The San Diego Foundation has a long history of support for community cultural development. It has also actively supported the idea that investment in the purposeful growth of civic engagement can stimulate both social entrepreneurship and committed community leadership.
Stories & Examples
The Annotated Guide to Tools & Resources provides tools, frameworks, and resources to help you develop and implement your evaluation. It’s a repository of useful, practical materials that can help you create an evaluation plan; design your evaluation approach; develop or adapt tools and instruments; and otherwise move your evaluation forward.
This Guide was originally assembled from many sources and fields and annotated by evaluator Suzanne Callahan of Callahan Consulting for the Arts. We continue to add resources. Your suggestions are welcome!
Do you have a useful tool or resource to add? Contact animatingdemocracy@artsusa.org.
Publication Date: March 1, 2015
Resource Format: case study
Continuum: Attitudes, motivation (values, aspirations) | Behavior, participation (action, activism, advocacy) | Public discourse (dialogue, deliberation, media)
Resource Format: practical tool
This item relates to the Preliminary Menu of Possible Outcomes/Indicators/Measures from the Starksboro Art and Soul Project, as both are part of the Art and Soul Project. This item is a ten page community survey with thirty questions. The survey is an adaptation of a standard survey developed by the Orton Family Foundation to use in tracking changes in perceptions about land use planning in all their Heart and Soul community projects.
Publication Date: May 7, 2013
Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced a wave of returning veterans suffering from both physical and emotional traumas as well as families, communities, and a society in need of ways to understand, adjust, and heal. Writer and “former military kid” Maranatha Bivens characterizes ways that art is raising awareness of the issues facing service members, bridging gaps in knowledge and communication between veterans and civilians, and offering veterans paths to healing and reintegration in family and community life.
Publication Date: March 1, 2012
Resource Format: book / article, case study
Arts Integration as Pathway to Unity in the Community: The (Ongoing) Journey of Pillsbury House + Theatre tells the story of how a nonprofit theater and a social service agency rediscovered their shared history and unified operations to become a Center for Creativity and Community. The report cites continual assessment as one factor of success for the merged organization and includes information on its evaluation efforts.
Publication Date: December 31, 2007
Resource Format: book / article
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 lessons learned. This article may be useful to the strategic design of programs and outreach efforts that aim to affect change.
Publication Date: March 31, 2012
Resource Format: case study
Continuum: Attitudes, motivation (values, aspirations)
Battery Dance employed a pre and post program participant survey to assess its program, Dancing to Connect - Iraq. In doing so, the dance company and the program participants explored areas of self-expression, attitude and perception changes, and conflict resolution. Three attached documents provide more detail of these evaluation tools: 1) a final program report, 2) an executive summary of an evaluative report with survey questions and results, and a graphical representation of survey results.
Resource Format: book / article, case study
"Connecting Californians" reports on a research project completed in 2000, that explored story as a powerful means of building community. The project conducted a search in each of California's 58 counties to find projects that engaged residents in a public performance or story about local history and life. Maps were created to represent the various projects. It is a helpful model for collaborative planning and discussion regarding the arts, culture, and civil society.
Publication Date: February 29, 2012
Resource Format: book / article
The strength of Counting New Beans is in its impressive list of contributors. Through interviews, artistic leaders engage in conversation about audience, community, and the value of art. Beyond these thoughtful essays, the book includes the results of a two-year study titled, Understanding the Intrinsic Impact of Live Theatre. This study, composed of patterns of audience feedback in 18 theaters and 58 productions, was commissioned by Clayton Lord of Theatre Bay Area and was completed by Alan Brown and Rebecca Ratzkin of WolfBrown.
Publication Date: May 1, 2012
Resource Format: website
Marty Pottenger discusses Art at Work in Portland, ME and the evaluative practices that were used in assessing participant impact. This resource captures Pottenger’s contribution from Animating Democracy’s 2012 Social Impact & Evaluation Blog Salon.
Publication Date: July 7, 2016
Resource Format: case study
Continuum: Attitudes, motivation (values, aspirations) | Behavior, participation (action, activism, advocacy) | Public discourse (dialogue, deliberation, media)
In 2013 the City of Minneapolis and Intermedia Arts collaborated on Creative CityMaking, a program aimed at integrating creative thinking, strategies, and processes into the ongoing operations of City Departments. Functioning within the Department of Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED), five core projects enabled artists and planners to explore new ways to involve citizens who typically haven’t participated in planning processes.
Grounded in a recent strategic plan, the Tucson Pima Arts Council is moving to advance civic engagement in the city and county through its programming, funding, and partnerships. As part of Animating Democracy’s Art & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, and in addition to the qualitative focus reflected in the evaluation inquiry with Maribel Alvarez, TPAC wanted to know what concrete measures are reasonable to use to understand the civic engagement effects of its work as an agency.
Resource Format: book / article, case study
Abstract: This paper tells two stories of how evaluation helped artists know what difference they made; their narratives help make evaluation concepts accessible and show how evaluation can be doable and even enjoyable! Most community-based arts practitioners feel overwhelmed by what it might take to implement credible evaluation. They’re pressed to define what is meant by “civic” or “social” impact, whose standards to apply, what evidence to look for, and what to document and track.
Resource Format: case study
Continuum: Awareness, knowledge, understanding
Breakthrough, an international human rights organization, invited Education Development Center/Center for Children and Technology to complete an evaluation of “ICED! (I Can End Deportation),” a video game that teaches young people about the effects of American immigration and detention policies. The video game presents scenarios of five different immigrant teenagers and asks players to answer questions about immigration and deportation policies. The evaluation focuses on two measures of social impact: the extent that “ICED!” increases players’ knowledge about the U.S.
Resource Format: case study, practical tool
Art & Soul is a project of the Orton Family Foundation. The Orton Family Foundation, in partnership with the Town of Starksboro and the Vermont Land Trust hypothesize that, by getting in touch with deeper community values and connections to place, citizens will be able to improve upon traditional approaches to planning and make better decisions about the future of their communities.
Resource Format: case study, practical tool
The Art at Work is a national initiative to improve municipal government through strategic art projects between artists, city departments, unions, elected officials and the community. Launched in 2007 in Portland, ME, as a three-year project, the initiative includes artmaking workshops led by artist Marty Pottenger with local artists (currently a printmaker, poets, and photographers) within the city’s Public Works, Health & Human Services, and Police Departments.
Publication Date: August 31, 2012
Resource Format: case study
Continuum: Attitudes, motivation (values, aspirations)
Beertown is a live-performance, guided in part by audience participation and feedback. The attached evaluation tools and results give insight into dog & pony dc’s evaluative approach, guided by Beertown director, Rachel Grossman. Survey instruments were modeled after Theatre Bay Area’s intrinsic impact assessment work that measures the effect of live performance on audience from a variety of different aspects including social/communal, intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic. More about this work can be found in their publication, Counting New Beans: Intrinsic Impact and the Value of
Publication Date: January 22, 2016
Resource Format: book / article
Continuum: Attitudes, motivation (values, aspirations) | Awareness, knowledge, understanding | Behavior, participation (action, activism, advocacy) | Systems, policies, places (legislation, issue/problem resolution)
Animating Democracy held its second Evaluators Circle (E-Circle) at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, inviting Los Angeles-based cultural leaders, researchers, and evaluators to share evaluation projects, findings and learning. It was a rich and hearty exchange.
Publication Date: June 30, 2015
Resource Format: case study
Featuring Alternate ROOTS, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, and The Theater Offensive, this rich and rigorous publication examines the contours, possibilities and limitations of adaptive change for three arts and social justice organizations participating in EmcArts Innovation Labs for the Arts. These organizations have social justice missions and mandates, and are deeply connected to histories of social movements in their respective communities.
Resource Format: book / article, case study
Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a Skid Row-based theater organization, founded and directed by artist John Malpede. LAPD has distinguished itself by its longstanding commitment to making change in L.A.’s Skid Row community, particularly regarding the homeless, through theater-based civic engagement work. Many have observed LAPD’s apparent potent effects on individuals and on social relations in Skid Row, and acknowledge its contributions to influencing structures, systems, and even policy.
Resource Format: practical tool
This tool serves as a model to align values, actions, and measures of progress for State Art Agencies. In table form, it lays out a generic base for locating concepts of participation within a framework of concepts of public value and motivating values of different groups. The table can serve as a basis for developing the types of outcomes and measures related to State Art Agencies' actions to broaden, deepen and diversify creators, stewards and spectators/participants.
Resource Format: book / article, case study
Artist Rha Goddess’s Hip Hop Mental Health Project (HHMHP) seeks to contribute to shifting the cultural paradigm of shame and alienation surrounding mental illness, and satisfy a need for a SAFE place to confront the issue and obtain vital information.
Resource Format: book / article, case study
When Flint Youth Theatre began planning for a new play addressing the local and national problem of school violence, it had no idea that, in the process of developing the project, its own community would experience a devastating elementary school shooting. A year after the tragedy, the play ...My Soul to Take, written by artistic director and playwright William Ward, became a focal point for fresh attention on this persistent and painful issue.
Resource Format: case study
Edutainment - the mixture of education and entertainment ranging from video games to soap operas, harnesses the power of entertainment to promote social change.
Resource Format: case study, practical tool
The Preliminary Menu encompasses process outcomes (short-term), intermediate outcomes (during the life of the project), and impact (long-term, post-project results) for the Art & Soul Project in Starksboro, VT. Community members and researcher/evaluator Chris Dwyer used the worksheet to clarify what to measure and how.
Publication Date: May 1, 2014
Resource Format: book / article
In response to the NEA’s call to identify and create data sources in the arts, the Prison Arts Resource Project (PARP) compiles resources on how the arts work in correctional settings and how they impact the lives of inmates, their families, and their communities.