In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts developed a cooperative agreement with The George Washington University to conduct a multisite national study with the aim of measuring the impact of professionally conducted community based cultural programs on the general health, mental health, and social activities of older persons, age 65 and older.  Referred to as the Creativity and Aging Study, the project’s formal title is “The Impact of Professionally Conducted Cultural Programs on Older Adults”.  No previous study of this nature using an experimental design and a control group had been carried out.  Results reveal strikingly positive differences in the intervention group (those involved in intensive participatory art programs) as compared to a control group not involved in intensive cultural programs.

This 2017 study out of the UK is the result of a three-year inquiry into the state of practice and research at the intersection of the arts and social care and provides recommendations on improvements of policy and practice.

Creativity Matters is based on the report of the first national conference on creative aging, cosponsored in 2006 by NJPAC and NCCA. Three dozen interviews with leading practitioners and an extensive literature review expanded the toolkit's content.

This resource from Aroha Philanthropies is designed to provide an overview on the field of creative aging. It provides a strong platform to find inspiration, discover current research, and locate leading organizations in the field.

This resource from the organization Grantmakers in Aging provides an overview of the impact of the arts in aging, as well as research, participating organizations, and funders in the space.

The Creative Aging Resource is a place to access and share resources that highlight the benefits of arts education for older adults.

Ths report reviews work in Seattle establishing the role that the arts play related to urban agricul-ture in order to foster a culture of urban agri-culture, and make lively places and healthy communities.

Craig Pearson and Judith Nasby discuss the evolution of how we think about agriculture, its use of the land and impact on landscape, and how landscape has been portrayed historically in art. They also offer a wider discussion on the role that science and economics have played in agricultural development and the parallels to changes in art form.

Elegantly written by a distinguished culinary historian, Food Is Culture explores the innovative premise that everything having to do with food—its capture, cultivation, preparation, and consumption—represents a cultural act. Even the "choices" made by primitive hunters and gatherers were determined by a culture of economics (availability) and medicine (digestibility and nutrition) that led to the development of specific social structures and traditions.

Food and Museums is the first book to explore the diverse, complex relationship between museums and food. This edited collection features theoretical analysis from cultural historians, anthropologists, neuroscientists, and food studies scholars; interviews with museum professionals, artists and chefs; and critical case studies from a wide range of cultural institutions and museums to establish an interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of the role of food in museums.

International and regional studies have highlighted the integral relationship between culture and sustainable development. This can be extended into the relationship of arts and culture and food security. [Executive Summary]

Cultural Perspectives in Civic Dialogue shares the efforts of cultural organizers who are skilled in working deeply within and across cultures to understand important cultural considerations in arts-based civic dialogue work. Their endeavors illuminate how cultural norms mediate public space and participation, as well as how the choices regarding art forms and dialogue approaches can support or discourage civic participation of various cultural groups. In the King Kamehameha I Statue Conservation Project, rural Hawai’ian residents deliberated how best to conserve a statue of King Kamehameha I and, in the process, deepened understanding of the links between cultural identity, heritage preservation, and current issues of land and economic development. The Center for Cultural Exchange’s African in Maine program supported Sudanese, Congolese, and Somali immigrant and refugee communities in their own cultural programming interests to reveal the diversity and conflicts within and across divided African communities, as well as between Africans and the wider community of “Mainers.” The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center’s ongoing Arte es Vida program addresses issues of cultural equity and democracy related to San Antonio’s Chicano and Mexicano communities. It acts on the idea of cultural grounding - the concept that, in the context of a culturally dominant society, a strong sense of selfhood and identity rooted in cultural practice is necessary to empower marginalized communities toward active participation in public dialogue.

This paper explores the psychology behind aesthetics, the concept of creativity, and art making and consumption.

Life as Art looks at how to integrate the aesthetic emphases of meaning, liberation, and creativity into one’s daily life.

The Arts and Civic Engagement demonstrates with statistically reliable data that arts participation overwhelmingly correlates with positive individual and civic behaviors. Put simply, Americans who read books, visit museums, attend theater, and engage in other arts are more active in community life than those who do not.

The ArtsFund Social Impact of the Arts Study frames a new way of understanding the public value of the arts in King County. How are arts advancing community priorities and positive outcomes for participants and non-participants alike?

Do all Americans have equal access to the arts? Are the arts accessible and inclusive for all communities? National rates of arts participation as measured by attendance at live benchmark events have been trending down for the past few decades.1 Consequently, a narrative of arts decline in the US has been largely accepted, even as some accounts show cultural engagement experiencing a renaissance enabled by advanced communication technologies and changing demographics (Wali et al., 2002; Alvarez, 2005; Brown, Novak & Kitchener, 2008; Novak-Leonard et al., 2015).  

This report, informed by a review of practitioner and academic literature, charts the concerns of arts stakeholders surrounding public arts engagement since about 2000, beginning with the discovery of a statistically significant decline in benchmark attendance as observed in the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). It also traces the role of the “informal arts” (folk, traditional and avocational arts) in broadening the definition of arts and cultural participation.  

This is one of a series of Animating Democracy papers looking at different segments of the arts-for-change field.

Civic Dialogue, Arts & Culture explores the power of the arts and humanities to foster civic engagement while advancing possibilities for arts and humanities organizations to be vital civic as well as cultural institutions. From 2000 to 2004, Americans for the Arts, with support from the Ford Foundation, implemented Animating Democracy, an initiative to foster artistic activities encouraging civic dialogue on important contemporary issues. This book examines the experiences of 37 arts and humanities projects, realized by a wide range of cultural organizations. These projects explored such issues as race relations, economic inequity, gentrification, school violence, the role of same-sex couples in society, and the influx of immigrants and refugees in communities, among others. Civic Dialogue, Arts & Culture contributes to deepening understanding of the artistic, civic, and organizational dimensions of the work; dialogue approaches; common challenges; as well as the principles, theory, and practices that underpin effective work.

This evaluation report from the Culture Builds Communities Project reviews a four-year comprehensive community grant program. The goals of this program were to both increase participation in the arts and to foster community building through the arts and culture.

Excerpted from "Arts & America: Arts, Culture, and the Future of America’s Communities". This essay explores the changing definition of "community" and the role the arts could play to have a positive impact on that change over the next 10 to 15 years. The full book of essays can be purchased in Americans for the Arts online store.

Through the case study of the Guernica Peace Mural Project (GPMP) in Columbus, Ohio, which involved American and Somali groups, I explore how participatory community arts generate social capital to promote intergroup social cohesion.

A team with the Chicago Center for Arts Policy found that the informal arts help to build both individual identify and group solidarity.

Report offers an account of evidence found of social impacts arising from participation in the arts,a nd some methos used in the research. Report is targeted for policy makers in the arts and social fields.

First essay in the book Arts & America: Arts, Culture, and the Future of America’s Communities featuring an introduction by Americans for the Arts CEO Robert L. Lynch. The full book can be purchased in Americans for the Arts online store.

This evaluation report from the Culture Builds Communities Project reviews a four-year comprehensive community grant program. The goals of this program were to both increase participation in the arts and to foster community building through the arts and culture.

This toolkit is intended to help municipalities incorporate arts and culture into their communities, enhance livability by improving quality of life, and become more attractive places to live, work, and play.

Community Arts Councils, Inc. (CACI) is the ancestor of today’s Americans for the Arts and as we look ahead to our 50th anniversary in 2010, we want to take this occasion to reflect upon effective arts development as we celebrate this movement that has grown from about 400 local arts agencies in 1960 to an estimated 5,000 today.

Community Arts Councils, Inc. (CACI) is the ancestor of today’s Americans for the Arts and as we look ahead to our 50th anniversary in 2010, we want to take this occasion to reflect upon effective arts development as we celebrate this movement that has grown from about 400 local arts agencies in 1960 to an estimated 5,000 today.

In 2014, the National Endowment for the Arts hosted Beyond the Building to better understand how performance-based organizations transform places through their artistic practices. 

This is one of several briefing papers created by the APA's Planning and Community Health Research Center on how planners use arts and culture to achieve economic, social, environmental, and community goals.

This is one of several briefing papers created by the APA's Planning and Community Health Research Center on how planners use arts and culture to achieve economic, social, environmental, and community goals.

This national study, conducted every five years by American for the Arts, is the most comprehensive look at the economic impact of the nonprofit arts sector in the country, and is accompanied by trainings and resources to translate data into change.

This report of the Artsplan makes recommendations for implementation of specific programs for the arts in Washington State during the next ten years and addresses the needs of the arts. Included in this report is a general estimate of the economic impact of the arts. Of the 627 Washington State arts groups who participated in Artsplan, only 306 responded to the economic financial survey and reported earnings of $13,054,509 and expenses of $15,747,811 during 1977-78. Also, there are an estimated 1,300 total arts groups in the state. The report also makes mention of the importance of the arts to tourism citing figures for the Seattle Museum of Art's Tutankhamun exhibition and the Seattle Opera's Ring Cycle of Wagner operas.

Urban and regional planners, elected officials, and other decisionmakers are increasingly focused on what makes places livable. Access to the arts inevitably appears high on that list, but knowledge about how culture and the arts can act as a tool of economic development is sadly lacking. This important sector must be considered not only as a source of amenities or pleasant diversions, but also as a wholly integrated part of local economies. Employing original data produced through both quantitative and qualitative research, Creative Communities provides a greater understanding of how art works as an engine for transforming communities.

Many states have created arts-based economic development strategies to support rural communities across the who are confronting economic development issues.

This study debunks the myth that arts economic development (AED) is a recent phenomenon. Although marked by piecemeal policies, different motivations, and scattered implementation, AED has played a strategic role in modern city planning over the past hundred years.

This is one of several briefing papers created by the APA's Planning and Community Health Research Center on how planners use arts and culture to achieve economic, social, environmental, and community goals. To see all the papers visit https://planning.org/research/arts/.

This is one of several briefing papers created by the APA's Planning and Community Health Research Center on how planners use arts and culture to achieve economic, social, environmental, and community goals.

This research paper and report on a 2010 summit convened by the Asia-Europe Foundation provides a variety of examples of current and future practice at the arts/environment/sustainability intersection.

The goal of this field scan is to understand and frame how place-based arts and cultural inter-ventions, or “creative placemaking,” can advance sustainability outcomes in the context of community development. We focused on the U.S. context, although many of the issues and priorities identified are also globally relevant. [Introduction, p. 6]

Excerpted from Arts & America: Arts, Culture, and the Future of America’s Communities. This essay looks at the role of arts and issues of environment and sustainability over the next 10 to 15 years. The full book of essays can be purchased in Americans for the Arts online store.

Grantmakers in the Arts commissioned this survey of arts funders who are supporting environment-related work. Some of the funders are actively pursuing this cross-sector work, while others are just beginning to consider whether and how to do this.

This report presents research across a wide range of national arts councils and ministries of culture, with the goal of broadening the understanding of environmental sustainability in connection to the arts, outlining current and future work, and encouraging collaboration and partnership to develop policies and programs related to culture and environmental sustainability.

This report follows an earlier study that observed an increased ability to understand others’ thoughts and feelings after reading literary fiction. It looks at the prolonged effects of exposure to literary fiction and the resulting effects.

This report is a broad collection of research and essays on ethnocultural arts organizations across the United States and Canada. It examines the resources available to these groups and the challenges they face.

Using data from the Cultural Data Project, the authors determine where newly established New York City arts organizations locate in terms of neighborhood racial, income, and industry diversity.

"We [Metris Consulting]] reflect on a list of questions during the arc of each of each project, from project design to reporting and presenting findings. These questions help us check our assumptions and make our work accessible to and reflective of the people at the center of each project. We make our “check list” and the resources we drew on to craft it, publicly available.' [excerpt from website]

Arts in Healthcare is a diverse, multidisciplinary field dedicated to transforming the healthcare experience by connecting people with the power of the arts at key moments in their lives. This rapidly growing field integrates the arts, including literary, performing, and visual arts and design, into a wide variety of healthcare and community settings for therapeutic, educational, and expressive purposes.

The purpose of this literature review on arts in medicine is to examine reports and studies that illuminate the role artists and arts organizations can and do play in healthcare, especially in clinical settings. The approach used in this review is a holistic one — looking at what authors have to say about the arts and healing in relationship to individual preferences and cultural norms. [p. 3]

This review explores the relationship between engagement with the creative arts and health outcomes, specifically the health effects of music engagement, visual arts therapy, movement-based creative expression, and expressive writing. Although there is evidence that art-based interventions are effective in reducing adverse physiological and psychological outcomes, the extent to which these interventions enhance health status is largely unknown. Our hope is to establish a foundation for continued investigation into this subject and to generate further interest in researching the complexities of engagement with the arts and health.

This Handbook reflects the complex and changing needs of our growing field. It serves as a guide through the Society for the Arts in Healthcare’s full-day workshop, Basic Tool Kit: Arts in Healthcare Program Essentials and was compiled through submissions from the workshop’s leaders. The workshop’s presenters are leaders in the field of arts in healthcare and serve as consultants in the Society’s Consulting Service, a technical assistance program designed to assist organizations in starting, growing, and sustaining arts in healthcare programs. The guide reflects their own work with organizations around the country and that of their peers – a pool of over 20 consultants specializing in a range of arts in healthcare areas.

National Organization for Arts in Health (NOAH) is proud to present the online edition of the white paper, Arts, Health, and Well-Being in America, which was unveiled in a print version at the inaugural Arts in Health conference for the organization in September 2017.

Arts & Health provides a forum for the interdisciplinary field of arts in healthcare. It publishes empirical research, policy analysis, theoretical discourse, systematic reviews, and examples of best practices.

This book deals with policy-making in the cultural arena from an economic point of view and examines cultural policy in the arts, heritage, cultural industries, urban development, tourism, education, trade, cultural diversity, economic development, and intellectual property.

This is one of several briefing papers created by the APA's Planning and Community Health Research Center on how planners use arts and culture to achieve economic, social, environmental, and community goals.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation's blog featured this article 10 Ways to Keep the 'Local' in a Local historic District.

"Over the past several weeks we’ve covered several aspects of creating local historic districts, including deciding to establish a local historic district, considering where its boundaries should be, and getting community buy-in. This week, we’re looking at keeping the local in your historic district, because districts are not a one-size-fits-all solution." [exceprt from blog post]

A project of Art of the Rural, this atlas maps rural arts and culture, with a focus on rural youth, rural-urban exchange, and an interest in the changing face of rural America.

This scan also indicates that the fields of creative placemaking and affordable housing need each other to be effective and also need to better consider each other as they endeavor to accomplish the overall goal of building healthy communities of opportunity.

This report and its predecessor, How Artist Space Matters (2010), explore how and why art spaces benefit in-house artists, arts organizations, and surrounding neighborhoods and regions. Artspace Projects developed the two case studies detailed in this report, the Riverside Artist Lofts (Reno, NV) and Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts and Tashiro Arts Building (Seattle, WA), as well as the three Twin Cities projects explored in our first report. The report provides both an in-depth exploration of how the Riverside and Tashiro Kaplan benefit in-house arts tenants and their neighborhoods and regions.

A decade after the onset of the Great Recession, the national housing market is finally returning to normal. With incomes rising and household growth strengthening, the housing sector is poised to become an important engine of economic growth. But not all households and not all markets are thriving, and affordability pressures remain near record levels. Addressing the scale and complexity of need requires a renewed national commitment to expand the range of housing options available for an increasingly diverse society. [Executive Summary, p.1]

This article reviews the state of knowledge about arts and culture as an urban or regional development tool, exploring norms, reviewing evidence for causal relationships, and analyzing stakeholders, bureaucratic fragmentation, and citizen participation in cultural planning.

By 2065, a record-breaking high of 1 in 3 US residents is projected to be either an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. How well immigrants and second-generation immigrants are settling into the US is of great importance to the well-being and vibrancy of the US as a whole. While economic, political, and social facets of immigration are regularly considered for policy-making, relatively little research has examined the cultural and artistic lives of immigrants. Through four empirical investigations, I explore arts participation as a means of broader civic and social engagement facilitating immigrants' integration into the US. [Abstract]

To what extent have immigrants contributed to the growth of the United States creative arts economy? In this paper, we explore the impact of immigration during the Age of Mass Migration on the development of the arts in the U.S. over the past century.

The works of art in this module represent a wide range of views and perspectives on immigration. Some artists contemplated the experiences of their ancestors in their artwork. Other artists witnessed events or journeys connected to immigration and displacement. Many artists were immigrants themselves.

Bridging Divides, Creating Community: Arts, Culture, and Immigration is a creative placemaking field scan written by John C. Arroyo, Ph.D., AICP, in partnership with ArtPlace America. This field scan seeks to illuminate key priorities within the immigration sector and provide a framework for understanding the ways that arts and culture contribute to local, place-based immigration related outcomes. It is intended for artists and other arts and cultural stakeholders seeking to better understand and collaborate with a particular community development sector, as well as community development practitioners, policymakers, and funders who are interested in how arts and culture partners might further their work.

Excerpted from Arts & America: Arts, Culture, and the Future of America’s Communities. This essay looks at the role of arts in political activism and immigration over the next 10 to 15 years. The full book of essays can be purchased in Americans for the Arts online store.

The Immigrant Artist Program at NYFA connects immigrant artists with a wealth of sources for advice, support, professional development, and networking.

This report is an evaluation of a range of outcomes at the four sites in the Creative Graffiti Abatement Project in Los Angeles County. This report evaluates the success of arts-based strategies in shifting perceptions, increasing positive activity, reducing graffiti vandalism, building a sense of community ownership and building capacity for future arts and culture activities at the sites. While this report takes a summative approach to evaluating outcomes, the evaluator was embedded in planning and public engagement activities throughout the project, combining elements of a developmental evaluation approach with strategies from ethnographic inquiry. The report offers detailed recommendations for public art commissioning agencies, arts organizations, artists and evaluators implementing similar projects.

Excerpted from Arts & America: Arts, Culture, and the Future of America’s Communities. This essay looks at how America’s transportation and building infrastructure will shift and transform over the next 10–15 years, as well as the role that the arts may play in positively impacting those changes. The full book of essays can be purchased in Americans for the Arts online store.

The Toolkit [online] presents a menu of strategies grounded in case studies of real projects that are exemplary of how arts and culture can be an effective component of planning, community development, land use, housing, transportation, economic development, public health, and public safety projects and initiatives. [What is this Toolkit]

This op-ed from Next City outlines the case for art as infrastructure, particularly in pursuit of equity.

This report is the result of a two-year research initiative exploring the multifaceted creative practices of artists who engage with digital technologies. The research examines the creative infrastructure supporting tech-focused artistic practices and provides insight into the existing challenges and opportunities faced by artists and organizations working at the intersection of arts and technology. Tech as Art is part of an Arts & Technology Field Scan conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Ford Foundation and the Knight Foundation

This report stemmed from a research collaboration with the Economic Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It analyzes data from the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey to quantify relationships among arts organizations, design-integrated firms, and business innovators in rural settings

The art of innovation is the result of a nine- month study into the working lives of fine arts graduates and the ways in which they contribute to innovation, both within the arts and in the wider economy.

The Art of Science Learning Project (AoSL) is a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded initiative, founded and directed by Harvey Seifter, that uses the arts to spark creativity in science education and the development of an innovative 21st century STEM workforce. This research was guided by three main hypotheses: (1) Arts-based innovation training, compared to traditional innovation training, improves an individuals creative thinking skills including critical thinking, divergent thinking, problem identification, convergent thinking and problem solving; (2) Arts-based innovation training, compared to traditional innovation training, increases individual collaborative behaviors within a team context; and (3) Arts-based innovation training, compared to traditional innovation training, enhances the novelty, impact and feasibility of team innovations. In order to test these hypotheses, the research study used a quasi-experimental design with a pre-test, post-test intact group design, including a control group for comparison purposes.

On March 14, 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hosted a convening in Washington, DC to showcase some of the nation’s most compelling studies and evidence-based programs that have identified cognitive, social, and behavioral outcomes from arts interventions.

This resulting white paper proposes a framework for long-term collaboration among the NEA, HHS, and oth - er federal agencies to build capacity for future research and evidence-sharing about the arts’ role in human development. A worthy aim of that collaboration is to foster data-driven models for including the arts in poli - cies and programs that seek to improve the well-being of Americans at different stages of their lives.

The Arts and Civic Engagement demonstrates with statistically reliable data that arts participation overwhelmingly correlates with positive individual and civic behaviors. Put simply, Americans who read books, visit museums, attend theater, and engage in other arts are more active in community life than those who do not.

In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts developed a cooperative agreement with The George Washington University to conduct a multisite national study with the aim of measuring the impact of professionally conducted community based cultural programs on the general health, mental health, and social activities of older persons, age 65 and older.  Referred to as the Creativity and Aging Study, the project’s formal title is “The Impact of Professionally Conducted Cultural Programs on Older Adults”.  No previous study of this nature using an experimental design and a control group had been carried out.  Results reveal strikingly positive differences in the intervention group (those involved in intensive participatory art programs) as compared to a control group not involved in intensive cultural programs.

Something to Say: Success Principles for Afterschool Arts Pro-grams from Urban Youth and Other Experts endeavors to an-swer these questions. The primary way we approached this project was by seeing youth as consumers of OST activities, and taking many of our questions directly to them. In our research we spoke to young people in their neighborhoods and homes, interviewed researchers and youth development practitioners, visited highly effective programs, and combed the research to address some of the key knowledge gaps in the field of OST arts activities for urban, low-income tweens and teens. [Executive Summary, p. 11]

To better understand the impact of local arts and cultural events on Americans’ choices about where to live, researchers at the National Endowment for the Arts worked with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to ask a series of questions as part of the 2015 American Housing Survey (AHS). The AHS is a HUD-sponsored national household survey that the U.S. Census Bureau (Census) administers every two years. The questions were designed to measure the value that U.S. residents place on living convenient to arts and cultural events, householder satisfaction with access to such events, and householder perceptions of the social and economic impacts of these events on their neighborhoods.

The study provides empirical evidence that the drivers that create emotional bonds between people and their community are consistent in virtually every city and can be reduced to just a few categories. Interestingly, the usual suspects — jobs, the economy, and safety — are not among the top drivers. Rather, people consistently give higher ratings for elements that relate directly to their daily quality of life: an area’s physical beauty, opportunities for socializing, and a community’s openness to all people. [from Introduction]

The report examines the research on NEA Our Town projects to determine whether proposed indicators were the correct ones for measuring project impact.

This white paper summarizes two decades of creative American placemaking, drawing on original economic research and case studies of pathbreaking initiatives in large and small cities, metropolitan to rural, as well as published accounts. The case studies stretch from Providence, Rhode Island, to Los Angeles, California, and from Arnaudville, Louisiana, and Fond du Lac, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington. Each reveals a distinctive strategy that succeeded when initiators built partnerships across sectors, missions, and levels of government, leveraging funds from diverse sources and programs.

The creation of cultural districts, which involves the concerted effort to put in place programs, policies, and systems that encourage the flourishing of culture in communities, is a driver of livability. This exchange provides resources, examples, and connections.