Anne Gadwa Nicodemus, founder, Metris Arts Consulting As a researcher, writer, speaker, and advocate, Anne Gadwa Nicodemus tells stories through narratives and numbers. Her favorite muse is creative placemaking. She’s fascinated by all kinds of places—their form, their people, their change. A choreographer/arts administrator turned urban planner, Nicodemus is a leading voice in the intersection of arts and community development. Nicodemus co-authored Creative Placemaking, the report for the Mayors’ Institute of City Design (2010) that defined the field. Her journal article “Fuzzy Vibrancy” (Cultural Trends, 2013)and forthcoming book, The Creative Placemakers’ Playbook, look more deeply at creative placemaking as cultural policy and its ethics and practical challenges. Nicodemus has also contributed to the intersection of arts, culture, and community development through other works. Her How Art Spaces Matter reports (for Artspace Projects, 2010 and 2011) reveal the benefits of art spaces to artists’ careers and communities, including anchoring arts districts, expanding arts access, and boosts to safety, livability, tax rolls and property values. Nicodemus and Ann Marksuen’s “Arts and Culture in Urban and Regional Planning: A Review and Research Agenda” (Journal of Planning and Education Research, 2010) was the most downloaded of that journal’s articles in 2009 and 2010. They also recently contributed a chapter to Creative Communities: Art Works in Economic Development (Brookings Institution Press, 2013). Nicodemus’ short writings have also appeared in publications including Grantmakers in the Arts: Reader, Createquity.com and Minnesota Public Radio News. Nicodemus speaks widely on creative placemaking and artist spaces, giving frequent talks at universities and professional conferences nationwide, and as far-flung as Macau, China. She was recognized as one of the nation’s fifty most influential people in the nonprofit arts in 2012 and 2013. Nicodemus holds a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a B.A. in dance and biology from Oberlin College. Nicodemus grew up in suburban Connecticut; went to college surrounded by the cornfields of Ohio; and lived, danced, and worked in New York City and Minneapolis for years. Her family hails from central Long Island’s north shore, where she grew up spending summers on one of its last remaining farms. Recently, she’s laid down roots in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. She lives in Easton, PA with her partner Julia Frances Nicodemus, dog Bogart, and cat Phoebe.

1. Indicators
Metrics
and
Evaluations
Oh My!
November 7, 2013
Anne Gadwa Nicodemus
@MetrisArtsmetrisarts.com

9. Coastal East Lothian; The Circus Comes To Winterfield Park, Dunbar by Richard West;; http://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/46914

11. Why does evaluation matter?

12. Why is evaluation tough?

13. Why is Evaluation Tough?
• Bias
• Conceptualization
• Causality
• Methodology
• Resources

14. Measure what you value.
Don’t value what you measure.

15. Not everything that counts can be counted.
Not everything that can be counted counts.

19. Photo from Artspace collection

20. Photo © Sean Smuda, seansmuda.com. 2009

21. Photo from Artspace collection

22. Community informant interviews (62)
Group interviews (36 artists and arts organization tenants)
Arts tenant survey (135 returns, 46% overall response rate)
Artist income records (149 artist households)
Trends in socio-economic data (Census, ACS, County and Zip Code
Business Patterns)

23. Population Growth: Riverside's Neighborhood vs. Reno and Washoe County
450%
400%
383%
350%
287%
300%
250%
200%
179%
150%
100%
133%
100%
87%
50%
0%
1980
1990
Riverside Neighborhood
2000
Reno
2005-2009
Washoe County

24. Community informant interviews (62)
Group interviews (36 artists and arts organization tenants)
Arts tenant survey (135 returns, 46% overall response rate)
Artist income records (149 artist households)
Trends in socio-economic data (Census, ACS, County and Zip Code
Business Patterns)
Hedonic modeling to estimate property value impacts

25. Estimated Property Value Impacts due to 1999 investment at
Riverside site

26. Benefits to In-house Artists
 The space “works” – affordability and meeting needs
 Co-location – more than the sum of its parts
 Strengthening reputations and identities
 Enhancing ability to create art
 Modest boosts to income

28. Photo from Artspace collection

29.  $9 million investment
 45% increase in taxable value
 From delinquent taxes  $13K (’10)
Riverside Hotel 1964. Photo courtesy Nevada Historical Society (WA-1511)

30. Estimated Property Value Impacts due to 1999 investment at
Riverside site

31. Neighborhood and Regional Impacts
 Transforming buildings and tax rolls
 Influencing neighborhood change, increasing property
values
 Few “red flags” on gentrification led displacement
 Social Benefits – fostering livability, bridging divides
 Larger arts impacts – providing anchors and
models, expanding offerings
 Strengthening, attracting and retaining arts entrepreneurs
 Bolstering other area business

37. Gordan Square Arts District
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland Public Theater, Gordon Square Arts District
Photo © Cleveland Public Theatre
Gordon Square Arts District
Photo © Detroit Shoreway Community Development

38. Weekly fiddle jam. Photo © Tom Pierce, 2009
NuNu’s Experiment
Arnaudville, Louisiana
Photo © Dan Bertrand

39. Paducah Artist Relocation Program
Paducah, Kentucky

40. 01SJ Biennial
San José, California
High n’ Low Rider by Ruben Ortiz-Torrez. Photo © Everett Taasevigen

41. Design in Motion © 2009 City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program/Desiree Bender &
Big Picture Youth. Photo by Steve Weiinik
Ann Northrup and inmate artists at Riverside Correctional Facility celebrate Going Home, the mural on which they collaborated.
Photo by Clem Murray for the Philadelphia Inquirer
Philadelphia Mural Arts Program
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

42. Ingredients
Challenges
• Prompted by an initiator
with vision and drive
• Countering Community
Skepticism
• Tailors strategy to
distinctive features of place
• Forging and Sustaining
Partnerships
• Mobilizes public will
• Attracts private sector buyin
• Garners support of local
arts and cultural leaders
• Builds partnerships across
sectors, missions, and levels
of government
• Assembling Adequate Financing
• Clearing Regulatory Hurdles
• Ensuring Maintenance and
Sustainability
• Avoiding Displacement and
Gentrification
• Developing Metrics for
Performance & Evaluation

46. Anne Gadwa Nicodemus

47. Creative placemaking:
* partners from public, private, nonprofit, and
community sectors
•strategically shape
•the physical and social character of a
neighborhood, town, tribe, city, or region
* around arts and cultural activities

48. Creative Placemaking:
Cross-Sector
Partners
Place
Arts &
Cultural
Activities

49. Creative Placemaking:
Cross-Sector
Partners
Place
animates
public/private
space
rejuvenates
structures +
streetscapes
improves
biz
vitality
Arts &
Cultural
Activities
improves
public
safety
brings diverse people
together to
celebrate, inspire +
be inspired

50. Alternativedefinitions:
A means of investing in art and culture at the heart of a portfolio of integrated
strategies that can drive vibrancy and diversity so powerful that it transforms
communities.
-ArtPlace
Active participation in arts and creative expression that give places meaning
and authentic identity.
-Kresge Foundation
An evolving field of practice that intentionally leverages the power of the
arts, culture and creativity to serve a community’s interest while driving a
broader agenda for change, growth and transformation in a way that also
builds character and quality of place
-Artscape