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Featured Resources on Indicators
These tools and frameworks offer diverse information about indicators. This list has been assembled from many sources and fields and annotated by evaluator Suzanne Callahan of Callahan Consulting for the Arts.
The Advocacy Evaluation Project, orchestrated by Innovation Network (Innonet), began in 2005 to move the field of advocacy evaluation beyond assessing policy change into one that considers more fundamental and contributory components of advocacy efforts: capacity building, network formation, relationship building, communication, issue framing, and...
website
In this article, author Alan Brown revisits and interprets the 2005 report, The Gifts of the Muse, published by the RAND Corporation and commissioned by the Wallace Foundation, with valuable analysis of how public value occurs from the core artistic experience. Starting with an individual experience, the cumulative impact of exposure to the...
Awareness, knowledge, understanding
Based on several years of field research in communities around the U.S., this six-page brief presents an insightful framework for better capturing and measuring arts, culture, and creative expression at the neighborhood level. Based on Urban Institute's in-depth work in this area over many years, the brief outlines four principles that guide...
book / article
The site offers an overview of Urban Institute's Arts and Culture Indicators Project, defines cultural vitality, briefly addresses cultural vitality indicators, offers case study examples, and gives abstracts and links to high-quality relevant research studies. The site is a beautiful resource for arts and civic engagement practitioners and...
website
This 43-page report is a literature review commissioned by the Arts Council of England to support its two-year social inclusion research program. It examines the impact of arts in addressing social exclusion with the purpose of informing the design of the research and placing it in a policy context. The first section attempts to define social...
book / article
Arts for All, a partnership between the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Office of Education, and local partners, developed the School Arts Survey to measure the availability and quality of arts education throughout Los Angeles County. The survey was administered as a pilot to five Los Angeles County schools. Using 16 indicators of quality,...
urban
January 2008
In order to better understand film as an agent of social change, this article offers examples of documentary films that have led to change in viewer behavior, public policy, and discourse. After examining the successful impact of these examples, the authors offer planning tools for outreach campaigns, an approach to assessing impact, and...
Behavior, participation (action, activism, advocacy)
The Boston Youth Arts Evaluation Project (BYAEP) Framework responds to the need for an evaluation model that considers the combination of education, youth development and social services outcomes and that does justice to the beauty, complexity and holistic nature of such integrated work. The BYAEP model has the potential to provide useful...
urban
Published by the Alliance for Justice, this highly useful, interactive guide has two major parts: the Advocacy Capacity Assessment Tool (13 pages) and the Advocacy Evaluation Tool (11 pages). The graphically pleasing guide is made for foundations and grantees to help improve evaluation methods given the difficulties of showing cause-and-effect...
practical tool
Animating Democracy Resource
Written for Animating Democracy's Arts and Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, this 69-page paper speaks directly to arts and civic engagement work, surveys current research, and makes recommendations for future practice.
The paper has three sections. The first attempts to define and differentiate civic terms: civic engagement, social capital...
book / article
