Posted on 06/16/2011 3:01:05 PM PDT by Steve Peacock
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has plans to develop a "logic model and measurement framework" that supposedly will help it weigh the impact of art on society and, presumably, when, why, and how that impact affects governmental funding of the arts.
Here's an excerpt from the Statement of Work governing the project, which NEA intends to outsource to a "capable" contractor.
"SECTION B
SUPPLIES/SERVICES AND PRICES
B.1 GENERAL
Historically, generations of artists, philosophers, and social science researchers have struggled to define the role and impact of art in terms of public value. They have asked questions as fundamental as: What is art? What is the nature of an artistic experience? What factors and conditions contribute to that experience, and how do they manifest in individuals and societies? What benefits do the arts confer, how, and to whom, and how might those effects be better known?
Such inquiries often end in a stalemate, and for good reason. As an area of human endeavor, “the arts” represent a highly evolved and complex system—a plurality of agents, activities, and relationships involving diverse pathways to achieve outcomes that have evaded typical measurement strategies. And yet, at the outset of the 21st century, an accurate picture of how the arts function in the lives of individuals and communities is needed more than ever. This knowledge is vital to understanding the arts’ relationships to domains of growing importance to all Americans: creativity and innovation; health and wellness; education and lifelong learning; livability and sustainable communities; global competitiveness; and economic prosperity.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) seeks to develop a logic model and measurement framework that would chart the dynamic, interrelated components of the arts ecosystem and how they act alone, together, or in league with external factors, to transform lives and communities. For this project, definitions are paramount. The NEA will engage a Contractor to recruit and work with some of the nation’s leading thinkers in academia, government, and the nonprofit and commercial sectors to propose and validate key terms and concepts for a logic model of the arts. The model will express a hypothesis for understanding the impact of the arts on American life, and it will include potential measurement strategies built around outcomes generated by the model. For this project to succeed, nothing less than a conceptual breakthrough is required. The NEA seeks leading-edge expertise in the design of models to illustrate new concepts and to pioneer innovative metrics. The Contractor will facilitate a creative process that results in outcomes and potential measures; it will also yield fresh insights about the applicability of new and existing tools, technologies, and data sources to obtain those measurements. The final product—a logic model and measurement framework for the arts—will serve as the bedrock for future data collection and evidence-sharing about the public value of the arts."
The selected contractor will be tasked with the following:
"C.2 SCOPE OF WORK
To ensure rigorous, comprehensive, and dynamic thinking about the questions posed above, the Contractor will assemble a working group of 10-15 individuals who are demographically and geographically diverse and who collectively have wide-ranging areas of expertise in the academic, government, for-profit, and not-for-profit sectors. These individuals will convene three times in the course of the project period (one year) to discuss and review iterations of the logic model.
"Prior to these meetings, the Contractor will perform a gap-analysis of representational and measurement models in the arts. To assist with this analysis, and to acquire recommendations, the Contractor will conduct interviews with up to 20 experts in specific domains, both arts- and non-arts-related. The choice of working-group members and interview subjects will be critical to the project’s success. The challenge of defining the arts and its relation to social good is at least as old as Plato; therefore, an innovative leap forward will be required."
Ultimately, the contractor and its group of thinkers will be responsible for producing:
"a final draft logic model, clearly differentiating the inputs, outputs, outcomes, pathways, and processes by which the arts transform individuals and communities. In narrative and pictorial terms, the model will fully define each element, the complex relationships among elements, the role of each element in contributing toward impact on American life, the precise nature and variety of impacts, and factors that improve or impede each element’s ability to contribute toward impact. In brief, the model will express hypotheses for understanding and exploring a cause-effect relationship between the arts and various areas of improvement in American life."
“10-15 academic “experts” at art. Guaranteed epic fail.”
Excellent point upon which to focus. I nearly choked when I read that segment of the RFP. How I would love to sit on just one session of those geniuses. Talk about unintentional, low-brow comedy!
Of course not. And the Arts do add to society. The NEA on the other hand does not.
Art is a good thing and should be part of a young person's education. The ability to understand beauty is as important as the ability to understand logic.
The NEA does not understand either so their attempt to develop a logic model to weigh the worthiness of art is a waste of time and money.
Art today represents culture.....ugly/shock factor. No beauty, no skill. That’s what the museums, progressives, market.
Exactly. As one who, by default, is involved in “da arts”, it’s been disturbing for years how art is defined by the all important message it sends (often politically based, tolerance, assorted teachable moments, etc.) rather than on style and substance of art itself.
You missed the point but that’s ok.
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