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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
A major national research initiative about how Americans have been connecting to culture, creativity and community
Our pandemic-era research collaboration with Culture Track® and Yancey Consulting has been all about equity and transformation. Read the reports from our 2021 phases: “A Place to Be Heard,” which centers Black voices, and “Rethinking Relevance,” findings from a large-scale national survey...
READ MOREThe Building Blocks of Welcome: Lessons Learned from Interviews with Black and Latinx Theatergoers for Signature Theatre
By Emily Bray & Jen Benoit-Bryan In early 2021, the Signature Theatre in NYC shared that they wanted to learn about the experiences of Black and Latinx audiences in their theater around welcome and belonging with the goal of making the theater a more...
READ MOREA toolkit for DIY audience surveying, 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 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
Riffing on a point made by Kyle Bowen of Museums as Progress, some thoughts about how cultural organizations can see their communities not just in terms of needs — the holes and gaps in the latticework — but in terms of assets: the connective tissue of place, relationships, creativity, culture, history, and vision that that holds the whole thing together…
READ MORE
We’re incredibly pleased today to announce the promotion of Dr. Emily Bray to Senior Researcher at Slover Linett. In this new role, Emily will be a key voice…
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What new song will you sing in 2023? Wishing you (and ourselves!) the courage to keep learning new tunes and belt it from the heart in the new year…
READ MORE
As many of you know, we’ve been expanding our team of researchers at Slover Linett, and I’m delighted to report that we’ve found a truly exceptional new colleague — Eddie Chong. Eddie has deep experience in research and data visualization, roots in the museum world, and experience doing community-embedded work…
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Inspired by some heartfelt personal reflections my friends and partner shared around our Thanksgiving table a few days ago, here are some things that have made me grateful in my professional life during 2022. And not just things, of course: people, including a few I’ve “met” only through their words…
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Do sports count as culture? Sure, there’s a culture of sports, but can we consider watching a game a cultural activity? What about playing a game? These are questions my colleagues and I seem to often come back to when designing research to understand cultural “attenders” and “non-attenders”…
READ MORELatest Tweets
And @museumprogress, this was sparked by your post that @PLinett's riffing on - thanks for the smart provocation!
https://museumprogress.com/letters/do-museums-need-to-stop-trying-to-meet-community-needs
New post from @PLinett about community-based #research as one of the ways a #cultural org or #arts funder supports its community.
It starts with seeing not just the holes & gaps in the latticework, but the connective structures that hold it all together.
Community as Full Partner in the Inquiry | Slover Linett
Thoughts by Peter Linett about how cultural organizations can collaborate on a level playing field with their commun...
sloverlinett.com
And apropos, we're excited to be talking about conducting another #research study of the #socialimpacts of folk & traditional #arts in lives and communities. (Our first was with @CalTradArts a few years ago. Learned and unlearned a lot since then!) Stay tuned...
So proud of my Santa Fe neighbor, artist & santero Luis Tapia, named an @NEAarts National #Heritage Fellow - our country's highest honor in the folk & traditional arts.
Great to see recognition of the political, social & protest power of his artwork.
https://www.abqjournal.com/2582857/honoring-a-trailblazer-2.html
So proud of my Santa Fe neighbor, artist & santero Luis Tapia, named an @NEAarts National #Heritage Fellow - our country's highest honor in the folk & traditional arts.
Great to see recognition of the political, social & protest power of his artwork.
Santa Fe santero Luis Tapia has won the nation’s highest distinction in the folk and traditional arts
Famed for blending the Hispanic carving tradition with contemporary commentary, Santa Fe santero Luis Tapia has won ...
www.abqjournal.com
Read the (beautiful) article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/arts/design/kehinde-wiley-de-young-museum.html
A "respite room" where viewers can process, mourn, repair.
This is why we love working with @deyoungmuseum & other cultural orgs that are rethinking, decolonizing, healing. Kudos to Abram Jackson & others @ FAMSF for getting that it's not just what goes on the walls...
#ICYMI here's @MellonFdn Pres. Elizabeth Alexander and @smithsonian Sec. Lonnie Bunch on the role of museums in telling the #AmericanStory. A fascinating and timely conversation:
Watch: State of Our Union: Telling the American Story | Mellon Foundation
How can we craft an American story with room for all? Find out from two of our country’s foremost cultural leaders.
mellon.org
Big thanks to #BAM for this gorgeous image: Sing Harlem Choir performing at the 2022 Annual Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Photo credit: Astrid Stawiarz, Getty Images for Brooklyn Academy of Music.)
We're so proud to work with amazing antiracist, justice-focused system-changers in #arts and #culture. Our sector has a unique role to play—and much more work to do. (Same goes for social #research and #evaluation.)
So let's take a breath together, remember Dr. King...and sing.
