Ben Davidson

Way back in May of 2009, Americans for the Arts began recruiting local, regional, and statewide partners for the Arts & Economic Prosperity IV national economic impact study. After three years of day-to-day project managing, data collecting, number crunching, and report writing, the study is finally complete and the findings have been released. Trust me, NO ONE is more excited about that than I am!

A research project of this scope and magnitude delivers a myriad of emotional highs and lows. Mistakes are made; then mistakes are fixed. Deadlines are missed; then “extended” deadlines are set. We all know the drill.

I am 100 percent certain that at least once, each of the 182 study partners wished I would just go away and leave them alone. I’m incredibly thankful that each of the partners stuck with the process. Their hard work made this study the largest and most comprehensive of its kind ever conducted. Many people have asked me about the specific challenges and successes of the project, and I’m happy to share my perspectives on a few of each.

CHALLENGES

1. Providing project oversight for 182 separate partners is a difficult task. It’s a frustrating feeling when you send an e-mail to 182 people, and your inbox immediately starts filling with requests for clarification. I knew immediately when my directions weren’t clear enough.

2. Utilizing multiple sources of data can be confusing. In the states where the Cultural Data Project (CDP) has been implemented, we used CDP data in addition to our AEP IV organizational survey (so that arts organizations submitting a CDP profile didn’t need to complete our survey as well). This tactic definitely reduced the burden on the organizations from which we needed to collect data. Unfortunately, it definitely increased the burden on my team and on our study partners located in those CDP states.

3. The fact that the study partners collected more than 150,000 audience-intercept surveys was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because it is unquestionably the largest sample of audience spending data that has ever been collected. It was a curse because that equates to 32 legal-sized boxes full of surveys that required sorting, coding, and data entry. As my team processed the mountain of surveys, we stacked the boxes in my office. This worked fine until one Monday morning when I arrived at the office and discovered that a stack nine boxes high had collapsed across my desk—spilling neatly bundled surveys out into the hall, crushing my work phone, and staining my office door with blue ink from the boxes. Colleagues said I was lucky that I wasn’t at my desk when it happened, but I thought it might have been a fitting way to meet my demise... 

Tom Bensen

Like so many of my colleagues across the county, I eagerly awaited the results of Arts and Economic Prosperity IV, and when the initial results arrived, I started meeting with community leaders to help spread the word, get their insights, and in a few cases, a juicy quote for a PowerPoint presentation.

I expected several folks, particularly those who support the arts in our community, to be impressed by the numbers and totally supportive of the study. They did not disappoint.

I also wanted to get the reaction from local economists, those who know more than the rest of us about these kinds of studies, but this also made me nervous. What I feared was a response along the lines of “You really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Or, “Why don’t you all just focus on art and we’ll deal with the economy.”

Because we are in the business of advocating for the arts, I was afraid that this study would be criticized for overstating our case, that we’re all just pumping up the numbers to make us look good and to justify our existence.

So I was not prepared for this criticism from Larry Swanson, director and chief economist for the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West, a regional studies and public education program at the University of Montana in Missoula:

“It is difficult to truly gauge how the arts benefit a community and area economic vitality by only looking at expenditures tied to non-profit arts organizations, even though these are important. Communities that are well-endowed in the arts are more vibrant and interesting places and tend to attract more educated and talented people who, once they make your community theirs, contribute in many other ways to area economic vitality. They first add to the area work force and to area economic activity and production, but they also buy homes and other area goods and services, they use area healt care, they send their children to our schools, and contribute in a variety of other ways to area economies. So, it becomes very difficult to fully gauge the importance of the arts to area economic growth and vitality, simply by looking at yearly expenditures by arts organizations and by patrons of the arts attending events.”