Giving Compass' Take:

• The Arts + Social Impact Explorer is a tool that shows how arts can impact various community issues such as education, job security, housing, health, wellness, and more. 

• How can funders help to increase awareness of resources like this one? Does this tool fulfill any of your needs? 

• Read about why advocacy for the arts requires collaboration.

To improve the perceived public value of the arts, we must connect into the places where people find value. To get members of our community to stand up and say, “We want more,” we have to tell them why “more” matters. The closer to the main hopes, dreams, and concerns of a community we can thread the benefits of arts and culture, the more likely members of that community are to stand up when arts and culture is threatened.

If we’re trying to create advocates for arts and culture among the members of communities, we need to increase the occasions where thinking about the arts makes sense. Because the truth is, the arts make more things possible, from better education to greater health outcomes to a more civically-engaged citizenry—it’s just that people don’t always see the connection to the arts when change happens.

Knowing people prioritize core issue areas like education, job security, housing, public safety, and health and wellness, how do we show the important ways the arts intersect with their day-to-day lives? At Americans for the Arts, our answer is the Arts + Social Impact Explorer.

This online tool draws together over 1,000 data points on how the arts integrate into—and impact—community life: top-line research, example projects, core research papers, and service and partner organizations from 26 different sectors, ranging from tourism to health and wellness, immigration to innovation, faith to environment.

The goal? To make it easier to see the ways that the arts can—and do—permeate community life, and to provide advocates and leaders with the information and research they need to make that impact visible and encourage deeper investment in the arts through pro-arts policy and pro-arts funding.

Read the full article about arts and social impact explorer by Clayton W. Lord at Americans for the Arts.