Thursday (11/19) on the Los Angeles Times blog Culture Monster, Mike Boehm reports that Friday, “the National Endowment for the Arts presents a live webcast of its daylong Cultural Workforce Forum. From 6 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, an assortment of academics, federal bureaucrats, and staffers from private think tanks and research organizations will assemble in Washington, and in cyberspace at www.nea.gov. They’ll attempt to elucidate, ponder and talk about how to broaden and improve the statistical evidence supporting the notion that what those composers, writers, painters, et al do is not just fluff and filigree, but part of the dollars-and-cents fiber of the country. Panel topics include ‘What We Know About Artists and How We Know It,’ featuring an economics professor from Northwestern University, an executive from the AFL-CIO, and arts researchers from the NEA and Columbia University; ‘Putting the Research to Work’; and ‘Widening the Lens to Capture Other Cultural Workers.’ … Sunil Iyengar, the NEA’s research director and organizer of the Cultural Workforce Forum, says the Senate vote’s dismissal of the arts illustrated the need to hone ways to gather more complete and useful data about artists as economic creatures.”
Posted November 19, 2009
