Roland Kushner

In 2010, Americans for the Arts launched the National Arts Index; this was followed in 2012 by its community-level sibling, the Local Arts Index.  The Local Arts Index (LAI) is the largest publicly accessible source of data on arts and culture at the county level.  It offers a free and easy-to-use web tool that displays information about the arts in every U.S. county in the form of 75 indicators, with data since 2009.  The site makes it easy for you to learn about your county (or the one next door, or where you’re thinking of moving) as an arts community. 

I had never been accused of being white. It was the second Diversity Forum with about two dozen local arts stakeholders and a clearly skeptical gentleman asked, “What are two white guys from a national arts organization doing facilitating a local conversation around diversity in the arts?” The question took me aback. “I’m not white, I’m Latino,” I instinctively responded as if my bona fides to facilitate this conversation were my non-whiteness. The gentleman had come into the meeting space with folded arms and body language that clearly expressed skepticism towards the purpose and the conveners of the forum.

This week’s blog salon on Cultural Districts and Communities: Catalysts for Change explored how cultural districts are improving, engaging, and sometimes changing their communities. Kicking off the salon, I introduced our new tool - the National Cultural Districts Exchange, which is a suite of online tools and resources to provide research and information about cultural districts. This new resource is meant to be an exchange of ideas, information, and resources - and this blog salon supplemented this new tool with great viewpoints and unique perspectives on cultural districts.

Robert Bush

If a Local Arts Agency (LAA) doesn't produce plays or present concerts or mount exhibitions or offer classes, why does a community need an LAA? Why does your LAA need your support?

A fundamental part of an LAA’s role in the community is to increase public access to the arts and work to ensure that everyone in their community or service area enjoys the cultural, civic, economic, and educational benefits of a thriving cultural sector. In 1999, when the LAA community and Americans for the Arts (AFTA) celebrated the 50^th Anniversary of the local arts agency movement, access was the theme that ran through our collective vision plan for American communities through 2025, which included the following:

• Fostering a lifelong continuum of arts creation, arts experiences, participation and education;
• Bringing cultural equity and equality into existence;
• Helping the arts bring diverse people together and bridging differences;
• Enabling people to value the arts by participating at both amateur and professional levels;
• Ensuring arts diversity is valued and celebrated as an expression of our humanity.

This month, Americans for the Arts releases its 2015-2017 strategic plan. For an organization that's been around 55 years you might wonder, so what? The truth is, Americans for the Arts actually lives by its strategic plan, and this one, more than ever, focuses on our number one priority: building recognition for the transformative power of the arts in all of our lives and communities in new ways.

We have always been working to help decision makers understand the impact of the arts in building better places to live and work. Through research, professional services, advocacy, visibility and policy development, Americans for the Arts has remained committed to educating decision makers about the impact of the arts, increasing resources and policies for the arts and arts education, and generating awareness that the arts are more than a great way to spend your Saturday night, and in fact, change lives.

BEA’s Arts in the GDP Study: What Next?

In January 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released its revised Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account (ACPSA)—a set of measures of arts and culture in the economy, including its share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Much has been written about the truly mind-bending sum of $698.7 billion in industry expenditures—a substantial contributor to the economy that supported 4.7 million jobs in 2012 and represented 4.32 percent of GDP.