MESOC Serapeum | Where culture meets AI

Id		137
Author		Jackson, M., R.; Kabwasa‑Green, F., ; Herranz, J.,
Title		Cultural vitality in communities: Interpretation and indicators
Reference		Jackson, M.R., Kabwasa‑Green F., Herranz J. (2006). Cultural vitality in communities: Interpretation and indicators. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
Link to article		https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/50676/311392-Cultural-Vitality-in-Communities-Interpretation-and-Indicators.PDF
Abstract		This monograph, part of a series presenting the work of the Urban Institute’s Arts and Culture Indicators Project (ACIP), discusses three major advances in his ongoing work. First, they introduce a definition of cultural vitality that includes the range of cultural assets and activity people around the country register as significant. Specifically, they define cultural vitality as evidence of creating, disseminating, validating, and supporting arts and culture as a dimension of everyday life in communities. Second, they use this definition as a lens through which to clarify his understanding of the data necessary, as well as the more limited data currently available, to document adequately and include arts and culture in more general quality of life indicators. Third, they develop and recommend an initial set of arts and culture indicators derived from nationally available data, and they compare selected metropolitan statistical areas based on the measures they have developed.

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The good news is that there is room for great optimism. .
The table focusing on artist jobs is an indicator of support for arts and culture. .
(c) new nationally comparable measures or indicators that help assess important aspects of a communitys cultural offerings. .
Such work, in cities across the nation, can take our understanding of communities and our ability to impact them positively to a new level..
Also important is the integration of arts and culture into other public policy priorities such as education and community development, which can increase the potential support for cultural activity and further contribute to a vibrant cultural scene. .
It recognizes arts and cultural participation as valuable on its own terms and also integral to everyday life, community dynamics, and community conditions. .
To call special attention to these types of organizations, we term them pillar organizations because they are a mainstay for the diverse cultural participation and network of community stakeholders inherent in our concept of cultural vitality. .
This integration increases the potential support for cultural activity and, by extension, makes for a robust cultural scene. .
On the other hand, the concept of cultural vitality as we define it is attractive to many people because it is inclusive and makes possible the engagement of a wider set of stakeholders with potentially more power, who are concerned with making sure that a place has what it needs to be culturally vital. .
Another dimension of cultural vitality is its system of support. .
The availability of better data about different aspects of cultural vitality is crucial and can lead to a much richer understanding of how different manifestations of the presence of arts and culture, cultural participation, and cultural support impact communities. .
This is yet another reason why, in addition to creating an appreciation for the role of arts and culture in and of itself, demonstrating the potential connections between cultural vitality and other community priorities is so crucial. .
On the other hand, it is attractive to many precisely because it is inclusive and potentially engages a more diverse and powerful set of stakeholders in making sure a community has what it needs to be culturally vital. .
Specifically, they define cultural vitality as evidence of creating, disseminating, validating, and supporting arts and culture as a dimension of everyday life in communities. .
Specifically, we define cultural vitality as evidence of creating, disseminating, validating, and supporting arts and culture as a dimension of everyday life in communities. .
Several types of participation that are particularly important to sustaining and increasing cultural vitality in a community surfaced in our research. .
We also found that a high incidence of artists in one place is another strong indicator of that locations cultural vitality and provides one measure or indicator of the level of support available for important aspects of artistic endeavor. .
For example, it enables urban designers and planners to give more consideration to ensuring that communities have community/cultural centers, including facilities for the practice of art, that make possible a wide range of arts engagement. .
And it enables community members to learn more about the range of cultural activity in their communities and where arts-related investments might best be made. .
This surge in indicator initiatives and related efforts to improve and expand the issues they report on provide a window of opportunity for the further integration of arts and culture into indicator systems. .
The Institutes Arts and Culture Indicators Project (ACIP), with its pioneering research, has deepened our understanding of the impact of arts and culture on community revitalization. .
Taken together, this body of work has deepened our understanding of the role culture can play in building vibrant urban communities. .
Lastly, our research points to the significance of the design of public and other spaces where arts and cultural activity can and do take place. .
Further, in the context of understanding arts and cultural participation as a catalyst for or example of social capital, opportunities for collective art making and the collective experience of arts has emerged as very significant. .
For example, in designing communities or neighborhoods, urban designers and urban planners subscribing to the cultural vitality concept can give more consideration to ensuring that neighborhoods have community centers or cultural centers that make possible a wide range of engagementincluding not only audience participation but also facilities for people to make or practice their craft of choice. .
More generally, the cultural vitality concept can compel policymakers, arts funders, and arts administrators to think more critically about to what aspect of a citys or communitys cultural vitality they are contributing. .
This is because the concept suggests an ecology of a wide variety of arts-related entities (some explicitly arts-related and some not)large, midsize, small, nonprofit, public, commercial, and informalas necessary for cultural vitality. .
Finally, acceptance and application of the cultural vitality concept potentially makes available a new range of resources for the artsfrom the education field (e.g., for additional arts instruction) to community development (e.g., for arts districts and artist live/work spaces) and other fields as well. .
Our purpose was to identify any advances relevant to our work on how current indicator systems define arts and culture and measure various aspects of cultural vitality. .
The growing number of examples of arts and culture being included in indicators alongside other issues is encouraging. .
Further, interest in creativity is mounting, and the ability to test the relevance of various aspects of arts and culture in community contexts through impact studies is growing. .
These types of reports are interesting to us because they sometimes include new data or metrics that can push our thinking about possible indicators of different aspects of cultural vitality. .
These measures capture some important aspects of cultural vitality listed earlier under the presence of opportunities for cultural participation domain and under the support for cultural activities domain. .
Data from this survey helped capture nuances of arts and cultural participation and support for arts and culture. .
Our advances in arts and culture data are helping to make answers to this kind inquiry possible. .
The surge of interest in the creative sector and the improved access to cultural vitality data that we document in this report represents a window of opportunity to integrate indicators of cultural vitality into broader policy discussions and decisionmaking. .
It encourages expansion of the cultural district concept to include more opportunities for amateur as well as professional arts engagement. .
All this helps create a window of opportunity for further advances in integrating arts and culture into the concepts of quality of life, good communities and great cities to which this monograph contributes. .
Similarly, the idea of a cultural district can change, from an area that provides opportunities for the consumption of artistic products to one that also offers more opportunities for amateur and professional engagement in the creative process. .
Our groundwork with quality of life indicator initiatives provides a springboard from which other urban researchers and practitioners concerned with quality of life in communities can launch related work in arts and culture. .
Arts and cultural activity is no longer thought of as only for special occasions. .
On a related note, it expands the range of stakeholders in arts and culture to include people who are not necessarily arts experts or acknowledged arts professionals. .
Another indication of a communitys support for cultural activity is the number of resident artists. .
We also found that participation in arts instructionformal and informal, at arts schools, community colleges, community centers, and through some arts organizations for all agesare forms of cultural participation engagement that people registered as particularly valuable because of the intrinsic value of the activity and also because of the skills acquired in learning a craft (e.g., problem solving skills, leadership skills, etc.) as well as the social networks created through this type of participation. .
We also found that formal and informal cultural districtsphysical concentrations of arts organizations and arts-related businesses as well as professional artists and people who are involved in making art recreationallyare important in helping to stimulate and sustain various crucial aspects of cultural vitality. .
For example, our research and the research of others affirms that arts education (kindergarten through high school) and after-school arts programs are an important form of participation that leads to future cultural and other types of civic engagement.16 .
We have learned that another important dimension of support involves public policies explicitly endorsing arts and culture as a community priority (e.g., mandated arts education in public schools, formal arts districts, inclusion of arts and culture in the general plan, etc.) as well as the continuous integration of arts and culture into other public policy priorities, such as housing, public works, education, and economic development. .
This is, in part, due to more data about arts education than other aspects of cultural vitality and strong advocates for arts education inside and outside the cultural field. .
Our work further reveals that, for some artists, working with people who make art as amateurs is part of their own artistic practice and philosophy. .
However, with the advent of city ranking systems catering to the creative class, we do see growing evidence of a more expansive definition of arts and cultural amenities, recognition that a critical mass of artists and creative people are key to attracting other members of the creative class, and some appreciation that residents actually want to engage in the creative process. .
This can best be achieved when a community has a network of strong arts advocates, especially outside the formal cultural sector. .
We at the Foundation hope these new tools will be widely useful for practitioners and policymakers as they consider what arts and culturebroadly conceivedcan and do contribute to the vitality of the communities that are this nations lifeblood. .
However, ACIP has found that commercial sector support is also important for cultural vitality and can be encouraged through public sector incentives such as tax incentives and small business loans. .
Additionally, we know that artists also work in the commercial sector and that many popular visual arts and music festivals that foster cultural participation are commercial. .
Areas with more people earning money as artists indicate that those communities also may have more of these types of resourcesimportant to artists and also to the robustness of important aspects of the cultural scene in general. .
Areas with higher levels of nonprofit arts expenditure per capita may experience relatively more opportunities for engagement in culturally vital activities. .
They also have relationships with local artists as well as with some of the larger arts venues primarily concerned with the presentation of professional artwork. .
Reports that are one-time efforts are useful, because they often call for the creation of indicators to monitor various aspects of the sector (however defined) over time and thus help to build demand for arts and culture data in general, and arts and culture indicators in particular. .
Typical areas of inquiry include questions about citizen participation in the arts, citizen satisfaction with the quality and availability of arts opportunities in their communities, how much respondents value the arts and culture, and how respondents feel about the arts as an appropriate area of government expenditure. .
From this perspective, a place with a high density of employed artists provides an indication that the place has a cultural ecological system supporting the development of artists in such a way that artists are able to find employment.6 It is worth noting that measuring the presence of artists is a difficult task. .
These players will have to ask themselves: What kinds of arts-related entities require further development or support in the communities in question for true cultural vitality to flourish? .
By offering a new approach to standardized measurement of cultural vitality, they can be used in research and public policy development work to more fully account for the role of art and culture in community, economic, and cultural development. .
We call special attention to what we term pillar organizations as particularly significant in fostering diverse kinds of cultural activity and participation. .
Embracing ACIPs Concept of Cultural Vitality Has a Variety of Implications Our definition of cultural vitality has implications for people both inside and outside the cultural field. .
The Pan Valley Institute in Fresno, California, which supports the arts-related (and other) activities of unincorporated cultural groups and also facilitates cultural exchange among different immigrant and ethnic populations in the Central Valley of California is such an example.14 Our research also indicates that formal and informal cultural districtsincluding retail opportunities for arts consumption and places where professional artists and others gather to make their workare important dimensions of cities or communities that help stimulate a creative buzz and promote various forms of cultural engagement. .
Community centers or ethnic associations or businesses promoting artistic practice? .
The community celebrations, festivals, fairs, and parades per thousand population measure is of particular interest because we have found this type of arts and cultural activity to be especially significant within a community context. .
So, in addition to providing information about physical places to go to make or experience arts and culture, the Internet can provide virtual venues for these experiences. .
The definition includes conventional interpretations of arts and culture (high arts and audience participation), but only as part of a larger picture of active arts practice and in a wider range of artistic genres that reflect the values and preferences of the population groups that make up communities. .
The arts establishments per thousand population, nonprofit arts organizations per thousand population, and nonprofit community celebrations, festivals, fairs, and parades measures provide a sense of the incidence and density of some of the arts and culture-related venues that our field research points to as significant opportunities for cultural participation defined broadly. .
Presence of Opportunities for Cultural Participation Our research finds that a mix of nonprofit, commercial, public, and informal venues and opportunities for cultural engagement is essential to create the continuum of participation that enables robust arts practice and consumption, both amateur and professional.6 .
Our definition of cultural vitality calls for a much more complex concept of arts and cultural assets in communities and the resources required to bring these to fruition, sustain, or expand them. .
Another significant advance has been to categorize, in terms of usability for arts and culture indicator development, the wide array of actual and potential data sources we have identified. .
Quality of life surveys are designed to gauge a range of quality of life issues, including the arts in some cases. .
Additionally, our recognition that locally generated data depicting cultural nuances of place, even though they may not be nationally comparable, points to the great value of recognizing local priorities and investments in arts and culture data collection and distribution. .
However, nonprofit arts organizations represent another very important yet different dimension of the presence of cultural vitality. .
Our tier one measure of artist jobs as a proportion of all employment provides an indication of support for an important aspect of cultural vitality as previously discussed in this report. .
These include studies of support for artists, arts and cultural activity in immigrant communities, partnerships among arts organizations and other entities, and the development of arts-focused spaces.4 Our definition of cultural vitality is deliberately inclusive and has been well received as a useful and logical repositioning of perspective on arts and culture by urban planners as well as practitioners and researchers in arts-related fields. .
Facilitating access to cultural vitality data, and to measures such as those ACIP is developing, will make it easier for cultural vitality to be integrated into policy discussion and decisionmaking on a broader scale. .
Their practices are worth highlighting as important steps toward the more comprehensive way of capturing cultural vitality recommended in this report. .
Better data also make possible the analysis of connections of arts/culture with other aspects of community, such as economic development, education, health, public safety, and civic engagement. .
In our field research in communities around the country, we found that organizations that are key catalysts for both amateur and professional arts practice and collaborate with a range of arts and non-arts organizations as part of their programming are especially important for a communitys cultural vitality as we define it. .
(c) long-standing connections with local parks, schools, community centers, etc., that sponsor community arts and cultural activities. .
Our new work continues to support and encourage the inclusion of arts and culture indicators in quality of life measurement systems and in efforts to explain community dynamics and conditions. .
We also learned that the Internet can be a significant portal to cultural venues and can facilitate certain kinds of cultural engagement, such as experiencing web-based artwork, discussing artwork and the creative process, and participating in some web-based art-making efforts such as story collages. .
Finally, we have learned that validation and critical discussion of a range of artistic and cultural practices via media including print, electronic, and web-based (all of which help connect amateur and professional artists to peer networks and expose arts to the general public)both mainstream and nonmainstreamare a form of cultural participation that impact subsequent participation.17 The types of evidencequalitative and/or quantitativepeople should look for in measuring participation include the presence and incidence of enrollment in art schools or university-based arts programs membership in professional arts associations or unions activity related to recreational arts practice18 such as enrollment in arts training programs in a range of venues; participation in arts activities in places such as dance clubs and exercise studios as well as in night clubs (e.g., open mike); and membership in arts clubs or leagues purchase of artistic materials (to make art) collective art-making practice vis-a-vis participation in festivals or other cultural community events child involvement in arts education in K-12 and afterschool arts programs audience participation in different kinds of venues public discourse about arts and cultural practices in newspapers and electronic media (television, radio, web) Support for Arts and Cultural Activity When considering financial support for the arts, policymakers, funders, and researchers have tended to emphasize public and philanthropic sources of support for the nonprofit arts sector. .
It is yet another signal of the possible robustness of opportunities for participation in the kinds of venues captured in these databases. .
It has also measured demand for opportunities to learn new forms of creative expression. .

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