Research

Our Current Research

• Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago
• Practices that Work: Increasing Participation in the Arts
• Protecting Cultural Heritage during Wartime: Learning the Lessons of Iraq
• The Cultural Amenities Project

Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago
Contact: Wendy Norris, wnorris@uchicago.edu, 773.834.3495

Chicago is internationally known for the excellence of its major cultural institutions, which attract millions of visitors every year. What is the connection between these organizations and the economically, racially, and ethnically diverse population of Chicago ? This study takes a significant step toward answering this question.

Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago is the first study of its kind of a major U.S. metropolitan area, and draws upon data – ticket purchases, subscriptions, donor lists – from Chicago ’s 12 largest cultural organizations and 49 smaller organizations. Information from the transactions was linked to census data on socio-economic status, race, and ethnicity to provide neighborhood-by-neighborhood maps of participation patterns. The study, funded by a grant from the Joyce Foundation, establishes the first benchmark to enable organizations to assess the future effectiveness of their diversity-building efforts among African-Americans and Latinos.

View the study webpage

View the Executive Summary (PDF)

View the Report (PDF)

Practices that Work: Increasing Participation in the Arts

Contact: Diane Grams, dmgrams@uchicago.edu, 773.834.5995

While we observe continual growth in the production and exhibition of arts and culture, researchers at the Cultural Policy Center are studying whether there is corresponding and consistent public participation through marketing and promotional strategies. And which strategies work best. A $340,000 grant from the New York -based Wallace Foundation supports a CPC research team now examining 58 arts and cultural organizations funded by $48 million in Wallace grants since 1999. Funding for the study, "Practices That Work: Increasing Participation in the Arts" is drawn from the foundation’s Leadership and Excellence in Audience Development (LEAD) and Leadership and Excellence in Arts Participation (LEAP). CPC is investigating the ability of these organizations to build, diversify, and maintain audiences as well as evaluating their entire connection and experience.

"This is a major opportunity for the Center to affect policy, particularly at the organizational level – where it matters," said D. Carroll Joynes, CPC executive director. "The result of this study, published as book of case studies will provide both foundations and arts organizations throughout the country with useful, detailed information demonstrating specific proven strategies. The strategies can then be adapted into making informed grants and strengthening the marketing positions of arts and cultural groups receiving the support.
As is typical of CPC research teams, investigators converge from various disciplines and expertise in relevant academics and practices: Diane Grams, CPC Associate Director; Harris School Faculty Advisors Robert LaLonde and Colm O’Muircheartaigh; Betty Farrell, Associate Director, Master of Arts Program, University of Chicago; David Karraker, independent consultant; and Margaret Wyszomirski, Director of the Graduate Program in Arts Policy and Administration at the Ohio State University. The team is examining the issues from learned perspectives in psychology, organizational development, and social networks as well as cultural policy and arts administration.

“This national study will go well beyond merely who is participating in the arts,” says Joynes. “The interdisciplinary approach means we’ll be able to understand the real breadth of the audiences and the sources of their motivation. This is the kind of useful information arts organizations need to develop and expand audiences for their work.” Joynes adds that the study, to be completed in fall, 2006 will be useful to academics, practitioners, philanthropists, and board members from foundations as well as arts and cultural organizations.

Protecting Cultural Heritage during Wartime: Learning the Lessons of Iraq

In response to the disastrous looting of the Iraq Museum in April 2003 and the ongoing damage to Mesopotamian archaeological sites, the Cultural Policy Center has undertaken a multi-year initiative to explore policies and legal regimes that will better prevent the pillaging of priceless artifacts and the destruction of historic and archaeological sites in the aftermath of armed conflict. Under the leadership of Faculty Director Lawrence Rothfield, a team of experts has developed a set of policy recommendations that aims to improve how governments, NGOs, foundations, and professional organizations of archaeologists and cultural leaders do their individual work and cooperate with each other.

The problem of antiquities looting is not limited to wartime situations. In peacetime, this problem can be addressed by crafting and enforcing of laws and regulations directed at suppliers, distributors, and purchasers of illegally obtained antiquities. During wartime, however, laws and regulations do not suffice. This project focuses on how, in the absence of positive laws, civil authority, and policy powers – but in the presence of armed forces – looting can be prevented.

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The Cultural Amenities Project

Contact: Lawrence Rothfield, lary@uchicago.edu, 773.702.7302
Terry Clark, tnclark@uchicago.edu, 773.702.8686

Research on the impact of urban amenities – including but not limited to the arts – suggests that cities with robust cultural scenes outperform comparable cities without such scenes in a number of measures of social and economic well-being. But the studies that have been done to date have been either too limited and local, or too broad and impressionistic in scope, to convincingly show that it is culture, rather than other factors, that is decisive, or even to establish the relative salience of cultural vs. other factors in urban development. A further problem with such studies is that they have equated culture with aggregate numbers (of arts organizations or individuals), making it impossible to distinguish between different kinds of cultural scenes (Nashville's country-music-dominated scene, for example, vs. Seattle's more ecumenical scene).

This two-year project, led by CPC Faculty Director Larry Rothfield and University of Chicago Sociologist Terry Clark, will go beyond these previous studies to analyze the impact of cultural amenities on cities. Professors Rothfield and White will lead a study of cultural amenities in the nation’s 350 MSAs which will identify indicators of "cultural scenes" and add these to the "cultural industries database." Among the categories to be studied are: public art and architecture, community-based arts, night-life arts, literary amenities, high arts, sports and natural amenities. The data-gathering for literary amenities, sports, and natural amenities is well advanced. In 2004-5 we will focus on gathering more details about: a) the high arts (in particular, the theatre scene); b) clubs and nightlife (in particular, the music scene); c) community-based arts (arts education, community centers, church-based arts, etc.). We will also be gathering data about city- and state-level public support for the arts and culture. This multi-year research project will seek to inform policy-makers on how to support economic and cultural development at the neighborhood level.

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