ART AND CULTURE IN COMMUNITIES: UNPACKING PARTICIPATION Policy Brief No.2 of the Culture, Creativity, and Communities Program The Urban Institute, Washington DC Maria-Rosario Jackson, Ph.D. Joaquín Herranz, Jr. Florence Kabwasa-Green 2003 A B O U T T H I S P O L I C Y B R I E F This brief is a product of the Arts and Culture Indicators in Community Building Project (ACIP) – the flagship initiative of the Urban Institute’s Culture, Creativity, and Communities (CCC) program. Launched in 1996 with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, ACIP seeks to integrate arts and culture-related measures into community quality-of-life indicator systems. ACIP is built on the premise that inclusion of arts, culture, and creativity is meaningful when it reflects the values and interests of a wide range of community stakeholders. This is the context in which the connection of arts, culture, and creativity to community building processes and other community dynamics can be fully understood. The authors of this brief would like to thank the Rockefeller Foundation for support of this work. We are indebted to the many community building professionals, arts administrators, artists, community residents and our local ACIP affiliates for their contributions. Also, we would like to thank Felicity Skidmore for her editorial assistance. T H E U R B A N I N S T I T U T E The Urban Institute is a nonprofit nonpartisan policy research and educational organization established to examine the social, economic, and governance problems facing the nation. It provides information and analysis to public and private decision makers to help them address these challenges and strives to raise citizen understanding of these issues and tradeoffs in policy making. http://www.urban.org The Urban Institute 2100 M Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20037 C U L T U R E , C R E A T I V I T Y , A N D C O M M U N I T I E S P R O G R A M The Culture, Creativity, and Communities (CCC) Program at the Urban Institute is a research and dissemination initiative that investigates the role of arts, culture, and creative expression in communities. It explores the intersections of arts, culture, and creative expression with various policy areas. http://www.ccc.urban.org design by: Brooklyn Digital Foundry http://www.brooklynfoundry.com art and culture in communities | unpacking participation 1 A R T A N D C U L T U R E I N C O M M U N I T I E S Arts and cultural participation is an which people actually participate in creative important element of community life and an expression – as creators, teachers, essential component of community building. consumers, and supporters. This brief But delineating the full role such presents our findings on arts and cultural participation plays in the community is participation in the context of community- dependent on capturing the range of ways in building processes. T H E P L A C E O F P A R T I C I P A T I O N I N A C I P ’ S O V E R A L L F R A M E W O R K F O R R E S E A R C H A N D M E A S U R E M E N T ACIP’s focus on participation derives from related institutions, and on-site examination the overall framework we have developed of selected community-building initiatives for conceptualizing and measuring the role around the country. The framework has now of arts and culture at the community level. been further refined through an extensive This framework has been developed through process of idea development and debate in extensive fieldwork and document review – workshops and conferences of researchers, data gathering that included in-person community builders, policymakers, funders, interviews and focus group discussions with arts administrators, and artists – and professionals and community residents in through practical application by ACIP nine cities,1 document review and telephone affiliates around the country.2 interviews with staff from arts and arts- 2 unpacking participation | art and culture in communities EXHIBIT A: Participation in ACIP’s Framework for Arts/Culture Research and Measurement Guiding Principles Domains of Inquiry and Dimensions of Measurement 1. Definitions depend on the values and realities of the community. * Presence 2. Participation spans a wide range of actions, disciplines, and levels of expertise. * Participation 3. Creative expression is infused with multiple meanings and * Impacts purpose. 4. Opportunities for participation rely on arts-specific and other * Systems of support resources. Our framework for arts and culture research and measurement has two major parts: * Four guiding principles. * A set of parameters that serve as both domains of inquiry (for conceptualization and classification) and dimensions of measurement (for documentation, data gathering, and indicator development). The concept of participation discussed here is referenced in guiding principle #2 (see left panel of exhibit A) – it spans a wide range of actions, disciplines, and levels of expertise. This definition of participation is what we explore in the second of our four research and measurement parameters (see right panel of exhibit A). art and culture in communities | unpacking participation 3 T H E M A N Y F O R M S O F P A R T I C I P A T I O N An example from Zumix, a music-focused contributions to bring the show to fruition. community arts organization in East Boston, The performance took place and families, helps capture the potential richness of arts friends, and neighbors attended. So how did and cultural participation at the community people participate? The women and their level. Reflecting on how the organization students were involved in making, teaching, might be considered an asset to the and learning art. Staff members from the community, Zumix staff described to us an community arts organization supported the instance in which Central American endeavor with their own labor and space. immigrant women living in the neighborhood Local businesses provided financial and in- approached them about using the kind resources. Families, friends, and organization’s space to teach dances from neighbors participated as audience Central America. Staff agreed to let the members. women use the space and helped them with their efforts. The women recruited Comprehensive documentation of the neighborhood children to participate in the multitudinous ways in which people engage classes and eventually decided to put on a in cultural activities would surely improve show for the community. To do this they our understanding of community dynamics – needed materials for costumes, background volunteerism, giving, organizing, civic scenery, and so on. Strapped for cash, the engagement. However, the breadth, depth, women and Zumix staff approached local and range of cultural participation in U.S. businesses to make financial or in-kind communities are seldom fully documented. 4 unpacking participation | art and culture in communities D O C U M E N T A T I O N P R A C T I C E S The most common ways of documenting or engagement in both traditional and measuring arts and cultural participation are nontraditional cultural venues. They would limited to audience counts – filled seats – also capture the nature of the participation, and periodic household surveys that also as through the following kinds of questions: focus primarily on attendance at cultural events. Most efforts to document these forms of participation limit their scope even * Is it ongoing or episodic? further by using definitions that exclude many neighborhood activities that ACIP’s * Do people participate as guiding principles would encompass. individuals or as groups? Missing, for example, are the creative expressions that may be observed in public * Is participation formal or parks (e.g., drumming), in subways (e.g., informal? singing or playing live music), on street corners (e.g., impromptu dance), or in * Why do people engage? private homes (e.g., sewing circles, amateur photography, decorative gardening, poetic * Do motives for engagement writing). change or evolve over time? Optimal practices, in contrast, would consider the many categories of L I M I T A T I O N S O F P R E V I O U S R E S E A R C H Unlike the other dimensions of our false dichotomies that oversimplify the framework, the meaning and significance of broad array of participation forms. cultural participation has been the subject of a long historical debate. This debate has Our view is in line with other researchers’ often been cast in elitist-populist terms as criticism of narrow interpretations of cultural sets of dichotomies: high/low, participation and with emerging research formal/informal, fine/folk, classic/populist, efforts that offer richer ways to frame professional/amateur, and the like. ACIP engagement. Peters and Cherbo (1998) research strongly suggests that these are argue, for example, that the cultural policy community has focused mostly on arts art and culture in communities | unpacking participation 5 participation in the nonprofit and for-profit Broad definitions of participation, not sectors and has neglected the surprisingly, also show many more informal “unincorporated arts” as a third sector.3 One organizations engaged in such efforts than consequence, they say, has been an do narrow definitions. A national study by undercounting of cultural participation. the RAND Corporation examined the profit, According to them, expanding the definition nonprofit, and “amateur” sectors of arts of cultural engagement increases organizations. It revealed that activities in participation rates from 80 percent to 95 the “amateur” sector accounted for 30 percent of adults in the United States.