Research Grants in the Arts

Overview

<p>Research Grants in the Arts support research studies that investigate the value and/or impact of the arts, either as individual components of the U.S. arts ecology or as they interact with each other and/or with other domains of American life.</p> <p>This is a year of transition for the NEA’s research program. Priorities that were expressed in a <a href="https://www.arts.gov/impact/research">new five-year research agenda for the agency</a> will be more fully reflected next year in the NEA’s FY 2024 Research Grants in the Arts application guidelines. Until then, the NEA will entertain research grant proposals that address any of the topic areas below.</p> <p>As in previous years, we are interested in research covering one or more of these topic areas:</p> <ol> <li><span style="font-size:1em">Factors that enhance or inhibit arts participation or arts/cultural assets;</span></li> <li><span style="font-size:1em">Detailed characteristics of arts participation or arts/cultural assets, and their interrelationships;</span></li> <li><span style="font-size:1em">Individual-level outcomes of arts participation, specifically outcomes corresponding with the following domains:</span></li> </ol> <ul> <li>social and emotional well-being,</li> <li>creativity, cognition, and learning, and</li> <li>physiological processes of health and healing</li> </ul> <p><span style="font-size:1em">      4.Societal or community-level outcomes of arts/cultural assets, specifically outcomes corresponding with the following domains:</span></p> <ul> <li>civic and corporate innovation,</li> <li>attraction for neighborhoods and businesses, and</li> <li>national and/or state-level economic growth</li> </ul> <p>With these guidelines, however, the NEA now also welcomes research proposals in any of three additional topic areas, as identified by the <a href="https://www.arts.gov/impact/research">NEA’s new five-year research agenda</a>. Those new topic areas are:</p> <ul> <li>The arts’ role in the healing and revitalization of communities;</li> <li>Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the arts; and</li> <li>The evolving arts ecology: arts organizations, venues, or places of arts learning; artists and other cultural workers; and arts consumers and learners</li> </ul> <p><strong>Projects and Research Methods</strong><br>Some of the most compelling research about the arts has originated with non-arts specialties: economics, for example, with its lessons about the arts' contributions to the economy as well as the arts’ role in manufacturing and product design or innovation; cognitive neuroscience, with its discoveries about the arts' role in shaping human development and learning-related outcomes; urban planning work that seeks to understand the arts as a marker of community vitality; and psychological, physical health-related, or therapeutic studies that posit the arts' relationship to individual health and wellness. We anticipate applications from diverse research fields (e.g., economics; psychology; education; sociology; medicine, health, and therapy; communications; business administration; urban and regional planning) in addition to projects that address a diverse array of topics concerning the value and/or impact of the arts. Similarly, we expect our awards portfolio to be diverse in terms of research focus area, research design, and geographical distribution.</p> <p>Applicants may propose research projects drawing from a variety of research design characteristics; these include but are not limited to, community-based participatory research, third-party summative program evaluations, translational research, single-case and multi-case studies, complex surveys, bibliometrics and meta-analysis, and quasiexperimental or experimental study designs.</p>