Problem definition Arts and culture is inherent in us all. Our realities have been shaped by the ongoing expression of reality with a variety of mediums and ways. We both practice the arts and culture and consume the arts and culture nearly every single day without realizing it. The arts and culture is natural to... Continue Reading →

There are many indicators within the National Arts Index Report that show both the overall health and industry-specific health of the arts and culture in the United States. I was excited to see so much deep data showing how the arts is performing across so many indicators. When trying to track the cultural health and... Continue Reading →

When discussing the need to prioritize arts education, I wish the following quote by Kurt Vonnegut was convincing enough: “[The arts] are a very human way of making life more bearable.” That reasoning should be enough, because the arts are what we need to live in this life, but unfortunately we live in a society... Continue Reading →

The study Cultural Clusters: The Implications of Cultural Assets Agglomeration for Neighborhood Revitalization takes a unique view at assessing the impact of the arts on a broader community. The study is done in the context that cities have focused their creative placemaking efforts on big, blockbuster-type projects that aim to attract large crowds through the... Continue Reading →

Understanding if arts participation is going through a decline or a renaissance is a tough question to answer that requires many different data sets and lines of inquiry to fully understand. One potential route that I think could help us understand the picture better is looking at Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural capital reproduction theory, which explores... Continue Reading →

The question I want to explore in this assignment is what does American participation in the arts look like? Collecting and evaluating this data will help us understand the question of what barriers to arts access exist that I’ve been exploring in this class so far this semester. I’m really interested in understanding how much... Continue Reading →

In week 2, I created a mind map focused on Access to Arts and Culture where the scenario presented the challenge around establishing data analysis to help find access blindspots that can be immediately addressed. The mind map explored many potential barriers to entry with engaging with the arts, be they awareness, monetary or proximity... Continue Reading →

The visualizations in this slide deck are pretty rough and are missing a few things to make them useful communication tools. Across the five examples I selected below, each one would need someone to thoroughly explain the visualization, otherwise it's meaningless. It takes a while between seeing each visualization and understanding it. And often, you... Continue Reading →