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Arts, Culture, and Museums

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Awareness of Cognitive Biases in Organizational and Policy Evaluation in the Arts by Rachael Jenison

Hi, I’m Rachael Jenison (MFA/MPA) and am currently serving as an AmeriCorps Member at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, a mayoral agency that oversees the distribution of city funds to arts and culture organizations. My focus there is on evaluation of equity-based reforms to the grant-making process. Prior to serving at DCLA, …

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Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Hiring Non-Evaluators to Do Evaluation by Madeleine Pope

Hi! I’m Madeleine Pope (they/them), research associate and project manager at HG&Co, a visitor-centered planning, strategy, & evaluation firm which supports museums and cultural organizations. Having just attended my first AEA conference as a new museum evaluator, I noticed that there are some differences between my niche world of work and organizational or teaching evaluation. I’ve …

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Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: (Mis)Adventures in Arts-Based Evaluation: Reflections on a Pandemic Practice by Maya Lefkowich and Jennica Nichols

We are Jennica Nichols and Maya Lefkowich – arts-based evaluators from Vancouver, Canada. Coming into the New Year, we’ve been reflecting on lessons learned over the last year and wanted to share some with you (and welcome your thoughts too). After years of dreaming about an arts-based evaluation company, we finally started one. We launched …

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Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: GET. EXCITED. by Marcel W. Foster

Marcel W. Foster, MPH, here, and I use they/them pronouns. Before jumping into today’s blog (merely a preview of this week’s contributions) – I invite you to take one simple inhale and one simple exhale. via GIPHY It is of course an honor and GEEK TRIUMPH to curate the 2023 Arts, Culture, & Museum (ACM) …

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ACM TIG Week: Evaluation, risk, and our collective power by Jeremy Foutz

My name is Jeremy Foutz, and I’m an ethnomusicologist, evaluator, and principal at STEAM  Workgroup, working with cultural and informal learning organizations. I’m writing this from the position of a cis white man who, although coming from a family that survived on welfare programs, had/has significant levels of privilege. This week of posts from the …

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ACM TIG Week: Audience Impact by Jennifer Novak-Leonard

This post was original released on AEA365 in 2012, and was so popular the first time around, it is being reshared from the archives at the request of the Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG. Hi everyone – My name is Jennifer Novak-Leonard, and I’m a Senior Consultant with WolfBrown, an arts and cultural research and …

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ACM TIG Week: Evaluating our Impact: Priorities and Instruments by Kari Ross Nelson

My name is Kari Ross Nelson. I am the Research and Evaluation Associate at Thanksgiving Point Institute and an independent consultant to museums and other informal learning organizations in the greater Salt Lake City area. My team at Thanksgiving Point is the research partner on an IMLS-funded project, Measurement of Museum Social Impact (MOMSI). This …

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ACM TIG Week: Building Staff Evaluative Thinking (and a Pyramid) with a Guest Needs Hierarchy by Lauren Holley

Hello! I’m Lauren Holley, the Audience and Evaluation Specialist at Space Center Houston. I work with our full organization; as our first in-house evaluator, I am shaping colleagues’ perspectives of evaluation and embedding accountability, iterative improvement, and focus on outcomes into our offerings. Our greatest and broadest offering is our general visitor experience. With consistent …

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ACM TIG Week: Collaborating with Practitioners to Create Relevant Instruments to Measure Library Staff Capacity for Informal Learning Activities by Patricia Montaño, Megan Littrell, Anne Gold, Claire Ratcliffe Adams, & Brooks Mitchell

We are Patricia Montaño, Megan Littrell, and Anne Gold from CIRES Education & Outreach at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Claire Ratcliffe Adams and Brooks Mitchell from the National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. We collaborate on the We are Water project to design informal Science, …

ACM TIG Week: Collaborating with Practitioners to Create Relevant Instruments to Measure Library Staff Capacity for Informal Learning Activities by Patricia Montaño, Megan Littrell, Anne Gold, Claire Ratcliffe Adams, & Brooks Mitchell Read More »

ACM TIG Week: A Research Agenda for Zoos and Aquariums (and Beyond) Part 2 by Emily Kalnicky & Kathryn Owen

Greetings! We are Emily Kalnicky & Kathryn Owen, members of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums’ (AZA) Social Science Research and Evaluation Scientific Advisory Group (SSRE SAG). Following up on yesterday’s post, today we will highlight two of the five research questions from the agenda and opportunities for possible collaboration. Example: Social emotional and physical …

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