From the Field

Arts & Culture Accessibility Self-Assessment

Open Door Arts (formerly VSA Massachusetts) has released a free, comprehensive, electronic tool to help arts and cultural organizations understand and improve their accessibility. The Arts & Culture Accessibility Self-Assessment evaluates an organization’s accessibility in five key areas: organizational approach, space, access services, communication and programming. A customized report scores strengths and areas for improvement. Step-by-step guidance and templates follow to create a bespoke accessibility plan that transforms learning into action.

Creative Placemaking: Strengthening Communities with Arts

Creative Placemaking Technical Assistance program has a new website that offers tools and resources for local leaders to elevate the arts to strengthen their communities. It offers resources at every step along the way to help civic organizers establish cultural placemaking at the local level.

Arts Vibrancy in Rural Communities

Arts Flourish in America’s Top Rural Counties: A Data-Driven Exploration highlights the most arts-vibrant rural counties in the United States, as identified by the SMU DataArts Arts Vibrancy Index. These counties, ranking in the top 5% nationally, exhibit exceptional arts engagement despite their rural settings. The study features counties like Nantucket, Massachusetts, and San Miguel, Colorado, which excel in arts dollars, providers and public support. To further investigate rural arts vibrancy, SMU DataArts partnered with Geoffrey Kershner from Small Town Big Arts. Kershner’s article, Arts Vibrancy in Rural Communities is Achieved through Collective Action, examines how these communities achieve cultural vibrancy through collective effort and engagement. He presents various models of successful arts organizations in small towns, emphasizing the importance of widespread support for sustainable cultural growth. These articles offer insights into thriving rural arts scenes.

Building Audiences for Sustainability

The Wallace Foundation has published a report, In Search of the Magic Bullet: Results from the Building Audiences for Sustainability Initiative, that examines the results from this initiative from 2015 to 2019. Twenty-five large arts organizations participated in the initiative and tried various methods of engagement to build their audiences. The report details which strategies worked better than others.