Culture is Key: Strengthening Rhode Island’s Civic Health through Cultural Participation
The Humanities Council has supported civic education through our grants and partnerships for decades. In 2020-2021, the Council undertook Culture Is Key, an initiative to understand, test, and evaluate the role of cultural participation on our state’s civic health. Culture Is Key is supported by the Rhode Island Foundation, the Federation of State Humanities Councils, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Culture Is Key Report
January 11, 2022 – The Humanities Council is excited to finally share the report on Culture Is Key: Strengthening Rhode Island’s Civic Health Through Cultural Participation with our community.
The Culture Is Key report focuses on the potential to help renew civic life through the practices of cultural organizations in communities. In the report, you’ll find a summary and analysis of an 18-month inquiry into connections between civic health and the public activities of nonprofit cultural organizations. In working with pilot project teams, soliciting survey responses, and conducting in-depth interviews, the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities’ goal has been to connect what cultural organizations already do to existing indicators of civic health.
We did not plan to publish the Culture Is Key report around the anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol last year. However, the report showcases how essential cultural organizations are for civic health and thus speaks directly to the critical role that culture, humanities, and arts play in healing fractures and strengthening common ground.
More generally, this transformational time has underscored the need to amplify and invest in culture, humanities, and arts. We hope that the insights, recommendations, and observations documented in the report help to make that case.
Please stay tuned for more information about the Council’s civic health efforts in the months to come, including the development of the state’s first ever Civic Health Index which is deeply informed by this work and your insights.
Limited print copies are available upon request, please contact Rachael Jeffers at rachael@rihumanities.org with your mailing address if interested.
Click here to download a PDF of the full report.
Click here to download a PDF of the Executive Summary of the report.
