We’re proud to announce that we’ll be helping the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs conduct a follow-up study on the needs of artists living and working in the Windy City. The 2010 survey, which builds on an initial study conducted in 2000, will explore how the city can better support artists and other creative entrepreneurs.
The 2010 Creative Arts Entrepreneur Space and Technical Assistance Study will extend and revise the picture painted by the earlier research, which led to new affordable housing policies for artists, spurred the development of the Chicago Artists Resource website, and catalyzed support for the Artists at Work Forum and Musicians at Work Forum series at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Now, a decade later, the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) plans to take a fresh look at how individual artists are faring in these challenging economic times and how the city can optimize its services and programs for them. By calling new attention to the needs of creative entrepreneurs, the research will help galvanize support for both working and informal artists and provide empirical data for arts advocates and urban planners.
The findings, which will be presented publicly at the conclusion of the research, will help generate dialogue about artists’ roles in economic and neighborhood development, the status of artists from national and international perspectives, and questions of identity and empowerment in the artist community.
Slover Linett’s senior associate for the arts, Chloe Chittick Patton, is looking forward to delving into these issues. “This study is so important for Chicago, because no one other than the DCA is looking systematically at the everyday challenges that artists face,” she says.
“And this work will expand our involvement with a question we’re very interested in: how the informal and participatory arts relate to the professional arts, and how the whole system can continue to thrive.”
Slover Linett will conduct the study in collaboration with Liz Monroe Cook, an organizational psychologist and expert qualitative researcher.
We are also delighted to have the benefit of additional insight from project advisors Alan Brown and Jennifer Novak-Leonard of Wolf Brown, the leading research and management consultancy in the arts sector.
Photo: Artist Bert Menco from art blog Happy Faces Chicago
Category: Other missions
