Helping the National Building Museum Make Evidence-based Decisions for an Artist-in-Residence Program
Client: National Building Museum | Location: Washington, DC
We used evaluation to help the National Building Museum think strategically about the future of Creative-in-Residence, a program that invites visual and performing artists to create original, site-specific works about the built environment.
OVERVIEW
In 2019, the National Building Museum contracted us to evaluate their Creative-in-Residence program, which invites visual and performing artists to do short-term residencies at the Museum and create original, site-specific works related to the built environment for the broad public to experience.
The Museum had been experimenting with various iterations of the program for some time. They hoped to understand the program’s successes and challenges thus far in order to make informed decisions about its future.
APPROACH
Our evaluation prioritized gathering many varied perspectives on the program. For context, we began by doing contextual observations of the public’s experience at a site-specific dance performance at the Museum created by an artist participating in the program.
Following contextual observations, we led in-depth interviews with:
External and internal stakeholders, each with different relationships to the program
Members of the broad public who attended the dance performance at the Museum
Artists who had been Creatives-in-Residence, and
Cultural professionals who managed similar artist residency programs at other institutions
We triangulated the results from observations and interviews to identify insights and led a workshop to prompt the Museum to think creatively about the program’s future.
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
Our findings further reinforced the power of visual and performing arts to promote new perspectives on the built environment. Stakeholders greatly appreciated how the Creative-in-Residence program unites the arts and the built environment, and there was strong interest in engaging with the National Building Museum building’s history and the building itself in creative ways.
We also surfaced opportunities to strengthen the program, including mitigating logistical barriers, integrating more historically underrepresented perspectives, and promoting visitors’ agency in shaping the built environment.
