The Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative works to advance understanding among practitioners, funders, and other stakeholders of the social impact of arts-based civic engagement and social change.
Goals are to:
- Coalesce knowledge and advance learning among practitioners, researchers, evaluators, and funders.
- Strengthen the capacity of practitioners to assess and describe social/civic outcomes.
- Position the arts as valid and viable contributors to civic engagement and social change.
The Impact Initiative aims to inspire and motivate evaluative thinking and assessment. The initiative is a holistic set of programs and activities through which we seek to drive evaluation practice forward by activating practitioners and specialists to build knowledge and improve the efficacy of arts for change work. It aims to:
- Improve the quality and efficacy of arts for change work through better assessment and evaluation;
- Synthesize and disseminate relevant indicators and methods for credible and useful evaluation; and
- Communicate arts for change impact.
The first phase of the initiative furthered practitioner and field learning through: a Field Lab connecting arts for change practitioners and evaluation professionals in collaborative inquiry about evaluation, a national Working Group, and commissioned writings and case studies.
For more detail: