Factors in Canadians’ Arts Attendance in 2010
Publisher: Hill Strategies
Link: http://www.hillstrategies.com/docs/Factors_Arts_Attendance2010.pdf
This report examines the dynamics of attendance at five arts activities: art galleries, theatres, classical music performances, popular music performances, and cultural festivals. In addition to an analysis of demographic factors, the report provides substantial information about cultural crossovers. The analysis of “cultural crossovers” examines whether participants in one cultural activity are more or less likely to attend other arts activities.
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Entering Upon Novelty: Policy and Funding Issues for a New Era in the Arts
Publisher: Grantmakers in the Arts
Link: http://www.giarts.org/sites/default/files/21-3_Evans_Entering-Upon-Novelty_0.pdf
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Building Arts Organizations that Build Audiences
Publisher: The Wallace Foundation
In June 2011, a conference called Building Audiences: Sustaining What Works sought to share ideas about how to sustain what is working in audience development. The Chicago gathering, sponsored by The Wallace Foundation, brought together representatives from the 54 recipients of the Wallace Excellence Awards, a grant program that has helped exemplary arts groups in six cities design and carry out projects to build participation in the arts. Together with researchers, experts in non-profit management, and marketing and communications mavens, the Excellence Awards grantees discussed their audience development projects and tried to make sense of what they have learned to inform their audience-building work in the future.
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World Cities Culture Report 2012
Publisher: Mayor of London
Link: http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/WorldCitiesCultureReport.pdf
The World Cities Culture Report 2012 is an international survey examining the cultural offerings of 12 cities. One of the report’s central points is that world cities are as important in terms of culture as they are in finance or trade. The report says: “Culture in all its diverse forms is central to what makes a city appealing to educated people and hence to the businesses which seek to employ them.”
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State of Uncertainty: Innovation policy through experimentation
Publisher: NESTA
Link: http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/Provocation_14_State_of_Uncertainty_v7.pdf
This paper proposes a new model for innovation policy that clearly distinguishes it from industrial policy. We challenge the idea, implicit in much existing practice, that governments operate levers that affect innovation in predictable ways, and argue that innovation policy should instead be conceived as a process of discovery, required because the creation and exploitation of new ideas by entrepreneurs is by nature radically uncertain.
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Survey of the General Public The Value of Presenting: A Study of Arts Presentation in Canada
Publisher: Ekos Research Associates
Link: http://www.diffusionartspresenting.ca/2012/03/26/survey-canadians-value-performing-arts/
This report examines Canadians’ performing arts participation based on a combination online and telephone survey of 1,031 adults. The survey instrument was designed to be comparable with results from the 2005 General Social Survey. These two surveys (unlike the 2010 General Social Survey) asked respondents about their attendance at performances by professional artists.
When asked “How often have you attended performing arts performances by professional artists over the past 12 months?”, 75% of respondents indicated that they attended at least once, including 14% attending only once, 33% attending between two and four times during the year, 21% attending “five or more times, but not every month”, and 7% attending “at least once every month”. On the other hand, 13% of Canadians indicated that they have never attended a performance by professional artists.
The study provides statistics on the percentage of Canadians attending theatrical performances (44%), popular music performances (42%), cultural festivals (29%), symphonic or classical music performances (20%), performances of cultural or heritage music, theatre or dance (19%), dance performances (15%), and other types of performances (19%). This is the first time since 1998 that dance-specific data have been available in a broad-based national survey. The report also provides attendance rates for six geographic regions: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan/Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada.
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Creative Placemaking
Publisher: National Endowment for the Arts
Link: http://www.nea.gov/news/news10/creative-placemaking-general.html
Based on a literature review and several case studies, this report examines culture-led placemaking and “its contributions to livability, economic revitalization, creative entrepreneurship, and cultural industries”. The study indicates that creative placemaking efforts are “using arts and culture to animate downtowns and neighborhoods, to stoke their creative industries, to stabilize population and jobs, and to attract new residents and businesses” to small and large communities. The report highlights common elements among successful placemaking initiatives and challenges in creative placemaking.
The report indicates that successful culture-based revitalization efforts must be appropriate to local circumstances. (The report defines “successful” initiatives as ones that “produce gains in livability and sustainability as well as new jobs and economic activity, and do so in an equitable and participatory way”.) Highlighting the common components of successful initiatives, each of the 14 case studies included in the report:
- “is rooted in the talents and vision of one or several collaborating initiators;
- demonstrates a commitment to a particular place and its distinctive qualities;
- mobilizes public will around its vision;
- garners private sector business support and buy-in;
- enjoys the commitment of the local arts and cultural community;
- dovetails initiators’ aspirations with those of other partners; and
- crosses boundaries to leverage support and funds from other functional agencies … and levels of government.”
The common challenges identified by the research include: “creating partnerships, countering skepticism on the part of communities and public leaders, assembling adequate financing, clearing regulatory hurdles, ensuring maintenance and sustainability, avoiding displacement and gentrification, and developing performance metrics”.
The authors argue that recent attention on the arts and culture as community placemakers and a stimulus to the cultural industries “parallels thirty years of emerging consciousness about the environment and its significance for liveability and economic competitiveness”. Noting that there is a lack of satisfactory indicators of cultural sector performance and impacts as well as a lack of policy frameworks and networking in the area of creative placemaking, the report concludes with the recommendation that further research be conducted into “how a new intergovernmental policy platform could be constructed to bridge functional and sectoral divides, advancing the liveability and economic productivity of American communities of all sizes”.
