Harnessing the power of research to learn and generate new insights, enabling the arts community to be strategic, focused and adaptive.
Harnessing the power of research to learn and generate new insights, enabling the arts community to be strategic, focused and adaptive.
Curious about where your organization fits within the arts ecosystem? You’ll be able to explore the dashboard to find like-minded peers, uncover connections, and gain a deeper understanding of your place within the broader sector!
There are benchmark moments when knowledge needs to be shared. However, as a learning organization, generating a report tends to signal the start of something rather than an end result. We also invest time in thinking about how to share information in ways that resonate with people.
A great example is the poem written and recited by Luke Reece during the ASOs: Positioning a Future Forward event. Make your way back up to the top of the page to see what we mean by creatively sharing knowledge.
From our earliest beginnings, we have built up our knowledge base by creatively convening the arts community. This work sets our priorities and determines the issues that matter to the sector.
Here is a gallery of challenges that we crowdsourced in 2022 in preparation of ASOs: Positioning a Future Forward.
Evaluative Thinking is a program from Mass Culture designed to support the arts sector in continuous learning, reflection, and adaptation. This initiative encourages a shift from merely measuring project outcomes to understanding the underlying processes and decisions that influence those outcomes.
Check out this initiative from Mass Culture below.
Knowledge, research and data exist all around us. We just feel the need to amplify and organize it in ways that feel digestible and relevant. In the past, we've hosted datathons to collect resources on particular topics so that we can house them in Artifex!
Click below to find out more about Artifex and share your resources to help it grow.
The relationships and connections that we have made with people who care about the arts is fundamental to doing this work well. When we talk about infrastructure, Mass Culture's network is a major part of what we are referring to, as well as the research tools we've been able to build in concert with the arts community.
Our newest research tool is the DNA Platform.
As a way of sharing knowledge to strengthen the arts sector we host learning opportunities. The T.R.A.I.N program is our largest professional development program to date. We have lots of asynchronous learning materials from T.R.A.I.N here.
Providing training opportunities also enables us to share how to use the research tools that we've created. Find out more about the D.N.A Learning Series here.
Logo designed by Sariena Luy.
We are very curious and experimental when it comes to designing processes. Our community-based approach to research often leads us to co-developing some type of convening. We thoroughly enjoy working with others to understand how best to bring people together to achieve resonance, continued engagement, and potential future action.
An example of a creative convening approach: Mass Culture’s Play-Go-Rounds.
Photography by Sariena Luy & Jazmine Snow.
Research is a living thing. Although this linear representation of our work is ending, we continue to test and apply the emergent ideas and resources from our projects.
An example of this is the Qualitative Impact Frameworks developed through our Research in Residence: Arts' Civic Impact program. Currently, we are working with the researchers and arts organizations to implement and test the usefulness of these new tools to determine impact.
Travel back to the top to see the cycle begin again.
Art by Harmeet Rehal.
Getting from here to there is by no means linear. This is just for the purpose of being neat and tidy.
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