Slover Linett at NORC

Did you know that opera companies in North America have seen a surge in first-time attenders in recent seasons? OPERA America's latest public report, made in collaboration with our team members Matthew Jenetopulos, Bayaz Zeynalova and Tanya Treptow, delves into the motivations, experiences, reasons to return, demographics and behaviors of opera new attenders. Download the report at https://lnkd.in/ecYvd2b9 and join us for a public webinar tomorrow, Friday, November 22nd, all free of cost.

Tune in for a free webinar on Friday, November 22nd @ 1pm ET, if you want to learn more about opera's new audiences. So proud of our team members involved in this project! Congrats to Matthew Jenetopulos, Tanya Treptow and Bayaz Zeynalova for their work, in collaboration with the OPERA America team and their member organizations.

We're excited to keep seeing the reverberations of Theaster Gates' community-centered approach to arts & culture. If you are a critic, consider applying to this paid fellowship offered by University of Chicago's Arts + Public Life initiative, led by Tempestt Hazel!

Our team is so excited with Peter Linett's latest essay, published on the National Endowment for the Arts' page (https://lnkd.in/eAnZi4pX). He discusses how to make measurements of public participation in the #arts more inclusive, by acknowledging forms and events such as #voguing and hip hop cyphers. As Peter notes on the essay, improvisational, community-centered, and participatory #art oftentimes escape Eurocentric boundaries between #artist and audience, requiring researchers to re-think methodological approaches. #SPPA #NEA #hiphop #ballroom #diversity #inclusion #equity

If you are interested in racial equity in classical music, join us for a webinar hosted by the League of American Orchestras, featuring our researchers Tanya Treptow and Michelle Ernst, PhD. The webinar is happening tomorrow, Tuesday, September 24 at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern. Register here: https://lnkd.in/eiMsuPG3

Are #museums living by their own principles of #diversity, #equity and #inclusion? Not always, according to research we released a few months ago in partnership with the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). Our team was heartened to see that museum trustees across the U.S. viewed #DEI as more important than they had back in 2017, when AMM’s previous board survey was conducted. Yet there’s still an acute lack of diversity in the governance of museums: 82% of board members and 88% of museum directors identify as white. And the painful fact is that only 12% of boards have developed concrete plans to diversify their own ranks. Given the profound role of museum trustees—and the leaders they hire and oversee—in shaping the priorities and character of American cultural institutions, the findings in this report shine much-needed light on how and why progress happens… or doesn’t. One thing we’ve been talking about with each other and our clients and partners around the field is how museum trustees are recruited into those roles. As noted in the report, we found that most of them come to the museum board through personal connections with current board members, directors, or other staff. So if a board has historically been predominantly white, and if the social and community networks of those trustees are also disproportionately white, then recruitment of new trustees tends to perpetuate the problem. Cory Garfin, who directed the research on our end, said the other day that this is essentially a “museum governance echo chamber,” constructed of the very social dynamics that museum say they want to help dismantle. Still, we found signs of progress. Museum leaders and trustees continue to be committed to their DEI principles even in the face of the current backlash. We hope that studies like this, along with the great resources our AAM colleagues included in the report, will help cultural institutions take more intentional, concrete actions to bring their values to life. Whether you work in the museum field or another area of the #artandculture sector, we’d love your thoughts on “2024 Museum Board Leadership: A National Report.” You can download it here: https://lnkd.in/e3B9Yt2b. And if you’re not comfortable filling out the brief form on that webpage, just leave a comment here and we’ll email you the PDF. Big thanks to Carys Kunze, Natanya Khashan and Elizabeth Merritt at AAM and to Northern Trust for the support that made this study possible! In addition to Cory, our research team included Michelle Ernst, PhD and Bayaz Zeynalova.

Working toward racial equity in music or other art-forms? Join us and three brilliant musical change-makers for a webinar hosted by the League of American Orchestras, where we’ll share a unique research study that amplifies the voices of people of color and challenges some of the myths about how people connect to #classicalmusic.? ? Slover Linett at NORC’s own Tanya Treptow and Michelle Ernst, PhD are excited to be part of a candid, forward-looking conversation with Emilio Alvarez (who was an advisor on this research), Jennifer Arnold, and Mieko Hatano about their innovative work in #livemusic, #publicradio, #audiencedevelopment, and movement-building.? ? We hope you can join us on Tuesday, September 24 at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern. Register here: https://lnkd.in/gVdUmSJz.

We're looking forward to this big-picture conversation about the state and future of #artsresearch. A bunch of our team will be attending the webinar on Aug. 27 to hear Jennifer Benoit-Bryan (our missed and admired colleague) and these other indispensable thought-leaders discuss what's known, what's changing, and what still needs to be explored. We love that they've been asking for input to plan the discussion, too. See you in the chat!

As we sail toward the one-year anniversary of our practice joining NORC at the University of Chicago, we are thrilled and honored to welcome two wonderful new researchers to the Slover Linett at NORC team. Gustavo Arruda Franco (he/they) brings rich experience in health research and working with marginalized communities, including bilingual (Spanish) projects. A native of Brazil, Gustavo trained as a dancer, is an active DJ, and cares deeply about the arts as a tool for community-building and collective healing. Heather Welty (they/she) will work both with Slover Linett at NORC and with NORC’s amazing Center on Equity Research. Heather’s academic and research work has ranged from LGBTQ+ health and anti-poverty programs to youth development and in-classroom equity, all through the lenses of sociology and cognitive science. Their joint appointment will help our whole team grow in our commitment to equity in every aspect of #research and #evaluation, and will help forge “arts &” collaborations with NORC’s experts in health, media, education, justice, and other areas. Heather and Gustavo are already diving into our projects with foundations, art museums, advocacy movements, libraries, symphonies, and other #artsandculture changemakers. Please join us in welcoming both of them to the arts research community!

You had us at "citizen artist." So glad that this beautiful profile of vanessa german pointed us to her new exhibition right next door to us at the Univ. of Chicago's Reva and David Logan Center For the Arts. (#fieldtrip!) Her work and teaching remind us that if we're going to really embrace the role of #art in healing body, spirit and community, we're gonna need a different notion of "art": what it's made of, how we talk about it, how we teach it. In her course here, according to curator and co-teacher zachary cahill, "she asked students to consider knowledge that exists but that isn’t taught to us in schools — ancestral knowledge or things being communicated to us in nonacademic ways.” After experiencing it, Cahill added, “It’s hard to think of going back.” This link is free of any paywall at the Times. https://lnkd.in/eRidzQWm