Florida: Arts & Wellbeing Indicators and Toolkits

One of the ways the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs (DCA) has realized the vision of its 2015-2020 strategic plan to foster vibrant, thriving and healthy communities is to partner with the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine in support of its Florida Arts & Wellbeing Indicators initiative. DCA funded the three-year effort to develop a paradigm for measuring associations between arts participation and well-being at the community level. The research project culminated with the creation of a set of indicators for the arts, wellness and community domains, which identify associations but not direct cause-and-effect relationships. The indicators address, respectively, arts participation, access, value, infrastructure and investments; health and quality of life; and civic involvement, social capital and community satisfaction, among other things. The research, described in the project’s executive summary, also yielded a Data Collection Toolkit to guide deployment of the Arts and Wellbeing Indicator survey as well as a related Data Analysis Toolkit. Both resources are available for free to state arts agencies, arts organizations and other stakeholders to enable better understanding of the value of the arts in local communities around the country. To learn more about these resources, how they were developed and how your agency might be able to use them, contact DCA Director Sandy Shaughnessy.