Category: Research Sharing

Brand new research that was shared with the listserv on a monthly basis.

Digital Arts Engagement (September)

COLLECTION: The Digital Age: Arts Content & Digital Engagement in the Online World SUBCOLLECTION 1: Audience Engagement a. “Digital Hybridity,” Centre for Cultural Value, Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre & The Audience Agency b. “In Real Life: Mapping Digital Cultural Engagement in the First Decades of the 21st Century,” Australia Council for the Arts c. “Fact Sheet: Digital Engagement,”… Read more →

Culture and Economic Recovery (July 2021)

1. Avril Joffe. Cultural Trends 30:1, 28-39. “Covid-19 and the African Cultural Economy: An Opportunity to Reimagine and Reinvigorate?” 2020. This article takes a summary look at Africa as a whole to ask how has the Covid-19 pandemic played out in the context of a continent that, in the last decade, has considered culture as a key aspect of its modernisation and development.

2. Douglas S. Noonan and Paul H. O’Neill. National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA). “The Arts and Culture Sector’s Contributions to Economic Recovery and Resiliency in the United States.” 2021. This report explores how the arts economy fares through economic downturns and its influence on economic trends. The companion technical report describes the statistical methods used to conduct this analysis and shows the relationships observed.

3. Stefan Hall. World Economic Forum.COVID-19 Shows It’s Time to Rewrite the Script on Jobs in the Creative Economy.” 2020. In this article, the author argues that more must be done to recognize the importance of the creative economy and to support cultural workers, such as through direct stipends, administrative support, subsidies for real estate and skills transfers.

4. Mark Banks and Justin O’Connor. Tribune. “Culture After Covid.” 2020. Covid-19 has brought about a crisis for arts and culture, with its workers bearing the brunt. To rebuild, cultural pursuits must be decoupled from the consumer economy – and reintegrated into daily life.

5. Louis-Etienne Dubois, David Gauntlett and Ramona Pringle. The Conversation. “How to Help Artists and Cultural Industries Recover from the COVID-19 Disaster.” 2021. The current pandemic has shocked us into an awareness of the threat posed by disasters, particularly given the world’s interdependence and complexity. We need to develop much more sophisticated contingency, rescue and recovery strategies.

Innovation in Opera (June 2021)

1. Steven Hadley. Cultural Trends 30:2, 174-186. “Oliver Mears (Royal Opera House): in conversation.” United Kingdom. 2021. Steven Hadley interviews Oliver Mears on trends and changes in the opera world.

2. Naomi André. University of Illinois Press. “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement.” United States. 2020. Naomi André draws on the experiences of performers and audiences to explore opera’s resonance with today’s listeners. Interacting with creators and performers, as well as with the works themselves, André reveals how black opera unearths suppressed truths.

3. Antonio C. Cuyler. Taylor & Francis. “Access, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of Executive Opera Managers of Color in the US.” United States. 2021. Analyzing the lack of diversity among opera executives, this book examines the careers of executive opera managers of color in the U.S.

4. Andrea Shea. WBUR. A Binge-Worthy, Netflix-Style Opera Series? The Boston Lyric Opera Sure Hopes So.” United States. 2021. Boston Lyric Opera has commissioned a netflix-style series that combines opera, TV, and music video.

5. AJ Willingham. CNN.Black classical artists are turning the pain of the Tulsa Race Massacre into music.” United States. 2021. Adolphus Hailstork latest work, “Tulsa 1921: Pity These Ashes, Pity This Dust,” is an operatic piece that tells the story of racism, bondage and hatred through the eyes of a young girl.

6. Matthew Peddie. National Public Radio. ‘As One’: Coming Of Age Opera Explores Themes Of Identity And Authenticity.” United States. 2021. In this interview, Opera Orlando director Gabriel Preisser and conductor Alexandra Enyart join Intersection to talk about the opera and transgender identity in the arts.

Live Performance vs Streaming (May 2021)

1. Martijn Mulder & Erik Hitters.Visiting pop concerts and festivals: measuring the value of an integrated live music motivation scale.” Cultural Trends. 2021.To better understand the growing popularity of live music, this study analyses consumers’ motivations for live music attendance.

2. Joe Kluger.Digital Strategies-To Stream or Not To Stream.” WolfBrown. 2021. In this blog entry, Kluger argues that a number of nuances in the data support the case for performing arts groups to offer both live and digital performances.

3. Hanna Kahlert.Live streaming and the role of music artist empowerment in the digital era.” MIDiA Research. 2020. Hanna Kahlert weighs the benefits of live streaming against what is lost without the live element.

4. Erin Sullivan.Live to your living room: Streamed theatre, audience experience, and the Globe’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies. 2020. This article presents the findings of an audience survey conducted after the London Globe’s livestream of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in September 2016, analysing that data alongside other surveys of online and cinema broadcast audiences.

5. AEA Consulting. From Live to Digital: Understanding the Impact of Digital Developments in Theatre on Audiences, Production and Distribution.” Arts Council England. 2016. Published by Arts Council England in partnership with UK Theatre and the Society of London Theatre, this report is a piece of primary research into the impacts and opportunities of live to digital work on theatre audiences and organisations.

6. Hasan Bakhshi & Andrew Whitby.Estimating the Impact of Live Simulcast on Theatre Attendance: An Application to London’s National Theatre.” Nesta. 2014. Using data for the UK’s early National Theatre (NT) Live broadcasts, Bakhshi and Throsby conclude that live broadcasts generated greater, not fewer, audiences at the National Theatre.

Audience Development (April 2021)

1. Steven Hadley.Audience Development and Cultural Policy.” Palgrave Macmillan. 2021. This book examines the relationship of audience development to cultural policy and offers a ground-breaking perspective on how the practice of audience development is connected to ideas of democratic access to culture.

2.  Jessica Sherrod Hale and Joanna Woronkowicz. “Evaluating a University’s Investment in Arts Programming on Student Arts Participation.” Cultural Trends 28:5, 366-378. 2019. This study sheds light on what makes college students more likely to participate in the arts by evaluating a university’s investment in arts programming on campus.

3. Francie Ostrower.Millennials Are Not a Monolith: Experiences from One Group of Performing Arts Organizations’ Audience-Building Efforts.” The University of Texas at Austin. 2021. Strategies to engage millennials in the arts may benefit from accounting for the group’s differences as well as its similarities, according to this brief.

4. Alexandra Olivares and Jaclyn Piatak.Exhibiting Inclusion: An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Museum Participation.” VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. 2021. The goal of this study is to examine how race and ethnicity correspond to art museum participation and to gain insight into the motivations for and barriers to participation.

5. Jonathan Shmidt Chapman and Emma Halpern.Envisioning the Future of Theater for Young Audiences.” National Endowment for the Arts. 2020. This report follows a June 2019 meeting convened by the Arts Endowment, TYA/USA, and Theatre Communications Group to tackle some of the structural and societal challenges facing the field and consider ways to overcome those challenges.

Colonialism in the Cultural Sector (March 2021)

1. Jonathan Paquette. Cultural Trends 29:4, 302-316. “France and the Restitution of Cultural Goods: the Sarr-Savoy Report and its Reception.” 2020. Europe. This policy review discusses the November 2018 Report on the Restitution of African Cultural Heritage – more commonly known as the Sarr-Savoy Report – submitted to the French president.

2. Felwine Sarr & Bénédicte Savoy.The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics.” 2018. France. This report provides an analysis as well as a number of strategies for returning a number of cultural items and artworks to African nations that were acquired by France during the colonial era.

3. Jamie Doward. The Guardian. “Professor warns of ‘political agenda’ to discredit researchers exploring slavery links.” 2020. United Kingdom. The academic at the centre of an escalating row over the National Trust’s efforts to explore links between its properties and colonialism has warned of a “political agenda” to “misrepresent, mischaracterise, malign and intimidate” those involved.

4. Sally-Anne Huxtable, Corinne Fowler, Christo Kefalas, & Emma Slocombe.Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery.” 2020. United Kingdom. This report offers a summary of research undertaken by colleagues within and outside the National Trust, exploring some of the most significant links to the places and collections in its care and focusing on the sources of wealth that helped to fund them.

5. Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen.Return of Cultural Objects: Principles and Process Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen.”  2019. The Netherlands. This report sets out the process by which objects/collections can be claimed for return from the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen in the Netherlands.

6. Julia E. Rodriguez. History of Anthropology Review 44. “Decolonizing or Recolonizing? The (Mis)Representation of Humanity in Natural History Museums.” 2020. United States. The author looks at the misrepresentation and appropriation of indigenous peoples in natural history museums and reviews curators, activists, and scholars.

7. Elisa Shoenberger.What Does It Mean to Decolonize a Museum?” 2020. This article shows examples of how museums across the US, Europe, and Australia are trying to tackle the challenge of decolonizing their institutions.

Installation Art (February 2021)

1. Jenny Kidd and Joanne Sayner. Cultural Trends 27:2, 68-82. “Unthinking remembrance? Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red and the significance of centenaries.” 2018. United Kingdom. This article uses a dataset of 1,488 responses to the installation of poppies on the Tower of London in 2014 in order to probe the impacts of this work.

2. Caitilin de Bérigny, Phillip Gough, Majdi Faleh, and Erika Woolsey. Leonardo 47:5. “Tangible User Interface Design for Climate Change Education in Interactive Installation Art.” 2014. Australia. The authors discuss how tangible user interface objects can be important educational and entertainment tools in environmental education.

3. Eleen M. Deprez. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78:3, 345-350. “Installation Art and Exhibitions: Sharing Ground: Symposium: Installation Art.” 2020. In this article, the author looks at installation art in relation to exhibition-making, exploring similarities in display and site-responsiveness.

4. Matthew Pelowski, et. al. Frontiers in Psychology.Capturing Aesthetic Experiences With Installation Art: An Empirical Assessment of Emotion, Evaluations, and Mobile Eye Tracking in Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Baroque, Baroque!’” 2018. In this paper, the authors introduce an exploratory study with installation art, utilizing a collection of techniques to capture the eclectic, the embodied, and often the emotionally-charged viewing experience.

5. Kati Kivinen. FNG Research. “Found Voices and Meaningful Silences: Situating Mika Vainio’s Sound Installations and their Spatial Practices.” 2020. Finland. This article looks at the different installations created by Finnish sound artist Mika Vainio.

6. Najmul Kadirkaikobad, Md Zafar Alam Bhuiyan, Shahina Parveen, and Md Shohel Anwarr. Journal Of Humanities And Social Science 21: 3, 3-18. “The Traditional and Cultural Practice of Installation Art: A Contextual Study.” 2016. Bangladesh. This article discusses the importance and role of installation art in Bangladesh in historical and contemporary contexts.

Health and Wellbeing (January 2021)

1) Hasan Bakhshi. Cultural Trends 23:4, 304-307. “Wellbeing and Policy.” 2014. United Kingdom. The author reviews a 2014 report, “Well-being and Policy,” and questions why the report makes no mention of the arts and culture in its assessment of well-being.  

2) Daisy Fancourt and Saoirse Finn. World Health Organization. “What is the Evidence on the Role of the Arts in Improving Health and Well-being? A scoping review.” 2019. Europe. This report synthesizes the global evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being, with a specific focus on the WHO European Region.

3) All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts Health and Wellbeing.Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing (short report).” 2017. United Kingdom. Short report of the study “Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing,” a 3-year inquiry into the state of practice and research at the intersection of the arts and social care that provides recommendations on improvements of policy and practice.

4) Dr. Stephen Clift. Colouring in Culture. Arts, Health and Well-being: The Need for Robust Appraisal of Research in the Field.” 2020. United Kingdom. This guest blog by Dr Stephen Clift calls for a thorough appraisal of research about how art might contribute to health and wellbeing and argues for greater critical debate about arts and health practice and research.

5) Jill Sonke, et al.Creating Healthy Communities through Cross-sector Collaboration.” 2019. United States. This paper presents a case for how collaboration among the public health, arts and culture, and community development sectors is critical to addressing the issues and conditions that limit health in America.

6) Mindy Thompson Fullilove, et al. Forecast Public Art.How Artists Can Address Public Health Challenges: Talk with Dr Mindy Fullilove.” 2020. United States. A FORWARD series conversation from Forecast Public Art on the arts and public health.

7) Hill Strategies.The Arts & Individual Well-being in Canada.” 2013. Canada. This report looks at connections between cultural activities and health, volunteering, satisfaction with life, and other social indicators in Canada in 2010. **New report coming out from Hill Strategies on this topic in February of this year!**

8) Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert. University of Pennsylvania. “The Social Wellbeing of New York City’s Neighborhoods.” 2017. United States. This research report presents the conceptual framework, data and methodology, findings and implications of a three-year study of the relationship of cultural ecology to social wellbeing across New York City neighborhoods.

9) ArtsFund.Social Impact of the Arts Study: How arts impact King County communities.” 2018. United States This study frames a new way of understanding the public value of the arts in King County.
10) Gill Windle, et. al. Arts & Mental Health 24:8, 1306-1315. “Enhancing Communication Between Dementia Care Staff and Their Residents.” United Kingdom. 2020. This paper explores how dementia care staff describe forms of communication in care settings and the impact on communication following four sessions of arts-based intervention.

Arts and Education (December 2020)

1)  Daniel H. Bowen and Brian Kisida. Cultural Trends 28:5, 379-390. “Arts Education Partnerships: Sources of Harmony and Dissonance with Cultural Institutions’ Collaborative Efforts.” 2019. United States. In this study, the authors examine survey data collected from arts organization administrators who participated in a large-scale school-community arts partnership initiative.

2)  Australia Council for the Arts.Cultivating Creativity: A Study of the Sydney Opera House’s Creative Leadership in Learning Programs in Schools.” 2020. Australia. This research report documents the results of a collaborative research partnership between the Sydney Opera House and the Australia Council for the Arts. The research aimed to understand the impact of the program on both learning and community engagement.

3)  Yael Z. Silk and Catherine H. Augustine. RAND Corporation.How to Support More and Stronger Arts Education Partnerships in Allegheny County.” 2017. United States. This report presents findings from an exploratory study on arts partnerships in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and identifies regional facilitators and barriers to forming, implementing, and sustaining them.

4) Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE).The Partnership for Arts Integration Research (PAIR) Project: An Investigation of Arts and Learning.” 2010. United States. This report is an evaluation of a 4-year, federal-funded Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) project administered by the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools.

5)  Bronwyn Mauldin. Los Angeles County Arts Commission. “We Are in This Together: A Survey of Community Arts Partners in LA County Public Schools.” 2015. United States. Arts for All conducted a survey of teaching artists and arts organizations working in LA County. The fundamental research question driving this survey was: How are community arts partners serving LA County’s 2,198 public schools?

Cultural Citizenship (November 2020)

1. Lisa Marx. Cultural Trends 26:4, 294-304. “Participation as Policy in Local Cultural Governance.” United Kingdom. 2019. This article takes on participation not as taking part in cultural activities per se but in cultural policy-making, by studying the transformation and institutionalisation of participatory processes.

2. Arts & Democracy.Activating the Cultural Power of a Movement.” 2020. United States. This webinar is part of a series on arts, culture, civic engagement and voting power.

3. Yudhishthir Raj Isar. European Commission. “Engaging the World: Towards Global Cultural Citizenship.” Europe. 2014. This report presents the first ever overview of the cultural relations strategies pursued by governmental and civil society actors in 26 of the EU’s strategic partners and Neighbours.

4. Ricard Zapata-Barrero. International Journal of Cultural Policy 22:4, 534-552. “Diversity and Cultural Policy: Cultural Citizenship as a Tool for Inclusion.” 2016. Europe. This article was presented at the 21st International Conference of Europeanists in the workshop “Immigration and Cultural Policy: Debating new research trends in post-migration studies.”

5. Homi K. Bhabha, Jacqueline Bhabha, Yo-Yo Ma, and Diana Sorensen. Silk Road Project. “Symposium on Cultural Citizenship.” United States. 2013. A performance and conversation with members of the Silk Road Ensemble.