Animating Democracy Stories and In-Depth Case Studies

Evaluation Plan for Art At Work: Terra Moto and the City of Portland, ME
by M. Christine Dwyer with Marty Pottenger

Art At Work (formerly the Arts & Equity Initiative) is a national initiative to improve municipal government through strategic art projects between artists, city departments, unions, elected officials and the community.  Art At Work's working hypothesis is that it is useful for people to make art about their work and lives, and that doing so increases their chances to come up with better solutions to longstanding problems. As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, artist and Art At Work director Marty Pottenger collaborated with evaluator Chris Dwyer of RMC Research. They applied an evaluation framework developed by Dwyer to systematically define outcomes and indicators for the Police Poetry Project, which addressed low department morale as well as the relationship between police and the public. The framework’s application over time can be used to substantiate the case for the role of the arts in civic systems and processes.
 

Evaluation Plan: Starksboro (VT) Art & Soul Project, The Orton Family Foundation
by M. Christine Dwyer

Art & Soul is a project of the Orton Family Foundation.  The Foundation hypothesizes 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. The Art & Soul Civic Engagement Project, piloted in Starksboro, VT with artist Matthew Perry, tested whether the use of arts-based methods of community engagement would catalyze articulation of the unique assets of a community, in turn impacting community decision-making.  As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, Art & Soul partners collaborated with evaluator Chris Dwyer of RMC Research. They applied an evaluation framework developed by Dwyer to systematically define outcomes and indicators that provide evidence of concern to targeted stakeholders and opinion leaders, as well as strategies for data collection and communication of results.  The resulting evaluation plan attempts to capture the full range of desired expectations organized in three phases: process (short term); outcome (during the life of the project); and impact (long term, post project results).
 

Making the Case for Skid Row Culture: Findings from a Collaborative Inquiry by the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) and the Urban Institute
by Maria Rosario Jackson and John Malpede

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. As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, LAPD and Urban Institute senior researcher, Maria Rosario Jackson engaged in research to develop a foundation to recurrently identify, monitor, and assess the cultural infrastructure of the Skid Row neighborhood. The framework suggested by their research would enable Skid Row organizations and leaders who use arts and culture to see their work as part of a larger system and to create an asset-focused narrative for Skid Row that may help shift or expand the ways outsiders perceive the Skid Row community.
 

Moments of Transformation: Rha Goddess’s LOW and Understanding Social Change
by Suzanne Callahan and contributing writers Jane Jerardi and Caitlin Servilio
With Artist Reflections by Rha Goddess

Artist Rha Goddess’s Hip Hop Mental Health Project (HHMHP) integrates performance and dialogue with the intent to: educate about the signs and symptoms of mental illness and tools for recovery; decrease the social stigma of mental illness, especially for those of lower incomes and of color; explore possible solutions to some of the life stressors that influence mental health; increase awareness of, and access to, mental health services and support; and influence public discourse about mental health. As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, Rha Goddess and evaluator Suzanne Callahan, of Callahan Consulting for the Arts, focused on the impact of the one-woman performance, LOW, and post-performance dialogues on audiences’ attitudes, beliefs and perceptions about mental health and illness by comparing two complementary studies that allowed comparison of research processes.
 

Two-Way Mirror: Ethnography as a Way to Assess Civic Impact of Arts-based Engagement in Tucson, Arizona
by Maribel Alvarez, Southwest Center, University of Arizona

Finding Voice, an ongoing program supported by the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) and Every Voice in Action, helps refugee and immigrant youth develop literacy and second language skills by researching, photographing, writing, and speaking out about critical social issues in their lives and communities.  Through the creative process, the program also aims to help young people develop a better understanding of their Tucson neighborhood and U.S. culture, and build a strong connection to their culture and family. As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, TPAC collaborated with ethnographer and evaluator Maribel Alvarez to learn how principles and practices of ethnography could be applied as qualitative evaluation strategies to better understand the social and civic effects of Finding Voices as well as help TPAC reconceptualize its role in and approach to assessing the civic impact of its work toward more effective casemaking with local civic leaders.
 

Documenting Civic Engagement: A Plan for the Tucson Pima Arts Council
by Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert, Social Impact of the Arts Project, University of Pennsylvania

Grounded in a recent strategic plan, the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) is moving to advance civic engagement in the city and county through its programming, funding, and partnerships. As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, and in addition to the qualitative focus reflected in an evaluation inquiry with Maribel Alvarez (see above listing), TPAC wanted to know what quantitative measures are reasonable to use to understand the civic engagement effects of its work as an agency. Collaborators Mark Stern and Susan Seifert of the Social Impact of the Arts Project proposed five strategies: improving organizational data gathering, telling stories, documenting artists and the informal cultural sector, identifying institutional networks, and using geographic information systems to integrate data for analysis to document civic engagement and the arts.
 

My Soul to Take Case Study: Flint Youth Theatre, Flint, MI
by Sue Wood

In Flint, MI, a year after a fatal elementary school shooting, Flint Youth Theatre mounted a new play ...My Soul to Take, written by artistic director and playwright William Ward to serve as a focal point for fresh attention on the persistent issue of youth violence in the city. Over several months, …My Soul to Take served as the backdrop for a diverse set of dialogue opportunities organized by Flint Youth Theatre and collaborating organizations concerned with education, neighborhood crime prevention, and community issues. These dialogue opportunities aimed to coalesce fragmented efforts to address school violence, deepen understanding of the causes and effects of school violence, and define options for action. FYT worked closely from start to finish with an evaluation coach and implemented a variety of evaluation activities itself. A logic model created for project planning and evaluation became a constant and useful reference point and helped FYT to focus and limit the project’s many possible programmatic directions.
 

Understanding Neighbors Case Study: Out North Contemporary Art House,
Anchorage, AK
by Lynn E. Stern

In 2003, Understanding Neighbors, a collaborative project between Out North Contemporary Art House, the Interfaith Council of Anchorage, and Alaska Common Ground, brought together 100 citizens in a month-long series of dialogue sessions to address the question: “What is the social, moral, and legal place of same-sex couples in our society?” Artists Peter Carpenter, Sara Felder, and Stephan Mazurek created eight performance and video works to serve as the catalyst for small group dialogues. Understanding Neighbors aimed to foster respectful dialogue and mutual understanding among diverse community participants and help shift the tone of media reporting around issues of same sex couples from a contentious to a positive tenor. The project engaged social researchers from the University of Alaska to conduct focus groups and create surveys to measure changes in participants’ pre- and post-meeting attitudes to determine the degree to which participants became more comfortable discussing same-sex relationships with those holding differing viewpoints; and the extent to which the arts-based dialogues impacted participants’ attitudes.
 

The Without Sanctuary Project Case Study: The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA
by Jessica Arcand

The Andy Warhol Museum presented the traveling exhibition Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, which contained 100 photographic prints and postcards from 1870 to 1960 that documented the history of lynching in the United States. The exhibition responded to heightened racial tensions as a result of recent racially motivated killings in the city by providing a potent context for refocusing dialogue about race in Pittsburgh. Daily facilitated public dialogues, use of the museum as a space for community meetings and dialogues around race relations, and artist-educator projects in the community, among other programs, assured visitors ways to respond to the highly charged images and engage with each other. The Without Sanctuary Project aimed to refocus public attention on and to activate meaningful dialogue on racial issues in Pittsburgh. Two outside evaluators guided project organizers in evaluation efforts to understand the impact of the exhibition and dialogues on visitors as well as the effectiveness of interdepartmental collaboration and working with a Community Advisory Board.