West Hillsborough News

Representatives of nonprofit arts and culture organizations across Hillsborough County are invited to attend an information session to learn about an important year-long study to measure the economic impact of the arts community in Hillsborough County. Hillsborough County Arts Council is teaming up with Americans for the Arts for the sixth nationwide Arts & Economic Prosperity study. The study is conducted approximately every five years to gauge the economic impact (on employment, government revenue, and household income) of spending by nonprofit arts and culture organizations and the event-related spending by their audiences.

The Let's Make Art Count meeting will be held in-person at the County's Entrepreneur Collaborative Center or virtually via Zoom from 2-3 p.m. on Thursday, June 16. Registration is required. A recording will be available after the meeting for those unable to attend live.

Eligible nonprofit arts and cultural organizations that can participate include:

• Traditional nonprofit arts and culture organizations, programs, events, venues, and facilities (e.g., performing arts, visual arts, museums, etc.)
• Municipally owned/operated institutions, programs, venues, and facilities (e.g., a city-operated museum or gallery)
• Unincorporated community arts and culture organizations and programs (i.e., without a formal legal status)
• Fiscally sponsored arts and culture organizations, programs, events, venues, and facilities
• Arts and cultural programs embedded in non-arts organizations (e.g., faith-based organizations, community/senior centers, health facilities, libraries, etc.)
• Living collections such as botanical gardens, zoos, and aquariums
• Historical and heritage societies (and other historical/heritage organizations or sites)
• Private arts councils
• Municipal arts agencies (e.g., an arts commission or a department of cultural affairs)

For-profit/commercial businesses and individual artists are excluded from the study.

During this study, Hillsborough County and Americans for the Arts have a specific emphasis to include participants representing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native American) identifying communities-a segment of the nonprofit arts and culture sector that has been underrepresented in past studies.

The study is conducted in two major parts: audience-intercept surveys and reporting from eligible nonprofit arts and cultural organizations. The results are expected to be published in September 2023.

Original source can be found here.