The document discusses the benefits of arts participation for individual and societal health, highlighting claims with strong evidence such as the positive effects of arts on older adults, mental health, and early childhood development. It also addresses barriers to participation, the socioeconomic status of artists, and the need for diversity and cultural equity within the arts ecosystem. Lastly, it outlines a research synthesis for advocating systemic change in the arts sector to enhance access and equity.

1. (Brain) Power Breakfast with
Createquity
August 7, 2017

2. Overview of Createquity

3. Overview of Createquity

4. Overview of Createquity

5. Createquity Arts Research Prize
2017 Prize Winner: Mirae Kim

6. (Brain) Power Breakfast with
Createquity
August 7, 2017

7. Arts and Wellbeing
Part of Your World: On the Arts and Wellbeing
Wellbeing is a way of
holistically grouping
the many components
of individual and
societal health under a
single conceptual
umbrella.
Photo by Flickr user Tim Jordan

8. Arts and Wellbeing
Amartya Sen’s “capability approach”
● Individuals draw varying levels of benefit from the same
resources. Pays more attention to specific states of being
and activities than external inputs.
● Having the freedom to make choices matters. All human
beings should have the knowledge, skills and opportunity
to lead lives “that they have reason to value.”

9. Arts and Wellbeing
Martha Nussbaum’s “central human capabilities”
● Life
● Bodily health
● Bodily integrity
● Senses, imagination, and
thought
● Emotions
● Practical reason
● Affiliation
● Other species
● Play
● Control over one’s environment
Photo by Flickr user Thomas Hawk

10. Arts and Wellbeing
Everything We Know About Whether and How the
Arts Improve Lives
Photo by Flickr user Beyond DC
1. What are particular
claims to the benefits of
arts participation?
1. Does the majority of
available evidence
support each claim?
1. How strong is the
quality of evidence?

11. Arts and Wellbeing

12. Arts and Wellbeing
Claims with the strongest evidence
● Participatory arts activities help to maintain the health and quality of
life of older adults.
● Arts therapies contribute to positive clinical outcomes, such as
reduction in anxiety, stress, and pain for patients.
● Arts participation in early childhood promotes social and emotional
development.
● Student participation in structured arts activities enhances cognitive
abilities and social skills that support learning, such as memory,
problem-solving, and communication.

13. Arts and Wellbeing
Claims with mixed evidence & where the research
could be improved
● Research on the economic and
social impacts of the arts are less
straightforward
● Additional research investments
would be most productive in:
○ Experimental & quasi-
experimental designs
○ Longitudinal studies
○ RCTs with larger sample sizes

14. Why Don’t They Come?
●Cost
●Time
●Access
Barriers to arts participation:
Art Gallery – photo by flickr user LWYang

15. Why Don’t They Come?
●Cost
●Time
●Access Trends reach beyond “conventional”
live arts.
Free time has gone up, particularly for l
SES households.
“Free” does not change low:high-SES.
Barriers to arts participation:

16. Is TV filling a “culture gap”?
Source: 2012 General Social Survey. ICPSR National Archive of Data on Arts and Culture

17. TV as a barrier to arts participation,
or TV as arts participation?
● Quality and quantity of
leisure time.
● TV time is correlated
with negative physical
and cognitive health,
but not with life
satisfaction.
● More options than
ever, something for
everyone!
● Is TV educational? Is it
art in its own right?
Less is More – photo by flickr user Arthur Cruz

18. Socioeconomic Status & Arts Careers
• Createquity’s Definition of a Healthy
Arts Ecosystem
• Household income during childhood
for artists the same as CEOs and
engineers. Artists were about 70%
more likely than average to have a
mother who attended college.
• Most arts majors come from money.
91,000 BFA holders, mostly from
middle and upper class households.
B.A. and Arts Double-Majors at Commencement 2016,
UMD School of Theatre Dance and Performance Studies |
Photo by Karen Kohn Bradley

19. Socioeconomic Status & Arts Careers

20. Socioeconomic Status & Arts Careers
Risk, Wealth, and Choosing Starving Artist?
• Formal arts education helps certain types of artists
pursue successful careers in the arts, at least in Denmark.
• Comparable to entrepreneurship.
• Individuals with low SES may suffer from reduced access
to careers as working artists due to less willingness and
financial ability to assume risk.

21. Socioeconomic Status & Arts Careers
The Role of the State
• Tale of Two Koreas: Golden Handcuffs or Arts Funders in
Handcuffs
• National Status vs. Sink or Swim
• State Policy Helps Artists Survive, Emerge, or Age
– Estonia
– Netherlands
– Denmark
– Sweden

22. Socioeconomic Status & Arts Careers
The Warning:
Selling Out
(Or Buying In)
For Survival

23. Making Sense of Cultural Equity

24. Making Sense of Cultural Equity
DIVERSITY
● Big-budget symphonies, presenters, arts museums,
etc. are far too homogenous.
● Simply offering free events and pursuing more
targeted marketing wasn’t enough.
● Diversity vision calls for change at the infrastructural
level in addition to the programmatic level. There are
both ethical and business reasons for this vision.

25. Making Sense of Cultural Equity
PROSPERITY
● Prosperity vision takes Diversity’s belief in the power
of organizational scale and applies it to institutions
started and led by artists of color.
● Seminal organizations like Studio Museum in Harlem,
El Teatro Campesino, Alvin Ailey American Dance
Theater, and Negro Ensemble Company, and others.
● Role of community leaders, patrons and champions.

26. Making Sense of Cultural Equity
REDISTRIBUTION
● Diversity and Prosperity both embrace the standard
market dynamics of the nonprofit arts sector, in which
a small number of high-profile institutions dominate.
● By contrast, Redistribution favors a larger pool of
recipients for contributed income, particularly from
grantmakers, and focuses on the full ecosystem of
individuals and institutions that comprise a
community.

27. Making Sense of Cultural Equity
SELF-DETERMINATION
● Full participation in and expression of cultural life for
communities of color through models that are organic
to those communities, where ownership of cultural
decisions is located within the community and
residents themselves get to shape cultural life.
● Look beyond established current nonprofit and
funding system which have a legacy of racism and class
hegemony that is still very much alive today.

28. Making Sense of Cultural Equity
FAULT LINES
● Role of Race
● Value + Cost of Integration
● Centrality of Institutions (over individuals)
● Cultural Norms
● $$ (capitalism & non-profit market dynamics)

29. Research Synthesis
Literature Review
Research Synthesis
Meta-
Analysis

30. Research Synthesis
Key Features of Research Synthesis
● Focuses on empirical studies
● Structured around a hypothesis
● Treats studies as a data set
● Draws conclusions across literature

31. Synthesis Project
The path to a case for change
Strategy
Exploration
Advocacy
(case for change)
Discovery
Phase I Phase II
Assess the relative
magnitude of the
problem/opportunit
y
Determine the
universe of
promising and
feasible strategies to
address the problem
Select and
communicate the
most promising
strategy or set of
strategies
Phase III

32. (Brain) Power Breakfast with
Createquity
August 7, 2017

33. Research Synthesis
DATA INFORMATION
KNOWLEDGE WISDOM
LOCALSTATENATIONAL
GLOBAL
SPPA
Foundation-
commissioned
research
reports
DataArts
NADAC
Arts &
Economic
Prosperity
Sustain
Arts
NCAR
Community
patron
databases
CultureBlocks
Academic
research
centers
ArtsEdSearch
CultureLab