Comments for Createquity.

Comment on Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem by lisa r

lisa r — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:35:06 +0000

Great article and more fuel for the fire beneath the long long simmering, never quite finished arts stew: how to align the “pursuit of happiness” that is hard wired to American experience with the reality that creativity and artmaking is hard wired to human experience.

Hard to know if the stew needs more salt, pepper or sugar – maybe all three and that could be the special sauce. The arts as related to economic and social and educational policy making has so many attributes to measure across many numeric indexes and we cannot forget the million dollar smile factor of happiness that participants value and keep coming back for more of.

Geographic regions, states, cities, and villages have so many different preferences for the type, content and presentation of cultural and arts offerings. Individual taste is a vexing variable for case making on the value and relevancy of public and private support for “ahts and culcha”. Stew simmers on.

I would be curious what the “group” thinks of the new study from National Governor’s Association, Arts, Culture and Design: New Engines of Growth. http://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/1204NEWENGINESOFGROWTH.PDF

Comment on Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem by Funder knows best | Jumper

Funder knows best | Jumper — Mon, 14 May 2012 21:26:08 +0000

[...] a recent thought-provoking Createquity post, Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem, Ian David Moss examines one of the newer initiatives of the NEA (and its private philanthropy [...]

Comment on Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem by William

William — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:08:33 +0000

As a former director of museums and board member of several arts groups and now consultant – my perspective is less sanguine. It appears to me that most of these programs – “Our Town” and the like -are less about community building and much more about NEA and Foundation brand building. The pressure for both to demonstrate public “value” (to anyone who will listen) has lead them down the redevelopment and social intervention business path. I also lay some of this propensity at the feet of art schools – where social practice is in raging vogue. Is this all a bad thing? – of course not. Yet in practice, listening to arts leaders and foundations spout peculiar “white-knight” notions as saviors and social experimenters – particularly in “underserved “communities – makes me question true motivations. A recent such project was LA’s Our Town funded Watts House Project. The public expose by the Los Angeles Times, vilification of the project by homeowners and the subsequent ousting of the director points to the fact that these efforts require seasoned, measured experts and diplomats. When called to comment, the NEA seemed clueless to the damage in this circumstance even as the director toured and touted it as sterling social success. Yet the truth was that artists brought into the project proposed more “brand building” projects (like plopping a gigantic LOVE sign on a homeowner’s small residence.) The net results were angry community and homeowners, broken property- improvement promises and served to further polarize the local cultural community. The entire notion that emanates out of this kind “social practice” strikes me as haughty, cultural colonialism (gentrification notwithstanding). Please come back when you are beyond the “practice” phase – and stop using communities (particularly communities of color) as Petri dishes.

Comment on Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem by John Shibley

John Shibley — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:49:05 +0000

Look, if I was the CFO of a big company, and I had a vendetta against the arts, I would love the emphasis on economic outcomes, because it gives me exactly the ammunition I need to win the argument against the arts.

Here’s why.

When you make an argument on economic territory, you don’t win by proving that your activity creates economic vitality. You win by proving that your activity is the BEST way to create economic vitality. You don’t have to prove a return on the investment you propose – you have to prove a return superior to every other investment that could be made. Those are the rules of the economic game. Every CFO knows them. Apparently, arts leaders do not.

When we fight on the CFOs’ battle ground, we have to fight based on the rules of that battle ground, and those rules are terrible for the arts, because it is much easier to prove that other investments have a more direct link to economic vitality and provide a clearer return on investment.

Every Civil War general knew that you should choose to fight on ground where you can win, and, for us, THAT ground is that the arts bind us most deeply to our essential our humanity, that develops our ability to contain and profit from complexity, and that brings us together as a democratic community, regardless of whether they lead to economic vitality (though, as a collateral benefit, they do).

It is good ground to fight from. It is true that the battle right now is elsewhere, but if we want to win this fight, we should claim that ground and make the CFOs fight us there.

It is naive to fight anywhere else.

Comment on Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem by Ian David Moss

Ian David Moss — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:21:28 +0000

Nina, there are potentially lots of ways to do this and I’m not trying to say this is the best. However, the criticism you point out is actually a feature, not a bug. Part of my thinking is that the method I suggested would test the efficacy of ArtPlace’s (or someone else’s funding), taking other such opportunities into account. If all of the denied projects find funds elsewhere, that will suggest ArtPlace’s contribution isn’t as meaningful compared to if none of the other projects happen.

Comment on Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem by Nina Simon

Nina Simon — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:09:44 +0000

Interesting concept, but I don’t think this would necessarily yield useful comparative results. As one of the applicants who didn’t make it past the LOI round, we’re looking for other funding to do the work. I think it’s presumptive to expect that this work will only happen with ArtPlace funding–unless you mean that ArtPlace-funded projects are more likely to be designed to explicitly reach particular outcomes or use specific processes that are not accessible to projects outside the ArtPlace funding pool (which I also think is unlikely).

Comment on Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem by The Artful Manager | Never mind the outcome behind the curtain

The Artful Manager | Never mind the outcome behind the curtain — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:50:53 +0000

[...] David Moss offers a fantastic overview and critique of ‘creative placemaking’ efforts now bubbling through the NEA, ArtPlace, and other initiatives. He suggests that the renewed focus [...]

Comment on Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem by Ian David Moss

Ian David Moss — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:12:18 +0000

Thanks, Tommer! Part of my goal in soliciting feedback on the models that we’ve created is to account for some of the diversity that you mention. Even though there are no doubt many ways to skin this proverbial cat, I would bet that if you looked at all of the Our Town and ArtPlace projects, not to mention those funded by Kresge, the Educational Foundation of America, and others pursuing this work, you would start to notice some patterns: common goals, common strategies, common assumptions, just all in different contexts. I think it would then be possible to roll up these examples into a broader typology for creative placemaking work and then stratify projects for measurement and analysis accordingly. Perhaps some of them present natural experiments that could make it possible to analyze causation without having to go through the trouble of setting up a control group; at a convening I attended today, the Minnesota Legacy Amendment was mentioned as one such opportunity (though not a placemaking-oriented one). Another way to do it would be, after selecting some key outcomes to focus on, to take applicants to Our Town and ArtPlace as a sample group and study the neighborhoods that weren’t invested in vs. the ones that were. To make it really robust you would focus the study on the applications that were “on the edge” – that is to say, the lowest-ranked funded projects and the highest-ranked projects denied funding, on the theory that they’re roughly equivalent in quality. Hopefully this provides some idea of possible directions.

Comment on Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem by Tommer Peterson

Tommer Peterson — Fri, 11 May 2012 01:30:16 +0000

Great work, Ian!

Among the many threads possible here, one thing that stands out is that the diverse stakeholders in these initiatives have a wide spectrum of expectations and measures of success – some easily quantifiable and some less so. This is not unlike the “evaluation” question that challenges many arts and culture funders in our increasingly data-driven field. That said, how do we invent the new tools for measuring the value and impact of these initiatives?

Comment on Is Federal Money the Best Way to Fund the Arts? by Public/Private Arts Funding, Our De Facto Ministry of Culture, and Cultural Diplomacy « Arts Diplomacy Los Angeles

Thu, 10 May 2012 21:59:14 +0000

[...] of these have been covered eloquently in some of Ian David Moss’s recent Createquity posts on public vs. private arts funding. I won’t repeat his well-reasoned arguments here, but here are some additional [...]