Staging a Comeback: How the Nonprofit Arts Sector Has Evolved since the Great Recession
Whether it's in schools or in the nonprofit sector, we all know that sadly, the arts are first in line to get cut. The Great Recession saw a huge decline in the Fine Arts, with many nonprofit art centers, dance companies and other groups losing funding in favor of other "necessities". While there have been some structural weaknesses in the nonprofit arts, the recession forced many to take a closer look at their operations to make sure this would not happen again. Read more about the great arts comeback below, in excerpts of a recent article from the Nonprofit Quarterly.
"There is ample evidence to demonstrate that nonprofit arts and culture organizations in the United States are rebounding from the Great Recession—albeit more slowly than other parts of the nonprofit sector. The 2014 National Arts Index compiled by Americans for the Arts notes that while the overall economic recovery began in 2009, it did not positively affect the arts until 2012. A report from the Urban Institute in 2014 showed that more arts, culture, and humanities nonprofits took the largest hit—proportionately—on revenue during the recession, and also had the largest decrease in total numbers of organizations of any of the subsectors studied. Two more-recent reports—one from the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), based on a 2015 nationwide survey of 906 nonprofit arts leaders, the other from the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, based on data from 5,502 cultural nonprofit organizations in eleven metropolitan areas—highlight some positive trends, as well as continued areas of concern, for the cultural sector."
"Three significant areas of weakness were already at play in the nonprofit arts sector before 2008: (1) arts organizations generally were undercapitalized, with only modest liquid assets available to cover unexpected costs or see them through a rainy day (or rainy five years); (2) audiences and traditional audience behaviors were changing in important ways; and (3) employment practices at both the smallest and the largest cultural institutions were showing signs of strain."
"Artists and arts organizations are increasingly demonstrating their value in solving social problems and inviting people to experience the arts right where they live. The idea of arts in economic development and city planning has roots in urban policy that run a hundred years deep—a trend that continues today in the ever-expanding field of creative placemaking. Since the launch of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Our Town initiative in 2010, more than $75 million has been invested in these types of projects, and funders like The Kresge Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation also have invested heavily in creative placemaking. Civic leaders—largely in urban areas but also in rural communities—have welcomed the trend, using it in some cases as an impetus to tackle long-standing issues of revitalization without displacement (i.e., avoiding gentrification). Cities are also embracing the idea of artists working within government. And artists and arts organizations are demonstrating their value in so many other ways—from public art projects to cross-sector collaborations to environmental advocacy—that Americans for the Arts is undertaking a three-year initiative, Transforming America’s Communities through the Arts, to demonstrate the multiple values of the arts—for example, in building a creative workforce, preventing crime, serving returning military/veterans, and advancing health and wellness."
To read the full article, please visit the original source here.