The Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago is a nationally recognized interdisciplinary research center dedicated to informing policies that affect the arts, humanities and cultural heritage. It is a joint initiative of the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Since 1999, the Cultural Policy Center has served as an incubator for new ways of understanding arts and culture, what they do, and how they are informed and affected by a range of policies in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

We address this breadth of study by drawing upon the extraordinary expertise and resources of the University of Chicago and building bridges with researchers and cultural sector leaders across the globe. Demographers, survey design specialists, and quantitative sociologists contribute statistical rigor to our efforts. Legal scholars, economists, and philosophers bring conceptual clarity. Historians, cultural critics, and anthropologists provide contextual and interpretative depth. These collaborations result in groundbreaking work on state cultural policy, the arts workforce, arts censorship, cultural amenities, economic impact analyses, and contingent valuation methodology.

We are committed to:

• Developing research that provides the basis for informed policy decisions affecting cultural institutions, activities, and markets at the local, regional, national and international levels.
• Generating policy options for cultural administrators and policymakers.
• Preparing students of public policy for careers in the cultural sector
• Developing future researchers and scholars in the field of cultural policy research.
• Advancing public dialogue on policy and culture issues of the day, through collaborative programs and working conferences that engage faculty, students, researchers, practitioners, policymakers and partners in the cultural and philanthropic fields.