Arts councils play an important role in the civic and cultural development of a community. By coordinating funding for artists, promoting events and the arts community, and, in their best form, ensuring that opportunities are distributed equitably to underrepresented artists, arts councils foster social bonds while cultivating a place’s cultural identity. These efforts also have economic benefits, as arts funding has been shown to both create a short-term increase in gross domestic product (GDP) and to alter the steady state of GDP in the long run.

This summary provides four case studies of localities – Cleveland, OH, Silicon Valley, CA, Washington, DC, and Hartford, CT - that have been successful in growing equity or embedding it within their arts systems, and identifies the following best practices as localities pursue the creation of their own arts councils:

• Take the time to listen, learn, and study before designing any type of solution. When the Cleveland Foundation first created a civic study commission on the performing arts made up of community leaders, and again when they created CPAC (later Arts Cleveland), they took time to gather comprehensive data on the arts and culture community and craft a plan for that community based on its proven assets and issues. The process took two years, hundreds of conversations with individuals and groups; dozens of written reports, website posts and media stories; and a publicly informed design process, culminating in Northeast Ohio’s Arts & Culture Plan in 2000.
• Consider creating an equity council as part of the new arts organization. In Silicon Valley, the SVCREATES equity council is comprised of at least two board members and several community representatives with the goal of guiding the organization in advancing racial and cultural equity within the organization’s structure, leadership, programming, and planning.
• Decide who gets funding by adequately weighting inclusion and diversity in funding formulas. As the case study of Washington, DC, makes clear, weighting inclusion and diversity into funding can be a complicated and contentious process, but one that, through dialogue, can lead to innovative solutions.
• Create an infrastructure in city hall dedicated to the creative and cultural industries with a focus on equity in arts funding. This could involve hiring a senior advisor and advocate for the arts, like the City of Cleveland is doing, or creating an entire department of cultural affairs like that of New York City to support the fine arts and for-profit creative industries including music, design, film, and fashion.