Aligning Arts Research with Practitioner Needs

Abstract

Abstract For much of the past half century, researchers at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) have marshaled statistics about arts “supply and demand” in the United States—one thinks immediately of surveys tracking the public’s arts participation habits, or reports about the artist labor force or arts organizations and industries. A separate focus of NEA research has been to measure the “value and impact” of the arts for individuals and communities. Such studies often use experimental or quasi-experimental methods to understand the relationships between the arts and various outcomes of interest, such as in health, education, or community development. The COVID-19 pandemic’s toll on arts organizations and arts workers has revealed some limitations to this twofold approach. The United States currently lacks a national arts surveillance and reporting system, one with sufficient data streams (approximating real time) that reliably can inform the sector about the health and vitality of its component parts, especially during economic downturns. Also lacking is a national clearinghouse of evidence-based practices that can appeal directly to arts managers. Although the NEA is not in a position to satisfy both needs entirely, the agency’s development of a new strategic plan and research agenda has surfaced themes that will contribute to a far more practitioner-oriented set of research investments than the NEA has made in previous years.