Zooming in on economic impact | The Artful Manager

I’ve gone on before about economic impact studies on the arts and their hazy logic (but astounding power among legislators). Now, two researchers in Toronto are attempting a different tack in assessing the civic impact of arts and cultural activity.

Instead of taking the macro view of a city or community and its arts-related activity, they are focusing in to a much smaller radius (500 meters around three specific arts facilities). By zooming in, they hope to discover the micro-developments that rise and fall around arts centers:

Their hope was that a highly detailed approach to a very small area would give them a more convincing picture of the impact of the arts than the larger but more general economic studies. They looked at economic factors such as how many building permits had been applied for; the turnover of retail businesses, the sales generated by square foot of retail space, rents and property values in the neighbourhood, and the employment rate. And they looked at social measures such as crime statistics and the age, ethnicity and education of residents, as well as polling residents about how they felt about their neighbourhoods. Was there buzz about the arts facility? Did they perceive the area to be cleaner?

What did they find? Among their tiny sample, property values, renovations, and retail sales generally went up over their control group. Residents largely saw the arts facilities as agents of positive change, but complained about traffic. And a few odd variations seemed worthy of further exploration (in one area, major crimes fell, but auto and minor thefts increased).

W.E. Deming once said that “All models are wrong. Some models are useful.” And while this version of the economic impact study certainly has its flaws, it does seem to suggest a more interesting and actionable perspective of arts facilities in an urban setting (especially to zoning boards).

Barry Hessenius on Business in service of beauty: “An enormous loss. Diane changed the discourse on culture – its aspirations, its modus operandi, its assumptions. A brilliant thought…” Jan 19, 18:58
Sunil Iyengar on Business in service of beauty: “Thank you, Andrew. The loss is immense. Back when Diane was teaching a course called “Approaching Beauty,” to business majors…” Jan 16, 18:36
Michael J Rushton on Business in service of beauty: “A wonderful person and a creative thinker, this is a terrible loss. – thank you for posting this.” Jan 16, 13:18
Andrew Taylor on Two goals to rule them all: “Absolutely, borrow and build to your heart’s content! The idea that cultural practice BOTH reduces and samples surprise is really…” Jun 2, 18:01
Heather Good on Two goals to rule them all: “To “actively sample novel experiences (in safe ways) to build more resilient perception and prediction” is about as useful a…” Jun 2, 15:05