a long held, embedded practice for m any others. To better understand this intersection, and complement the emerging learnings from The Kresge Foundation’s Fresh, Local and Equitable (FreshLo) multi-year support of community-led efforts which fuse artistic and cultural expression with equitable food-oriented neighborhood change, ArtPlace America has engaged DAISA Enterprises in conducting a field scan. DAISA is the National Program Office for FreshLo at the time of this report and adds this perspective and knowledge to this field scan, exploring the relationship between arts and culture and the community development subsector of food and agriculture. The research report seeks to inform current knowledge and practice around how arts and cultural approaches can be better leveraged to create equitable and place-based food system s change across the country – spanning rural, tribal, and urban settings. In more clearly articulating these processes, the field scan will contribute to building the fields of arts and culture and com m unity development, informed by creative placemaking and grounded in the experiences of artists and com m unity change-makers.
General
Creative Placemaking and Expansion of Opportunity
Kresge has defined creative placemaking as the integration of arts, culture, and community-engaged design strategies into community development and urban planning. The paper Creative Placemaking and Expansion of Opportunity: Observations and Reflections offers ideas and critical needs as the field continues to develop through leaders, practitioners, philanthropy, and community members interested in building healthy, equitable communities.
A clear understanding of the sources and consequences of urban inequality, including its historic roots, and reframing the rule of arts, culture, and design in vulnerable communities, are among the field’s needs identified in the paper written by Maria Rosario Jackson, senior advisor with Kresge’s Arts & Culture Program.
U.S. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002-2017
New survey findings from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) show gains in arts attendance totals, rates, and demographic groups plus sizeable growth in poetry-reading. U.S. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002-2017 is a first look at results from the 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). A partnership of the NEA and the U.S. Census Bureau, the SPPA is the nation’s largest and longest-running survey of how millions of adults participate in the arts.
The gains in arts attendance in U.S. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002-2017 track with findings from a recent National Endowment for the Arts report, in partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, which shows growth in consumer spending at the box office for performing arts events. The performing arts together with other arts and cultural industries contributed more than $760 billion to the nation’s economy in 2015.
The new U.S. Trends report covers shifting patterns of arts attendance and literary reading as measured by the share of Americans aged 18 years and older who reported doing any of these activities at least once in a year. The report covers the years 2002, 2008, 2012, and 2017.
‘Raising the temperature’: the arts on a warming planet
The search for decisive actions to remain below 1.5 °C of global temperature rise will require profound cultural transformations. Yet our knowledge of how to promote and bring about such deep transformative changes in the minds and behaviours of individuals and societies is still limited. As climate change unravels and the planet becomes increasingly connected, societies will need to articulate a shared purpose that is both engaging and respectful of cultural diversity. Thus, there is a growing need to ‘raise the temperature’ of integration between multiple ways of knowing climate change. We have reviewed a range of literatures and synthesized them in order to draw out the perceived role of the arts in fostering climate transformations. Our analysis of climate-related art projects and initiatives shows increased engagement in recent years, particularly with the narrative, visual and performing arts. The arts are moving beyond raising awareness and entering the terrain of interdisciplinarity and knowledge co-creation. We conclude that climate-arts can contribute positively in fostering the imagination and emotional predisposition for the development and implementation of the transformations necessary to address the 1.5 °C challenge.
Strategies to Achieve Equitable Investment by Local Arts Agencies and Nexus Organizations
According to the Americans for the Arts Local Arts Agency Profile, each year the United States’ 4,500 local arts agencies (LAAs) and nexus organizations collectively invest an estimated $2.8 billion in their local ecosystems. This includes an estimated $600 million in direct investment in artists and arts and culture organizations through grants, contracts, and loans. This investment has grown steadily since the founding of the local arts movement 60 years ago. For comparison, according to Helicon Collaborative’s Not Just Money, all of private philanthropy invests approximately $4 billion annually to the arts, and according to Giving USA’s 2017 report, corporations give about $950 million annually to the arts.
This makes LAAs, collectively, the largest distributor of publicly-derived funds to arts and culture and
one of the largest and steadiest underwriters of artists and creative workers in the United States. LAAs
must employ a strong lens of equity in their investments through grantmaking and beyond.
Existing systems of power grant privilege and access unequally. At this moment and in this sociopolitical
climate these inequities are more visible even as they are more untenable.
Service and funding organizations, such as Americans for the Arts, that support LAAs and nexus organizations must encourage a thoughtful, quick, and decisive transition of inequitable investment policies and practices toward equity. In the short-term, this means propelling shifts now in the nature and structure of LAA investment programs, policies, and practices. In the longer-term, this means supporting and driving root transformation in the systems and structures that undergird LAA investments in the community and cultural ecosystem, transforming the minds and hearts of those who currently controll and
impact such investment strategies; and training and establishing a more diverse and representative set of
leaders among those who make decisions and set policies.
In partnership with a field-based advisory group, Americans for the Arts proposes four goals that, if
achieved, would support meaningful, measurable progress toward the fair and equitable distribution of all
types of LAA investments, as well as specific strategies to achieve those goals. Together these goals address the need to change the conditions and culture in the agencies stewarding cultural investment resources, while also providing immediate and proximate support for people leading the change. The goals and associated strategies listed here and detailed below are interrelated and synergistic. Multiple prongs of effort need to be implemented concurrently and strategically staged.
While this document guides rather than dictating specific next steps, Americans for the Arts and our
various partners are actively moving on the recommendations in this document and developing new
bodies of work around national communities of practice, leadership pipeline, and the education and
transformation of existing leadership in the field.
Equitable Investment Policies and Practices in the Local Arts Field
Cultural equity is critical to the arts and culture sector’s long-term viability, as well as to the ability of the arts to contribute to healthy, vibrant, equitable communities for all. At the core of challenges related to cultural equity is the historically inequitable distribution of resources, and the values systems, biases, and systemic barriers associated with that distribution.
To achieve fair and equitable distribution of resources within the cultural sector of each community, all types of investment made by local arts agencies should adhere to core practices and competencies that center equity and address bias, honor and embrace the inherent knowledge of the communities and constituents with which they engage, strengthen and broaden the leadership pipeline, support the fullest range of arts, cultural, and creative expression, and embrace new models of power-sharing and decisionmaking.
Each year the United States’ 4,500 local arts agencies (LAAs) collectively invest an estimated $2.8 billion in their local arts and culture ecosystems. This includes an estimated $600 million in direct investment in artists and arts and culture organizations through grants, contracts, and loans. For comparison, all of private philanthropy directly invests approximately $4 billion annually to the arts, corporations about $1.5 billion, state arts agencies about $300 million, and the National Endowment for the Arts about $100 million.
This makes LAAs, collectively, the largest distributor of publicly-derived funds to arts and culture and one of the largest and steadiest underwriters of artists and creative workers in the United States. It is therefore crucial that LAAs employ a strong lens of equity to consider the full scope of their investments-including not only direct financial infusions such as grants, contracts, and loans, but the estimated $2.2 billion each year that are expended on staff salaries, vendors, direct-to-community programming, overhead, marketing and communications, and more. This is particularly important because the existing systems of power that often drive the policies underlying such expenditures grant privilege and access unequally. With data, will, and guidance, however, progress can be made.
This report reviews results from the 2018 Local Arts Agency Profile, an annual survey deployed in April 2018, with a particular focus on an added module to the survey about how, when, and where LAAs in the United States currently consider equity in the deployment of their funds, time, space, and staff. The data was gathered from a broadly representative sample of 537 local arts agencies in the United States of varying budget size, community size, tax status, geography, etc.
Overall, the report tells a story of a field where direct and indirect practices about and centered on equity are on the rise. While major demographic challenges continue to exist among staff at LAAs of all sizes, the majority of large LAAs, and, in most cases, midsize LAAs as well, are taking a variety of steps to consider, engage, and develop support mechanisms for the full diversity of their communities. LAAs with more limited financial capacity and smaller staff sizes are not able to participate in these new mechanisms at the same rate but are inclined to want to know how they can.
That said, there is significant work to do. Only half of LAAs with DEI-related policies say that those policies affect fiscal decisions. The majority of entry- and mid-level staff do not have access to supported professional development. And, perhaps most starkly, LAA funds are distributed inequitable, with the largest 16 percent of grant recipients receiving 73 percent of the dollars awarded.
The centering of equity in the investment practices of the LAA field is necessary to the continued relevance of not only LAAs themselves, but the arts and culture sectors each LAA nurtures. The information in this report provides a jumping-off point. Those at the cutting edge of new practices like start-up capital, loans, and other creative financial mechanisms, as well as those who are pioneering and iterating better ways to addressing systemic inequities, biases, and other challenges within the field and its structures have now been identified, and their stories and learnings can be more easily told.
