Art and Culture in Communities: Unpacking Participation

Policy Brief No. 2 of the Culture, Creativity and Communities Program

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

Art and Culture in Communities

Arts and cultural participation is an important element of community life and an essential component of community building. But delineating the full role such participation plays in the community is dependent on capturing the range of ways in which people actually participate in creative expression — as creators, teachers, consumers, and supporters. This brief presents our findings on arts and cultural participation in the context of community-building processes.

The Place of Participation in ACIP's Overall Framework for Research and Measurement

ACIP's focus on participation derives from the overall framework we have developed for conceptualizing and measuring the role of arts and culture at the community level. This framework has been developed through extensive fieldwork and document review — data gathering that included in-person interviews and focus group discussions with professionals and community residents in nine cities,¹ document review and telephone interviews with staff from arts and arts-related institutions, and on-site examination of selected community-building initiatives around the country. The framework has now been further refined through an extensive process of idea development and debate in workshops and conferences of researchers, community builders, policymakers, funders, arts administrators, and artists — and through practical application by ACIP affiliates around the country.²

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

Notes

1. Definitions depend on the values and realities of the community.

2. Participation spans a wide range of actions, disciplines, and levels of expertise.

About this Policy Brief

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.

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