Social Impact of the Arts Project

The Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) is a research group at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy & Practice, in Philadelphia, PA (USA). We began in 1994 to ask questions and develop methods to explore the impact of the arts and culture on urban communities. Our research focuses on the relationship of the arts to community change with a particular interest in strategies for neighborhood revitalization, social inclusion, and community wellbeing.

Cultural engagement represents an important dimension of community wellbeing by building social connections within groups and across social divides. The arts provide a resource that people can use to make sense of the world as it is, to connect with collective memory, and to imagine the future. Neighborhoods with a vital cultural life also enjoy “spillover effects”—including stronger community and civic engagement; better health, schooling, and personal security; and economic revitalization. SIAP’s mission is to understand and document these connections—what we call community cultural ecology—and the role that public policy and philanthropy can play in encouraging them. To learn more about SIAP’s approach, methods, and research team, go to: About SIAP.

Since start-up in the mid-1990s, SIAP has been committed to open data and open access as both a research methodology and a dissemination strategy. Thanks to ScholarlyCommons, the open access institutional repository at Penn Libraries, SIAP archives—including methods and work-in-progress—are accessible to research, policy, and practice communities across the globe and free to all. We invite visitors to browse the Social Impact of the Arts Project Collections, listed below in reverse chronological order. The link to each SIAP Collection will access reports, working papers, and other materials produced by that project. All documents are downloadable in PDF format for public use with full citation requested. For a listing of additional SIAP publications under copyright, go to: About SIAP.

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Culture and Social Wellbeing in New York City (A SIAP Collection, 2017)

The Social Wellbeing of New York City’s Neighborhoods: The Contribution of Culture and the Arts, Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert (SIAP Report, March 2017). This research report presents the conceptual framework, data and methodology, findings and implications of a three-year study of the relationship of cultural ecology to social wellbeing across New York City neighborhoods. The project was undertaken in collaboration with Reinvestment Fund, a community development financial institution, with support by the Surdna Foundation, the NYC Cultural Agenda Fund in the New York Community Trust, and the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Culture and Social Wellbeing in New York City, SIAP and Reinvestment Fund (Research Brief, February 2017). This research brief provides a summary of the data, methods, and findings documented in the March 2017 report.

 

Culture’s Contribution to Social Wellbeing & Neighborhood Vitality, SIAP and Reinvestment Fund (Policy Brief, February 2016). This policy brief is a summary of project rationale—why and how to measure social wellbeing—and its potential to guide policy toward more equitable and livable communities.

 

Social Networks and Inequality in New York City’s Cultural Sector, Mark J. Stern (A SIAP Working Paper, October 2017). This paper presents an analysis of the geography of program sites served by City grant recipients based on a dataset maintained by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and its interaction with the inequality of cultural opportunities within the city.

 

Understanding neighborhood change: An approach to assessing displacement risk among NYC residents, Ira Goldstein, Emily Dowdall, and Colin Weidig, (Reinvestment Fund, October 2017). Reinvestment Fund has used its displacement risk ratio (DRR) in several cities to gauge the gap between neighborhood residents’ incomes and housing costs. This paper applies the same approach to New York City but also considers its applicability to renter-occupied housing.

 

Using PUMS to Calculate Geographic Mobility in New York City, Mark J. Stern (A SIAP Working Paper, October 2017). In this paper SIAP uses census data drawn from the annual American Community Survey to identify patterns of geographic mobility common in New York City neighborhoods between 2007 and 2015.

 

Divergent Paths—Rapid Neighborhood Change and the Cultural Ecosystem, Susan C. Seifert and Mark J. Stern (A SIAP Working Paper, December 2017). This paper considers the impact of rapid neighborhood change on the cultural ecology of Fort Greene and surrounding Brooklyn neighborhoods based on qualitative study undertaken during 2016.

 

 

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  • Publication
    The Embeddedness of Community Cultural Institutions: Wall Art in Social Context
    (1994-08-01) Stern, Mark J; Amrofel, Laura; Dyer, Gina; Wolk, Alison
    This paper uses the findings of a pilot study of wall art in two Philadelphia neighborhoods to examine how community art is embedded in the lives of individuals, families, and communities. During the summer of 1994, three SIAP research assistants--Laura Amrofel, Gina Abrevaya Dyer, and Alison Wolk--hung out in the neighborhoods around two wall murals (one in South Philadelphia, one in West Philadelphia), talked to residents, and observed the way the spaces around the murals were used. They found that the impact of the murals on their neighborhoods was connected to the demography and ecology of the community, but not in a simple way, and in fact was more complex than current theories of art and society suggest. The authors concluded that the role of a wall mural could not be separated from its specific community context--a phenomenon they described as "embeddedness."
  • Publication
    Foreign-Born Population of Philadelphia, Composition and Change, 2000-2007
    (2011-01-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C
    This map series accompanies the full report, Arts-Based Social Inclusion: An Investigation of Existing Assets and Innovative Strategies to Engage Immigrant Communities in Philadelphia (September 2010). See Section 3, "The Changing Profile of Metropolitan Philadelphia's Immigrant Communities."
  • Publication
    Mapping Arts-Based Social Inclusion: A Diversity of Ideas, Approaches, and Challenges
    (2011-01-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C
    This summary matrix accompanies the full report, Arts-Based Social Inclusion: An Investigation of Existing Assets and Innovative Strategies to Engage Immigrant Communities in Philadelphia (September 2010). See Section 4, "Arts-based Social Inclusion--A Typology."
  • Publication
    Arts-Based Social Inclusion: An Investigation of Existing Assets and Innovative Strategies to Engage Immigrant Communities in Philadelphia
    (2010-09-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C
    This document reports on a study of the role that arts and culture play in Philadelphia’s migrant communities—that is, Puerto Rican and foreign-born residents and their families, including children born in the U.S. The project explored the concept of “arts-based social inclusion”—the idea that organizations and artists use culture and the arts as a means to improve the life circumstances of new Philadelphians and integrate them more fully into community life. The study confirmed that arts-based social inclusion is a productive perspective with which to make sense of this work. The report first examines the changing presence of the foreign-born in Philadelphia from 2000 to 2007 as a context for the study. The authors then discuss findings based on fieldwork conducted during the spring and summer of 2010. Two cross-cutting themes emerged from interviews with practitioners. One is that a cultural perspective provides a broader, multi-dimensional way—beyond economic need—of thinking about the process of social inclusion. At the same time, cultural practitioners working with migrant communities repeatedly run up against conventional notions about nonprofit organizational structure and capacity. The report describes a five-part typology of existing models pursued by cultural practitioners: cultural space development, community organizing, institutional networks, school-based programming, and culturally-sensitive social service. The conclusion offers guidelines for philanthropy interested in a holistic, bottom-up approach to building the arts' capacity to engage immigrant communities.
  • Publication
    “Natural” Cultural Districts and Neighborhood Revitalization
    (2009-06-01) Stern, Mark J
    In this presentation, Stern argues for a policy approach that recognizes creativity as deeply embedded in urban social structure and the importance of diversity (economic, ethnic, and household) to the social production of the arts and culture. Only then can we come up with strategies that stimulate a creative society, not just a creative economy.
  • Publication
    Culture and Urban Revitalization
    (2007-06-01) Stern, Mark J
    This presentation references the SIAP/TRF Harvest Document (Jan 2007) to provide a critical review of literature on culture and urban revitalization. Posing the question--Does creativity have a pay-off for distressed cities?—the talk highlights shortcomings of arguments based solely on the arts as economic engine, including current theory on the creative economy and the creative class. Stern argues that a cultural cluster approach--which is really about economic sociology--leads to a focus on social impacts and an inclusive vision of culture-based revitalization.
  • Publication
    From Creative Economy to Creative Society
    (2008-01-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C
    Public policy promoting the creative economy has two serious flaws: one, a misperception of culture and creativity as a product of individual genius rather than collective activity; and, two, a willingness to tolerate social dislocation in exchange for urban vitality or competitive advantage. This brief recaps current culture and revitalization research and policy and proposes a new model—a neighborhood based creative economy—that has the potential to move the 21st century city toward shared prosperity and social integration.
  • Publication
    Culture and Urban Revitalization: A Harvest Document
    (2007-01-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C
    This document provides an overview of the state-of-the-art literature on culture and urban revitalization. Part 2 places the creative sector in contemporary context with a discussion of three social dynamics: the “new urban reality”, the changing structure of the creative sector, and the emergence of transactional policy-making. Part 3 turns to the major dimensions of current literature on culture-based urban revitalization: the promise of the creative economy; culture’s role in building community capacity; and the negative consequences of culture-based development. Part 4 uses the critical synthesis afforded by the review of literature to propose a new model of a neighborhood-based creative economy. Part 5 concludes with a reflection on research gaps and implications for community development policy and practice. Here the authors postulate that U.S. cities have the potential to regenerate urban neighborhoods through culture-based strategies that combine wealth-creation and social justice—but only by digesting the lessons of past experience.
  • Publication
    Cultivating “Natural” Cultural Districts
    (2007-09-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C
    This brief presents the concept of “natural” cultural district as a vehicle to translate grassroots culture into urban revitalization. The term is both descriptive and analytical. Descriptively, a “natural” cultural district identifies a neighborhood that has spawned a density of assets—organizations, businesses, participants, and artists—that sets it apart from other neighborhoods. Analytically, cultural clusters are of interest because of density’s side effects. They can build community, spur cultural production, and attract new services and residents. The challenge is how to encourage these geographically-defined social networks without snuffing out the spark that makes them distinctive. “Natural” cultural districts must be cultivated. To do so, we mush first understand their ecology and how they fit into the contemporary urban arts scene.
  • Publication
    Migrants, Communities, and Culture
    (2008-01-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C; Vitiello, Domenic
    New immigrants have already changed Philadelphia's cultural scene—particularly in urban neighborhoods. This brief uses three types of evidence— a small-area database of cultural participation, a survey of residents of North Philadelphia and Camden, NJ, and a survey of artists living or working in the metropolitan area—to explore migrant cultural engagement. Taken together, SIAP’s evidence on artists and cultural participants paints a portrait of migrants and foreign-born residents who are positively oriented toward cultural expression but frustrated by institutional, spatial, and socio-economic barriers. Can culture serve as a means of linking new Philadelphians to other social institutions?