Assessing the Vitality of a City's Creative Ecology: A New Framework



Elizabeth Long Lingo and Steven Tepper, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Curb Center at Vanderbilt, use interviews and survey methodology to explicitly examine the factors that define a vital creative system.  More specifically, Lingo and Tepper offer city leaders and policy makers a new framework and set of criteria for investing in their cities’ creative capacities. 

Their assessment tool defines vitality in terms of the potential effect on four spheres of influence: 1) citizens’ expressive life, 2) art forms or the creative community as a whole, 3) civic goals, and 4) economic development and creative enterprise beyond the arts.  The framework emphasizes the need for policy makers and leaders to consider how investing in a city’s creative capacity requires an understanding of how the four facets interrelate with each other.  Otherwise, investments can be misguided, redundant or undermine already existing structures and systems in place.

Current Working Paper: • Assessing the Vitality of a City’s Creative Ecology: A New Policy Framework