About Arts Impact Study

In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, there has been very little effort to document and assess arts/design-based efforts to address social issues.

In fact, there is not even a comprehensive database of programs and practitioners, and rigorous evaluation of the work is almost nonexistent. Arts Impact Charlotte seeks to rectify that omission with studies of the social impact of the arts in Charlotte.

We began in 2019 with a landscape scan of local artists and organizations working for social impact through artistic practice. That study was supported by the Faculty Fellowship Program through the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, funded by The Gambrell Foundation.

In 2020, we received a National Endowment for the Arts Research Grant to begin to study arts-based social mobility in Charlotte. Based on semi-structured interviews, this research explores how local artists and organizations conceptualize and assess the social impact of the arts, what motivates participation in those activities, and how both providers and participants describe those experiences.

Significance

Among the 21 overarching recommended strategies issued in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force Report, the role of the arts (visual arts, design, literary and performing arts) was limited to just one of the strategies: Strategy U/21 - Social Capital. And yet, both nationally and locally, the arts and design play a significant role in the many strategies/areas of need identified by the Opportunity Task Force.

Motivated by the desire to address social and economic injustice, public health, neighborhood vitality, and other urgent issues, artists and designers across the country are devising ways to creatively solve pressing problems. As programs are initiated, a parallel effort is underway to begin to document them and evaluate their effectiveness. 

The prevalence of the “social impact of the arts” conversation is demonstrated, for example, by the Arts + Social Impact Explorer, recently launched by Americans for the Arts, the national arts advocacy and research organization, which identifies 26 specific categories within 10 areas of social impact and provides examples nationally of relevant arts programming and research for each.

In the Charlotte region we have yet to ask how the cultural sector influences the key questions of social mobility, human opportunity, or creative capital. Arts Impact Charlotte seeks to rectify that omission.

Photos: Charlotte Ballet Reach Education Program by Peter Zay; Bechtler Museum’s Low To No Vision Program; Andrea Downs’ Airing Out the Dirty Laundry; Julio Gonzalez at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation.