Culture and Community in a Time of Transformation

The Covid-19 pandemic and America’s overdue racial reckoning raised new questions for the U.S. arts and culture sector and made some longstanding questions more urgent. Slover Linett and LaPlaca Cohen began work in early 2020 to develop a national research initiative that would bring audiences as well as the broader American public into a dialogue about what communities value and need from arts and culture organizations—including their hopes for the future of the sector. This research is published as a special, pandemic-era edition of LaPlaca Cohen’s ongoing Culture Track study.

To date, the project has involved two waves of a large-scale online survey, in Spring 2020 and Spring 2021, plus a qualitative study in 2021 involving in-depth interviews with Black adults around the U.S. A range of strategic summaries, policy-level reports, and webinar presentations have been produced and are available here.

Barr’s Arts & Creativity team commissioned Slover Linett to provide “deeper dive” analyses to inform the work of Massachusetts-based arts organizations and foundations. We encourage all to review the two-page summary of key findings and potential actions based on responses from Massachusetts residents. Statewide data is accompanied by region-specific reports and in-depth reports examining findings by race, ethnicity, and income.

Access event information, explore the research, and view practitioners sharing practices that align with research findings below.

• South Shore and South Coast Convening: Watch the convening
• Western Massachusetts Convening:. Watch the convening.
• The Berkshires: Watch the convening.
• North Shore and Northeast MA: Watch the convening.
• The Cape and Islands: Watch the convening.
• Greater Boston: Watch the convening
• Worcester: at the Worcester JMAC.

Watch practitioners address key themes from Culture + Community in a Time of Transformation research.