Artist Space Development: Making the Case

Based on case studies, discusses the challenges advocates of artist space development face, the arguments they make to garner support, the strategic approaches they take, and what they achieve in making artist space a priority in community development

Block-Based Development of Mobile Learning Experiences for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things enables experts of given domains to create smart user experiences for interacting with the environment. However, development of such experiences requires strong programming skills, which are challenging to develop for non-technical users. This paper presents several extensions to the block-based programming language used in App Inventor to make the creation of mobile apps for smart learning experiences less challenging. Such apps are used to process and graphically represent data streams from sensors by applying map-reduce operations. A workshop with students without previous experience with Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile app programming was conducted to evaluate the propositions. As a result, students were able to create small IoT apps that ingest, process and visually represent data in a simpler form as using App Inventor's standard features. Besides, an experimental study was carried out in a mobile app development course with academics of diverse disciplines. Results showed it was faster and easier for novice programmers to develop the proposed app using new stream processing blocks.Spanish National Research Agency (AEI) - ERDF fund

Creating Change through Arts, Culture, and Equitable Development: A Policy and Practice Primer

Across the nation, artistic and cultural practices are helping to define the sustainability of urban, rural, and suburban neighborhoods. In the design of parks and open spaces; the building of public transit, housing, and supermarkets; in plans for addressing needs for community health and healing trauma; communities are embracing arts and culture strategies to help create equitable communities of opportunity where everyone can participate, prosper, and achieve their full potential. And artists are seeing themselves -- and being seen by others -- as integral community members whose talents, crafts, and insights pave the way to support community engagement and cohesion."Creating Change through Arts, Culture, and Equitable Development: A Policy and Practice Primer" highlights both promising and proven practices that demonstrate equity-focused arts and culture policies, strategies, and tools. The report describes the role of arts and culture across the nine sectors below. Within each policy chart there are goals, policies, and implementation strategies that can help achieve communities of opportunity. These policies have yielded such outcomes as: support for Native artists in reservation-based cultural economies, the creation of a citywide cultural plan, engaging low-income youth of color in using digital media, and efforts to address redevelopment, employment, food access, and environmental justice

People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement: Taking Stock of the Place Initiative

This report serves as a point of entry into creative placemaking as defined and supported by the Tucson Pima Arts Council's PLACE Initiative. To assess how and to what degree the PLACE projects were helping to transform communities, TPAC was asked by the Kresge Foundation to undertake a comprehensive evaluation. This involved discussion with stakeholders about support mechanisms, professional development, investment, and impact of the PLACE Initiative in Tucson, Arizona, and the Southwest regionally and the gathering of qualitative and quantitative data to develop indicators and method for evaluating the social impact of the arts in TPAC's grantmaking. The report documents one year of observations and research by the PLACE research team, outside researchers and reviewers, local and regional working groups, TPAC staff, and TPAC constituency. It considers data from the first four years of PLACE Initiative funding, including learning exchanges, focus groups, individual interviews, grantmaking, and all reporting. It is also informed by evaluation and assessment that occurred in the development of the PLACE Initiative, in particular, Maribel Alvarez's Two-Way Mirror: Ethnography as a Way to Assess Civic Impact of Arts-Based Engagement in Tucson, Arizona (2009), and Mark Stern and Susan Seifert's Documenting Civic Engagement: A Plan for the Tucson Pima Arts Council (2009). Both of these publications were supported by Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, that promotes arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change. Both publications describe how TPAC approaches evaluation strategies associated with social impact of the arts in Tucson and Pima County. This report outlines the local context and historical antecedents of the PLACE Initiative in the region with an emphasis on the concept of "belonging" as a primary characteristic of PLACE projects and policy. It describes PLACE projects as well as the role of TPAC in creating and facilitating the Initiative. Based on the collective understanding of the research team, impacts of the PLACE Initiative are organized into three main realms -- institutions, artists, and communities. These realms are further addressed in case studies from select grantees, whose narratives offer rich, detailed perspectives about PLACE projects in context, with all their successes, rewards, and challenges for artists, communities, and institutions. Lastly, the report offers preliminary research findings on PLACE by TPAC in collaboration with Dr. James Roebuck, codirector of the University of Arizona's ERAD (Evaluation Research and Development) Program

Rockefeller Brothers Fund Charles E. Culpeper Arts and Culture Grants Impact Assessment

Fulfilling the assignment received from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), NEXT: Transition Advisors and AKA|Strategy present their review of the RBF's Charles E. Culpeper Arts and Culture Grants. After 11 years of funding arts and culture in New York City, the Culpeper grants were ready for review, according to the assessment protocol established by the RBF for all its program areas. NEXT and AKA, which specialize in transition and strategy studies for nonprofit institutions, present this review with respect for the RBF, its accomplishments, and its dedication over time to support of the nonprofit sector, including arts and culture. The review aims to situate and evaluate the activities of the Culpeper grants within the RBF's overall portfolio and within its field, and to bring to the surface questions and significant issues that should be addressed at its decade mark