Arts participation and career preparedness: A pragmatic approach to assessing arts benefit

As the political and economic landscape of the United States shifts in coming years, American society's perception of the arts will likely change as well. Arts advocates must be ready to adapt their arguments for arts' value to changing societal priorities. This paper summarizes the two leading frameworks for current arts advocacy arguments: extrinsic benefits and intrinsic benefits. The paper then introduces practical benefits, a pragmatic third framework for arts advocacy that focuses on skills gained through the creation of collaborative art that prepare participants for careers in the creative class, as defined by Richard Florida. The paper uses student-run theatre organizations on college campuses as incubators and case studies for these benefits, using original ethnographic research and surveys to develop assessment protocols for these benefits, with the intention of growing their applicability to larger and more varied arts organizations.