Hello! I’m Kimberly N. Harris, economist, founder and principal researcher & evaluator at Educa Consulting, Inc., a full-service research and evaluation company that leverages data to serve as a bridge, connecting our clients and the communities they desire to serve. Educa Consulting is a company that understands the power and importance of community in good, sound, research and evaluation. At Educa, we are unapologetically collectivist because we understand that people are at the center of our why.
It is this grounding that draws me to art, as a patron and as an evaluator. The plasticity of art is found in its ability to simultaneously enter, occupy, and hold space for co-creation, reflection, interrogation, evaluation, and re-creation. While the elasticity of art is characterized by the haven it holds for all who are called and compelled to operationalize and bring to life, what inspires them. Even in the face of artificial barriers to entry that have all too real consequences (e.g. cordoning off exclusionary spaces, the historic invisibilization of black and indigenous artists, signalizing of legitimacy, illegitimacy, and value through terms through exclusionary jargon), art always holds its form and function as the connective tissue of humanity (Harris, 2025).
Lessons Learned
As a Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluator, regularly evaluating arts programs, I see the far-reaching impact of arts initiatives in nearly every sector of the economy. Arts and community stabilization, arts and economic justice, arts and education, arts and public health, are just a few of the synergistic intersections that bring diverse stakeholders together to out-vision and co-create. When done right, these moments are formed and shaped by and in the image of community. We as the evaluators are privileged to walk along side, providing what Dr. Hazel Symonette refers to as helpful help (Thank you Mama Hazel!!).
For Educa, helpful help means listening deeply and thoughtfully, while showing up in ways that reflect of our responsive and respectful engagement approach. This includes developing customized evaluation tool kits for grass-roots community groups, co-creating dissemination strategies with community, and training and engaging the community to work alongside us as community evaluators (Harris, et.al, 2023).
Whatever approach is called for and called on, the transformational power of art, and its life affirming connective tissue, grounds us to our collective why. To quote Mr. Olusanya Bey, Artist of Color Unite! Advisory Board Member, artist, art teacher, and one of the most amazing humans I have been honored to work with:
“Art to human beings is like water to fish. Its all around you, its in you, you do it all the time, whether or not you are conscious of it, because when a human being expresses themselves, that’s the state of their being. That’s the answer to how art thou. And so, to me, I serve art more than art serves me. Although art does serve me, because as I’m doing it, it helps me to get further insight into my being. My being a work of art. So, I don’t do art as much as I think I am a work of art; a work of art that’s in progress, and so the more I express it, the more I come to know what art means to me.”
Now, that’s the stuff!!
Rad Resources
- Learn more about the Arts, Culture, and Museums Topical Interest Group
- Check out this article on Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Arts
- While in St. Louis, Check Out the Arts Scene
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Arts, Culture, and Museums (ACM) TIG Week. The contributions all week come from ACA TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.