Arizona and Indiana: Grant Impact at a Glance

State arts agencies have a long-standing practice of publishing information about their grants to show how taxpayers’ dollars are spent. Apart from demonstrating transparency and accountability, such reports offer a useful communications opportunity. State arts agencies can package and present their data in creative ways to help policymakers and the public learn about the scope and impact of public investments in the arts. Arizona and Indiana offer inspiring examples.

Arizona

The Arizona Commission on the Arts uses a mixture of public and private funds to support the arts in Arizona communities. To distill complex information into a concise format, the agency has produced Funding the Arts in Arizona. Designed to work digitally or physically, this pamphlet uses colorful graphics to explain the agency’s budget, show how Arizona funding compares to other western states, map the distribution of grant award sites, and summarize the economic impact of the arts. Additional details on grant awards are presented via the agency’s website. Viewers can browse an interactive table to examine awards by program, filter awards by location, explore grantee websites and download related data files.

Indiana

The Indiana Arts Commission uses a Grants Dashboard to visualize data about its grant investments. Headlines capture key reference points about a data set that spans more than 5,200 awards made in recent years. Viewers can explore a time line of agency grant funding, with subtotals offered for each year and each grant program. An accompanying map illustrates funding by county, Indiana house and senate districts and U.S. congressional districts. The map can be filtered by fiscal year, grant program, county or city. Users can toggle the view to access grant data in a list format, which itemizes expenditures by recipient name, type of grant, artistic discipline and award amount.