Awareness, knowledge, understanding

Edutainment - the mixture of education and entertainment ranging from video games to soap operas, harnesses the power of entertainment to promote social change.
Last Updated: July 19, 2013
  The documentary film “Waiting for Superman” reignited the debate over the quality of public schools in America. At the request of the Ford Foundation, the Harmony Institute completed an evaluation of the social impact of the documentary film....
Last Updated: July 19, 2013
  Understanding how knowledge moves through communities can help evaluators select the components of a program that are best suited for scaling up. “Scaling” is the practice of replicating programs for implementation at new locations, by other...
Last Updated: July 19, 2013
In this article, author Alan Brown revisits and interprets the 2005 report, The Gifts of the Muse, published by the RAND Corporation and commissioned by the Wallace Foundation, with valuable analysis of how public value occurs from the core artistic...
Last Updated: July 19, 2013
Sparkwise, a new kind of digital dashboard developed by design and innovation firm, Tomorrow Partners, uses visually compelling platforms to share the stories of impact of films and visual media. Measuring the impact of films and visual media is...
Last Updated: July 19, 2013
MWW: Audio in Philadelphia serves as an example of innovation in data collection and evaluation.  This resource captures Penny Balkin Bach’s contribution from Animating Democracy’s 2012 Social Impact & Evaluation Blog Salon.
Last Updated: August 21, 2013
A May 22 Funder Exchange on Evaluating Arts & Social Impact, presented by Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy program and hosted by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, brought together funders, evaluation professionals, and arts...
Last Updated: August 23, 2013
Porch Light (an initiative of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program in partnership with the City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services) Powerpoint presented at the Animating Democracy/Americans...
Last Updated: August 23, 2013
Cultural organizing exists at the intersection of art and activism This paper explores the power of cultural organizing with examples of groups and individuals placing art and culture at the center of organizing strategies: organizing from a...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Folk arts include a constellation of artistic activities and cultural expressions in community life that are informal, often popular in orientation, amateur, voluntary, and occurring in myriad social contexts. As expressions of deep cultural...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
In this paper, Lyz Crane draws on the work of practitioners and researchers to characterize the field of arts-based community development in which arts and culture can help achieve place based change related to the physical, social, and economic...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
The modern-day arts-based community development movement is founded on the belief that the arts can be a powerful agent of personal, institutional, and community change. Since its beginnings in the 1970s, the movement has grown from a very small and...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
In this paper, long-time community arts chronicler Linda Frye Burnham offers snapshots of selected projects that help capture the range of community arts projects and programs happening today. They are led by veteran and up-and-coming artists and...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Artists who are committed to social justice through their work must navigate a complex contemporary art world characterized by numerous political positions and aesthetic expectations. In this paper, Nato Thompson observes two overarching approaches...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
From an environmental perspective, we are living in transitional times; the practices we engage in now have far-reaching implications for the survival of the earth and all its life forms. “Environmental Art” is an umbrella term for a wide range of...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013

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