View Research by Author - Carole E. Rosenstein

Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/CaroleERosenstein

Cities around the world are building urban cultural life as a way to develop local economies and revitalize urban centers. But they have done less to recognize and systematically promote the cultural lives of urban neighborhoods and their residents. This brief examines four characteristics of city cultural policy that affect cultural development and cultural life in neighborhoods. The brief is informed by policy forums held by The Living Cultures Project in New Orleans in 2008-2009 to address key policy issues confronting neighborhood and cultural life.

Across the United States, nonprofit cultural heritage organizations serve communities by helping people to remember their shared experiences and aspirations, building and sustaining a sense of community through fairs, folklife programs, public celebrations of music, food, and holidays. This brief uses NCCS Form 990 data to examine the finances and programs of these organizations. It finds that cultural heritage organizations tend to be small, to blend program areas, to make cultural difference central to their work, and they show important program and organizational variation across ethnic groups. These key characteristics should be taken into account when supporting cultural heritage organizations.

The report presents the overall findings of Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structure for U.S. Artists. A major contribution of the study is a new comprehensive framework for analysis and action, which views the support structure for artists in the U.S. as a system made up of six key dimensions of the environment in which an artist works. This builds on previous and ongoing Urban Institute work to measure characteristics of place that make a culturally vibrant community. The study provides information on the status of various dimensions of the artists' support structure--both nationally and in specific sites.

This monograph provides an overview of nonprofit cultural heritage organizations in the United States and a snapshot of their structure, finances and programs. The monograph confirms that cultural heritage organizations are fundamentally community oriented, and that their primary intent to preserve and benefit youth, elders, immigrants, ethnic groups, neighborhoods, towns, and cities is both explicit and reflected in a broad programmatic range of activities beyond the arts. It also finds that cultural heritage organizations are small and lack financial resources compared with the nonprofit arts, culture and humanities subsector. Organizations affiliated with Black/African American and Hispanic cultures are shown to be particularly vulnerable financially.

As the nation's ethnic and racial composition fundamentally shifts, the leading national source of data on arts participation has a critical shortcoming: it does not provide a clear picture of arts participation among Hispanics and people who aren't white. Conducted every five years by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) consistently reports that non-Hispanic whites have the highest rates of arts participation (with two exceptions: African Americans have the highest attendance at live jazz performances and Asian Americans have the highest museum attendance). However, the types of arts participation measured by the SPPA systematically bias its results. Examining the particular demographic characteristics of ethnic and racial populations in the United States makes apparent how these biases disproportionately affect SPPA findings on arts participation among Hispanics and people who aren't white.

Traditional artists and economic development agencies have much to offer one another, but they need to get past the mismatch of needs, resources, and cultures in order to make productive partnerships work. This report shows how artists and agencies have partnered with one another to further the economic development of the areas in which they live and work. It points out where their assets complement one another, as well as where their liabilities pose special challenges. It also highlights the considerable value of intermediation, in which relationships between these unlike parties can be brokered effectively.

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