Skill and Will Mapping: New Research on Funding Creative Youth Development in the United States

In 2019, the Creative Youth Development National Partnership engaged in a project to better understand the funding landscape of their field. To illustrate their findings, researchers connected with funders and program leaders in four settings to better understand the dynamics of their partnerships. Here is a summary of six publications illustrating the findings.

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Connecting Theatre and Politics: Results from A Pilot Study

Through our recent research with Theater & Policy Salon, a member of our Incubator for Creative Impact, it seems that audiences in the Washington, D.C. metro area are becoming increasingly interested in hard-hitting topical plays. Whether it is because of the urgency of this moment in U.S. and global politics due to rising nationalist sentiments or antiracist movements, our research unearthed the potential for the political to not only come center stage but to become the center of an experience which navigates the intersections of fiction and fact as themes from the play are explored by experts and creatives at post-show talk-backs.

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The Role of Music in Well-being: New Report from WolfBrown and Bernard Van Leer Foundation

A new report has been published by WolfBrown and the Bernard van Leer Foundation, titled “Making a Joyful Noise: The Potential Role of Music Making in the Well-Being of Young Families.”

Seeking to answer the question: What role does music play in building a world in which young families thrive? This report combines a comprehensive literature and landscape review that highlights the value, impact and scaling potential of music and sustainable music interventions/programmes throughout the world.

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Our Community Responds: How Funders Can Support Arts Education Despite COVID-19

Funders should think about shifting available funding to benefit the most financially vulnerable members of the arts education community: teaching artists, independent contractors, and freelance educators and artists by providing direct-to-individual, one-time grants, and broadening the structures and criteria for grants which support – financially and through wraparound services – their ability to fill their unique role in the ecosystem.

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How do you write a strategic plan in a quickly changing field? Adaptive Impact Planning

Planning inherently leads to consideration of the mission’s relationship to programming and development. But creating an Adaptive Impact Plan, specifically, gives arts organizations a tool to respond to change and to make decisions without performing a full strategic assessment any time they are presented with a new possibility and without compromising its mission and vision.

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