Research + Resources
Arts and culture can have profound effects on youth education, economic mobility, and individual and community health.
While the research is relatively young, it is already demonstrating that arts and culture can have profound effects on a society’s well being. Here are some examples of research.
Click through the categories to see who is doing the research and what it’s showing.
Low-income students who are highly engaged in the arts are more than twice as likely to graduate college than their peers with no arts education.
Cultural resources in a neighborhood have a positive impact on a neighborhood’s health, the outcomes of its schools, and its crime rate.
Twelfth graders who participate in the arts are 40% more likely to have friends from different racial groups.
Resources
We’ve pulled together databases, toolkits, and other resources for you in current best practices and creative thought.
Creativity and Collaboration for Healthier Cities
This resource from the National League of Cities is designed to equip and enable local government professionals to better engage and partner with artists, and in so doing, improve community trust, increase transparent communication, and flexibly respond to dynamic community needs. →
2023: Arts Vibrancy Report
A report from SMU DataArts that ranks cities and states according to 13 measures of arts vibrancy.→
Setting the Stage: Practical Ideas for Implementing High-Quality Afterschool Arts Programs
This Wallace Foundation report highlights promising approaches, how to cut costs and make arts programs available to more young people.→
Four Big Ways to Improve Health through the Arts
Behavioral scientist Dr. Tasha Golden presents an overview of arts and health, identifying four areas in which the arts can contribute to positive public health outcomes. →
Arts & Economic Prosperity 6
An economic and social impact study of the nation’s nonprofit arts and culture industry, conducted in 2022 by Americans for the Arts.→
Arts on Prescription: A Field Guide for US Communities
Arts on Prescription: A Field Guide for US Communities offers a roadmap for communities to develop programs that formally integrate arts, culture, and nature resources into local health and social care. →
WHO: Learning from the Arts
A summary report of the December 2022 World Health Organization expert meeting on prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases: learning from the arts. →
Prison Arts Resource Project
This annotated bibliography is a comprehensive collection of scholarly research on arts in the U.S. prison system.→
ASC Cultural Equity Report 2021
The Arts & Science Council reports on its efforts in 2020-21 to reach its cultural equity goals. →
The Impact of Arts and Cultural Engagement on Population Health
This report from the Social Behavioral Research Group presents findings from major cohort studies of the arts and health in the UK and USA, 2017 – 2022.→
NEA Our Town: Asset Mapping Guide
How does a community start to harness its cultural resources? The first step is to identify and map its cultural 'assets' - the local people, organizations, facilities and businesses in the arts and design. →
Arts Education Data Project
The Arts Education Data Project is rooted in data reporting efforts dating back to the 1990’s.Today the Arts Education Data Project is currently working in 31 states to increase arts participation with the goal of providing arts education data to empower citizens in all 50 states.→
Arts + Social Impact Explorer
An online primer that draws together top-line research, example projects, and organizations about 26 different sectors, all in an effort to make more visible the incredible, wide-reaching impact of the arts. →
PolicyLink: Arts, Culture & Community Development
Learnings from how six organizations in urban, rural, and tribal areas were able to incorporate arts into their work, help them achieve their missions more effectively, and bring about positive outcomes for their communities. →
Transforming the Workforce Development Sector Through arts & Culture
A report by ArtPlace America demonstrating six ways that the arts and culture advance workforce development. →
Grantmakers in the Arts: Arts Funding at the Intersection
Arts Funding at the Intersection topic areas include arts and: aging, community development, disability, environment, health, higher education, juvenile justice, social justice, technology, and more. →
Arts Education Data Collection and Reporting
This 50-State Comparison assesses the capacity of all 50 states and the District of Columbia to aggregate and report on arts education data already housed in statewide education data systems. →
Success Measures Creative Community Development Evaluation Tools
Presents 15 data collection tools—including surveys, observations and creative methods—developed by Success Measures for community development and arts and culture practitioners to collect primary data for evaluating outcomes of creative community development work. →
Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account
This report from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis measures the impact of arts and culture on the U.S. and state economies. →
Art Became the Oxygen: An Artistic Response Guide
A guide for artists, emergency management agencies, funders, policy-makers, and communities responding to natural and civil emergencies. →
Americans for the Arts Animating Democracy
A program of Americans for the Arts, Animating Democracy provides resources to support arts and cultures as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change. →
Report: The Overlooked Anchors
This Kresge Foundation report offers recommendations on how arts organizations, anchor collaboratives and funders can work together to increase social and economic opportunity in disinvested communities. →
Creativity, Culture & Capital
A resource for exploring how art, design, culture, heritage, and creativity can benefit people, communities, and the planet and the role of impact capital in a sustainable global creative economy. →
Municipal-Artist Partnership Guide
A “relationship guide” to forging strong and sustainable creative partnerships between local governments and artists that use creative processes to engage residents and improve communities. →
National Organization for Arts in Health
This organization works to unite, advance, and serve the field of arts in health through conferences and events, publications, and training opportunities. →
Arts, Culture & Creativity
A series of papers from the American Planning Association illustrating how planners use arts and culture strategies to achieve economic, social, environmental, and community goals. →
Arts In Medicine Research Database
A database of more than 35 years of research in the arts and health, compiled by the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine. →
A Handbook for Artists Working in Community
This new publication from Springboard for the Arts is a toolkit for individual artists who wish to begin or deepen their community-engaged artistic practice. →
ArtPlace Field Scans in Arts and Community Development
A series of reports on arts and culture in community development sectors, including health, housing, immigration, public safety, and youth development. →
Creative Futures
From the Ford Foundation, Creative Futures is a series of 40 provocations by thinkers across the spheres of arts and culture, documentary film, and journalism unfolding throughout the fall of 2020. →
Center for Cultural Power
The Center for Cultural Power is a women of color, artist-led organization that creates content about issues of migration, climate, and gender and racial justice and supports artists through fellowships, training, and opportunities for activation. →
Cool It with Art: A How-To Guide for Tackling Rising Temperatures with Art in Our Communities
This guide from Boston's Metropolitan Area Planning Commission includes information on heat risks, types of creative interventions, and how art and artists can help tackle rising temperatures. →
Creating Change through Arts, Culture, and Equitable Development
This 2017 policy and practice primer was issued by PolicyLink and reviews the intersection of the equitable development and community centered arts movements in the US. →
Building Community Wealth through Arts, Culture, and Equitable Development
A report issued by ArtPlace America that explores how arts and culture practitioners can address generational economic challenges through cross-sector collaborations. →
How To Do Creative Placemaking
An action-oriented guide to arts in community development using case studies from the NEA Our Town project. →
Creative Placemaking Guidance for Local Governments
A 2020 publication from the International City/County Management Association, an organization of local government professionals dedicated to creating and sustaining thriving communities throughout the world. →
How Arts and Culture Can Accelerate Environmental Progress
A creative placemaking field scan by ArtPlace America with the goal to understand and frame how place-based arts and cultural interventions can advance sustainability outcomes in the context of community development. →
Culture Track
Dedicated to addressing the most pressing challenges facing the worlds of culture and creativity through research, education, dialogue, and action. We believe that studying and tracking the shifting patterns of audience behavior is critical to shaping the future of culture. →
Seattle/King County Social Impact Study
With a primary focus on youth development & education, health & wellness, and neighborhood vitality, this 2018 study probes the potential for arts to influence more equitable outcomes in the Seattle, WA region. →
Community Arts Network
A platform that aims to enable, engage and empower individuals, organizations and communities through arts and unlikely alliances to generate meaningful change and shape a humane future, together. →
FORWARD: Arts and Housing
Forecast and NeighborWorks America present case studies, interviews, and a toolkit on the topic of the role of the arts and artists in addressing critical issues in housing.→
Forecast
Forecast is a non-profit arts organization founded in 1978 by and for artists working in public space. Resources include stories, toolkits, case studies, public discussions, and other events. Forecast also publishes “Forward,” covering the intersections of art and civic issues. →
Arts and the Workforce
The Commission on the Arts issued a report offering recommendations that acknowledge and support the important place of artists as part of the American workforce, and propose to support creative workers. →
Photos: Clayworks program at Harvey B. Gantt Center; The Arts Empowerment Project’s “Promoting Peace” Project; Muddy Turtle Talks by Hannah Hasan and QC Family Tree, photo by Tracy Watts.
