Launched in 2017, ArtsAmplified has been a deep partnership and extraordinary journey with 15 leading arts organizations from across Massachusetts. Over these eight years, each of the ArtsAmplified partners has made fundamental shifts in how they do their work. The initiative also changed how Barr approaches its own grantmaking.
With a summative evaluation recently completed by Sarah Lee Consulting, we are excited to share more about what these impacts were, and what we learned from walking alongside these extraordinary leaders.
Eight dimensions of transformation
ArtsAmplified partners embarked on a multiyear investigation into arts leadership, grounded in co-design, exploration, and experimentation. They described their evolution through the experience along eight key dimensions:
1. Deepening and expanding community engagement
Thirteen partners adopted strategies to center community member voices, interests, and needs in the design and execution of artistic programming—from partnering with community-based organizations to inviting community members into curatorial practices and program design.
2. Embedding commitments to civic and social impact
Nine partners clarified and institutionalized commitments to civic and social impact—leveraging the arts in service to the public good by inviting audiences to engage in civic action, amplifying traditionally marginalized stories, and responding to community needs.
3. Changing staffing structures and personnel
Nine partners underwent substantial staffing changes to accelerate efforts to deepen community engagement and activate civic impact, bringing in new perspectives and expertise.
4. Undertaking major capital projects
Seven partners initiated, advanced, or completed major capital projects during ArtsAmplified, transforming their facilities into literal and conceptual spaces for activating community engagement and civic leadership.
5. Transforming internal organizational culture
Six partners reshaped their internal culture, particularly by opening up institutional decision-making processes to include more staff and artist ownership.
6. Investing in programmatic experimentation and innovation
Five partners pursued bolder, more ambitious artistic work and innovations in the ways audiences experience that work.
7. Strengthening capacity for long-term, strategic decision-making
Four partners developed much stronger alignment across their staff and boards around a shared strategic vision—connected to their efforts to define organizational values and strengthen culture.
8. Stabilizing financial position
Three partners focused on financial stability, establishing endowments or solidifying their working capital base.
What we’ve learned together
The lessons from ArtsAmplified emphasize the transformative value of multiyear funding commitments, the power of pairing unrestricted operating support with risk capital, and the importance of trusting arts organizations to set their own goals and chart their own paths to impact. ArtsAmplified partners specifically noted the value of thought partnership and coaching provided throughout the initiative by arts sector consultants Ashley Berendt and Susan Nelson of TDC.
Perhaps most importantly, we learned that change happens not through mandates or requirements, but through sustained relationships built on mutual respect and shared commitment to the arts’ potential to create a more just and thriving world.
Barr is pleased to share these considerations with peer grantmakers, intermediaries, and consultants who focus on arts, as well as nonprofit community engagement and leadership more broadly.
Looking ahead with gratitude and conviction
These insights are already shaping our own ongoing investments in Arts + Creativity, and we hope they contribute to broader conversations about supporting bold leadership in the arts.
We are deeply grateful to our ArtsAmplified partners who trusted us with their aspirations and vulnerabilities, who shared their discoveries and setbacks, and who showed us what courageous leadership looks like in practice.
The sector faces new challenges today—funding cuts, ongoing instability, and efforts to undermine strides to elevate the full range of creative expression and make our institutions welcoming, accessible, and relevant to all. But it also carries vast potential to create solutions for a better future. Our experience with ArtsAmplified partners fills us with hope and renews our conviction that, in the arts, we have opportunities to practice the kind of society we want to live in.
We invite you to explore these insights with us as we carry forward the lessons learned and the relationships forged through this remarkable partnership.
Explore ArtsAmplified highlights
ArtsAmplified grantees:
- The American Repertory Theater
- ArtsEmerson
- Celebrity Series of Boston
- Global Arts Live
- The Greenway Conservancy
- GrubStreet
- The Huntington
- The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
- The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
- Jacob’s Pillow
- MASS MoCa
- Peabody Essex Museum
- Silkroad
- The Theater Offensive
- The Yard
