ACIP defines Cultural Vitality as "a community's evidence of creating, disseminating, validating, and supporting arts and culture as a dimension of everyday life."
This definition includes the range of cultural assets and activity that people around the country register as significant.
Recommended Phenomena to be Measured:
Findings from our field work in communities and our review of literature on arts and culture impacts point to the cultural venues, activities, and supports registered as important by people in communities around the country and therefore more likely to have influence on various aspects of a community—education, public safety, economic development, health, civic engagement, and arts and cultural development itself.
ACIP's recommendations for cultural vitality phenomena (or evidence) to be tracked come from these observations and are tempered by what we know about the current state of annually recurrent arts and culture-related quantitative information and the likelihood of accessing such information. We summarize our recommended phenomena for tracking by domain of measurement—presence of opportunities for cultural participation, cultural participation itself, and support for cultural activities.
| Presence of Opportunities for Cultural Participation |
- Nonprofit, public, and commercial arts-related organizations (with a particular focus on size and function within the cultural and broader community context)
- Retail arts venues—bookstores, music stores, film theaters, craft and art supply stores
- Non-arts venues with arts and cultural programming—parks; libraries; ethnic associations, societies, and centers
- Festivals and parades
- Arts focused media outlets (print and electronic, including web-based venues)
- Art schools
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| Participation |
- Amateur art-making
- Collective/community art-making
- Arts education K-12
- Arts after-school programs
- Audience participation
- Purchase of artistic goods (materials for making art as well as art products
- Discourse about arts and culture in the media
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| Support |
- Public expenditures in support of the arts in all sectors (nonprofit, public, and commercial)
- Foundation expenditures in support of the arts (nonprofit, public, and commercial)
- Volunteering and personal giving to the arts
- Presence of artists (professional artists as well as people who are tradition bearers but may not make money from their arts practice)
- Integration of arts and culture into other policy areas (e.g., community development, eduction, parks and recreation, etc.)
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