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relevance
connections
support
friends
fans
participation
moments
insight
transformation
vitality
action
loyalty
experiences
impacts
success
engagement
innovation
equity
power
places
social change
revelation
inclusion
passion
meaning
progress
community.
We’re a social research firm for the cultural sector.
We use rigorous research & evaluation methods to shine new light on how people connect to the arts, museums, media, science, stories, ideas, creativity, and community. And how they could connect.
Explore the links below, or scroll down to see what we’re up to lately.
The research has the capacity to be transformational for the O’Keeffe Museum. Slover Linett took the time to listen, understand our needs, and integrate their work with another consultant team… As a result, the staff is eager to develop and implement experimental programs to attract and retain new audiences. Peter and his team are not only experts in audience research; they are experienced, thoughtful, and sophisticated partners who are willing to think with my team.”
Featured Projects
Announcing a national study of cultural audiences & the wider American community during COVID
Like others in the arts and culture sector, we’ve been asking ourselves how we can help the field during these difficult times. We believe that a shared, empirical picture of cultural audiences and the wider American public will help ground and guide a collective...
READ MORENew, free toolkit for DIY audience surveys, with OF/BY/FOR ALL
We're right there with community innovator Nina Simon when she says, "Collecting good demographic data can help you smash stereotypes. It can help you make smarter strategic decisions and better programs." Well, we would believe that — we’re researchers....
READ MOREWhere is Folk Music Heading? A New Survey for Folk Alliance International
Slover Linett has done considerable research on classical music audiences and innovations over the years. But other kinds of music are also vital, evolving art-forms, with their own communities of creators and consumers. So we’ve been delighted...
READ MOREContinuing Our Inquiry with Two Wallace Foundation Arts Grantees About Audiences’ Connection to New, Unfamiliar Works
In 2019, we’ve been working again with Ballet Austin and the Goodman Theatre on related research questions: How do audiences decide to take the leap of attending dance or theater performances that they don’t know much about? Both organizations are...
READ MOREHow Can Science Connect to More Millennials? A Survey for the National Academy of Sciences
In 2018, the National Academy of Sciences closed its science museum in Washington, DC and announced a new program aimed at millennials, LabX. The LabX team engaged Slover Linett to conduct a groundbreaking national study of how science is perceived by...
READ MOREMapping the Future of the Arts at Cornell University
Slover Linett has long worked with museums and arts presenters based on college and university campuses. But until recently we hadn’t helped a major educational institution look at the big picture: What roles can the arts and creativity play in...
READ MORESupporting and studying a learning community of arts organizations in California
We’re excited to be entering the homestretch of one of our most rewarding and complex engagements: an ongoing evaluation and capacity-building project with the James Irvine Foundation and its fifteen grantee-partners in the New California Arts Fund (NCAF)...
READ MORENews & Notes
Most of what we’ve shared about the national study that we’re co-leading with our colleagues at LaPlaca Cohen, Culture and Community in a Time of Crisis, has been focused on research findings; in this post we’d like to provide a different perspective on the work—a behind-the-scenes view of the research process itself.
READ MORE
Like many people across the country I am finding myself refreshing the FiveThirtyEight website multiple times a day and squinting to extract as much meaning from the numbers as I can. I love the simple probabilistic topline—Biden wins the election in x out of every 100 scenarios—but I am even more intrigued by the snake chart with every state ordered by probability and a clearly demarcated tipping point…
READ MORE
Last week we co-hosted a webinar with the Morton Arboretum that focused on the unique thoughts, behaviors, attitudes, and needs of botanical garden attenders compared to the nationally representative sample of respondents to the Culture and Community in a Time of Crisis survey research…
READ MORE
This is the third and final installment of my conversation with Tom O’Connor.” In the previous excerpt, we left off talking about the benefits of having systems-thinking leadership during times of change and, as Tom put it, potential redemption for a field that is coming to terms with its own complicity in longstanding systemic inequities…
READ MORE
In engineering circles, there’s a famous, possibly apocryphal story about a course at MIT that used to begin the same way every year. The professor shows a photo of an improbably long bridge and asks the students why the structure stands instead of falling into the waves below. Student after student offers…
READ MORE
In part one of our conversation, we talked about what the arts and cultural sector might learn from social work. In part two, we touch on some of the core values that arts and cultural organizations can deliver on to increase audience engagement and social relevance…
READ MORELatest Tweets
Nina Simon's big-hearted, deeply human career decision opens a huge opportunity for some visionary, communitarian leader. I bet some of you know the right person...or *are* the right person.
Let's spread the word. @OFBYFOR_ALL is helping make belonging & relevance happen.
And it's a great gig! @OFBYFOR_ALL has solid financial footing, a talented multi-racial staff, committed institutional members, and a global platform for action & change. I know the next CEO will bring new vision and direction to these assets - and I'm excited to cheer them on.
This is a fantastic org and a great opportunity https://twitter.com/heyshaelyn/status/1331320397342470144
1.) @OFBYFOR_ALL is looking for a new CEO. Check it out if you think it could be you!
2.) REALLY SUPER APPRECIATE the level of transparency in this job posting. A model for us all. https://www.ofbyforall.org/join-our-team
Mark your calendars!
On 12/10 @calmuseums hosts @jenbenoitbryan for a dive into the challenges #museums are facing & how the field can move forward. We'll discuss areas unique to the California museum-goer and more; register here:
#audienceresearch
December 10, 2020: Marketing Now
www.calmuseums.org
Our #artsactivism friends working with & through #arts toward community, healing & justice will find Simon Woods' @OrchLeague manifesto tepid & inward, even as the #classicalmusic world finds it naively, bewilderingly progressive. Sigh.
#forkintheroad
A World More Embracing
Thoughts on orchestras after the pandemic
medium.com
Wonderful to call for challenging racial injustice & rethinking the "canonic European...past." But we'll need to keep peeling, because "classical music" & "orchestra" are culturally specific categories that only pretend to universality. They come from a place (Europe) and time.
Our #artsactivism friends working with & through #arts toward community, healing & justice will find Simon Woods' @OrchLeague manifesto tepid & inward, even as the #classicalmusic world finds it naively, bewilderingly progressive. Sigh.
#forkintheroad
A World More Embracing
Thoughts on orchestras after the pandemic
medium.com
How do you scale a research study up from a planned sample size of 10,000 to over 120,000 respondents across the country in just a few weeks? @vvp317 tells all!
Many thanks to @zoedowling & @FocusVisionInfo for the opportunity to share the #CCTC process.
Scaling up: Behind the scenes of CCTC | Slover Linett
Most of what we’ve shared about the national study that we’re co-leading with our colleagues at LaPlaca Cohen, Culture and Community in a ...
sloverlinett.com
Painful, and it's not just #poetry: White #artists get to create about anything in their orbits, as if the privilege of doing so weren't itself political. But Black and Brown artists get siloed as "topical" or political when they do the same: @parul_sehgal
A Monumental and Rapturous New Anthology of Black American Poetry
“African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song,” edited by Kevin Young, contains an overwhelming amount of variety and history.
www.nytimes.com