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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
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…
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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…
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Cory Garfin recently had a wide-ranging conversation with Tom O’Connor, a marketing and audience development consultant for the arts and culture field, about a piece he had written called “Engaging Arts Audiences in a Time of Trauma.”
READ MORE
We’re excited to announce the release this morning of key findings from our national research & strategy collaboration, Culture & Community in a Time of Crisis: A Special Edition of Culture Track…
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When we began this national research and strategy collaboration, the “crisis” in our title was the coronavirus. Recent events have demonstrated that the actual crisis is deeper, more historical and unavoidably, irreducibly cultural…
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I’m delighted to announce that we’ve added Melody Buyukozer Dawkins, newly minted PhD, to our talented team of researchers. Melody has jumped in despite the remote-work situation and is already playing a crucial role on several projects, including our national audience & community study…
READ MORELatest Tweets
Such contrast across the fold in today's (paper) @nytimesarts section: harpist & rapper pieces.
One technical, historical, jargony, individualist, serious.
One culturally embedded, vernacular, social/familial, funny, political.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/arts/music/tobe-nwigwe-breonna-taylor.html #ClassicalMusic #arts
To get to real equity, we need to move beyond "access" to "intentional welcome": the palpable, overt kind.
And safety, on multiple levels.
Great to hear @mslynnross on this panel.
Rich questions about identification and attachment with communities & places. Listening to #liveaturban's webinar about new @urbaninstitute research on "Community Ties" for @knightfdn.
Loose ties - also important to understand in #creativeplacemaking and in the #arts generally.
It’s here! Love my #MuseumWorkersSpeak shirt.
Consider getting #InFormation & send some support to @MuseumWorkers.
#BlackLivesMatter
Jonathan Majors beautifully voices a view of the #arts I'm hearing more in #racialjustice conversations...and finally understanding: It's about healing, of "the invisible hurt." As essential as the medical kind.
(@bamuthi!)
1/2
Jonathan Majors on âLovecraft Country‘: Horror as a Full Body Scream
The actor talked about starring in the new HBO series, which blends the supernatural with a critique of American racial injustice, and about how actin...
www.nytimes.com
Hearing this too often from #communityengagement & #education staff at #arts & culture orgs. Including many who are, not coincidentally, no longer at those orgs.
"We had free rein & affirmation from leadership...until we tried to make this work central rather than marginal."
It’s here! My #MuseumsAreNotNeutral mug, proceeds supporting @MuseumWorkers
Get yours (or a shirt, maybe?) here: https://www.bonfire.com/museums-are-not-neutral/ cc: @SloverLinett
To get to real equity, we need to move beyond "access" to "intentional welcome": the palpable, overt kind.
And safety, on multiple levels.
Great to hear @mslynnross on this panel.