Understanding Arts Service Organizations in a Changing Arts Ecosystem

This study is anchored in ADC Consulting’s research values and principles. In practice, the application of these values across Phase 1 of the research process included:

• Establishing a paid advisory cohort of members of the arts and cultural community. This includes a diverse group of individuals across lived experience, expertise, and geography, and who actively engage in the work of ASOs in different capacities.

• Acknowledging the ongoing impact of the pandemic. This includes its impact on the research process, the people who are a part of the process, and the cultural sector.

• Acknowledging the ways in which capitalism, white supremacy, war, genocide, economic precarity, and climate change continue to impact the arts and culture sector and, therefore, the outcome of this study. This includes the roles members of the arts ecosystem including ASO’s, research leads, and research participants, play in benefitting from, exacerbating, upholding and/or being oppressed by these systems and their outcomes.

• Engaging in a multi-phase research process that is iterative and considers multiple modalities, perspectives, and adapts to learning and contemporary contexts. This includes, adjusting timelines as needed, and pausing where necessary to address potential harms, new learnings, or additional approaches. 

• Exhausting all possible resources to ensure a large cross-section of members of the community are able to contribute to the research process. This includes sharing their stories, ideas, and areas of expertise through interviews and focus groups, and through that process, seeking their consent, compensating them for their time, and communicating transparently about the purpose and use of their information and/or contributions.

• Providing a variety of accessible opportunities for participation in the data collection processes. This includes providing written and oral forms of digital data collection alongside closed captioning, ASL interpretation and/or other types of accommodations so research participants can engage in methods that best align with their access needs, time, and capacity.

• Creating tools for the public to interact with, download, and analyze/interpret the data themselves. This includes providing access to normalized/clean data sets, and using a platform that allows for user-generated versions of the data to promote transparency and encourage additional analysis of the data. 

• Understanding that research alone cannot solve all of the problems it aims to observe, explore, or influence, including acknowledging our limitations as humans and researchers. This means working with institutions and individuals to spread the word of the study and to advocate for the application of its findings in ways that advance collective goals of liberation and well-being for arts workers, arts entities, and their communities.

Understanding Arts Service Organizations in a Changing Arts Ecosystem intends to provide updated baseline data on three aspects of ASOs operating in the United States:

• Typology Framework — to better define ASOs by understanding their key characteristics, service roster, constituencies, and support structure.

• History & Impact — to more accurately tell the story of their impetus, operating environment, role, and ongoing impact in the arts ecosystem; and 

• Evolution — to provide insights into the paths they can take to move towards sustainability, better serve their constituencies, and contribute to building a more equitable and just arts ecosystem.

It is designed to benefit the arts sector, with a specific focus on ASOs and the individuals and entities who impact and drive their work, including: 

• ASO workers — as the individuals tasked with carrying the work of ASOs forward;

• Funders of ASOs (private and public) and policy makers — as the individuals and entities whose decisions impact the resourcing of ASOs and their ability to remain operational; 

• Arts workers and organizations — as the intended beneficiaries of the work ASOs do; and

• The arts sector — to provide greater visibility and information on the work ASOs do and how they might interact with them.

As the first component of this multi-phase study, Phase 1 Background Research focused on seeking and analyzing existing data on ASOs in order to consider how this study could update, complement, and/or expand existing research. To guide this work, a series of research questions were established:

• What are ASOs? How do we define them and/or distinguish them from other arts entities or service entities? 

• What is the history of ASOs? 

• How have they evolved over time in response to shifts in the arts ecosystem and the changing needs of individual arts workers and arts entities?

• What is the ASO typology framework?

• What information or data already exists about ASOs, and what new data do we need to collect to better understand them?

Phase 1 of this study took place between May 2023 - October 2024. Three additional phases have been identified in order to gather primary data. As the arts ecosystem continues to rapidly evolve, the methodologies, processes, and types of data collected may change to respond to new learnings, organizing and collaboration efforts, and availability of resources. Resources to fund future phases of this project have not yet been secured and are in process of identification. For a full outline of future research phases download the research overview.