Columbia Putting Audience Research Evaluation to Strategic Use in the Arts

Inquiry and cess is rare in the arts, and it tends to focus on "proving" our value. Economical impact studies. Studies of how arts participation affects student test scores. This kind of research has two big problems:

1. It puts almost of our assessment capacity into research for someone else, on someone else's terms. It is rarely at the heart of what we practise best or are most passionate about. As Ben Cameron recently said, "I don't know any creative person who started a theater company saying, 'let'south go out and improve some exam scores!'"
2. It prevents the states from focusing on research that could transform our own work. Instead, we use inquiry to endeavor to convince someone else to change their piece of work. And given what I've seen on micro and macro-levels in arts funding and power, I don't think this strategy is working.

I'd love to meet an increment in the arts' commitment to research. But we should finish using it to prove that our work is valuable and showtime using it to better the work that we do.

Consider the recent research at the University of Arkansas nigh the value of school field trips to cultural institutions. Educational reform researchers did a rigorous study of school groups that experienced a single ane-hour guided bout of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. They found that students who received the bout--compared against a control grouping of students who did not visit the museum--retained content, increased their critical thinking skills, increased their "historical empathy" for people who lived in different places and times, increased their tolerance for diverse points of view, and increased their involvement in visiting museums. The study was extensive and methodologically robust, and the results are making the rounds of museum and fine art publications and blogs.

But what is the value of a study that tells us that museum visits make a deviation? My sense in reading the reports is that this research was intended partly to "bear witness" the value of a museum school field trip to policymakers. The "Policy Implications" section of the overview report focuses nigh entirely on implications outside the museum, encouraging school administrators to provide resources for tours of cultural institutions and philanthropists to fund them.

In my conversations with administrators about field trips, the educational value of the trips never comes up. That is a given. Anybody would like more field trips. Everyone thinks they are valuable. The conversation is always near resources; money for buses, parents to chaperone, time to get away. When the Crystal Bridges research was published on EducationNext, a teacher wrote in, effusive nigh the impact of museums on her students. She didn't demand data to believe in the value of museums. She needed money. I am very, very skeptical that this research could move the needle on her ability to pay for the passenger vehicle to get to the museum.

Instead of focusing on policy implications for someone exterior our sphere of control, I'd love to see this kind of research used to change policy inside the museum. Reading the Crystal Bridges report, I was struck by several questions:

• All of these examination subjects received a docent tour. How do their outcomes differ from school groups who visit but do non accept a facilitated feel? Should museums put more than resource into docent programs, or fewer?
• The outcomes were significantly higher for students from "less-advantaged backgrounds." In fact, the affect for advantaged students (larger towns, wealthier schools) was "smaller or null." Does this mean nosotros should prioritize offering docent tours to school groups from rural and poorer schools? Should we put resources into those offerings at the expense of offerings to school groups from wealthier schools?
• If a museum cared most one of these outcomes specifically (i.e. content retention vs. historical empathy vs. tolerance), what could they do to their tour program to "dial up" that effect?

I'm most interested in measurement that moves an organisation forward. In that location are occasionally instances when measurement can motion a funder, or an elected official, or a community. Merely that motion, especially when it comes to proving the value of the arts, has been irksome. I believe that our ability to "prove" our value is most correlated non to our economical bear upon and exam score inflation but to our ability to do what we practise all-time. And to exercise it virtually powerfully, we need research that tin guide usa to better choices and approaches. When we improve our own work, we bear witness our value.

At least, that's my hypothesis. I guess we'll have to test it.

davisheizieray.blogspot.com

Source: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2014/02/arts-assessment-lets-stop-proving-and.html

Share this post