The Power of Community Generated Data

We believe that resources flow to what is known. Through visibility on CreativeGround, the region’s artists, creatives, culture bearers, arts and culture organizations, and creative businesses claim the impact of their work in their own words. With this labor properly represented on CreativeGround, our partners are emboldened through access to real-time, centralized data about their creative communities to strengthen the sector with the resources and support they need. With the help of the community, we can more accurately share the reach and impact of the creative minds we believe and have believed since our founding are the driving force behind positive social and economic development in the region. 

For 50 years, NEFA has provided arts organizations with data-driven research to be used for advocacy to their local governments, strengthening and informing local, statewide, and regional efforts to build New England’s creative economy. What began as paper surveys to collect raw data from the region’s arts and culture nonprofits has evolved into gathering and sharing community-generated data through CreativeGround. 

Collaborators, venues, services, and vital data can all be found on CreativeGround, but only if it is maintained. Accurate CreativeGround profiles fuel the quality of data behind the entire directory, driving traffic and influencing decisions across New England’s creative economy. The accuracy of the data is what attracts partners who count on current, reliable information to make informed cases for investing in creative communities. NEFA and our partners—the six state art agencies, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Barr Foundation, Northeast Indigenous Arts Alliance (NIAA), ArtsHub of Western Massachusetts, MaineTransNet, Mosaic Lowell, Creative County, and New Bedford Creative to name a few—rely on the community to maintain or claim their profiles. 

Claim or Update Your Profile

NEFA has learned from our many years of commissioning Creative Economy studies that any research study begins with the need for a database/list to analyze – CreativeGround is that database for all of New England. While data about some entities are added to the database from public records, we share these public data through the directory, so that it can be updated directly by users, serving our vision for a self-sustainable Network. Feedback from users who search the site and get listed also gets integrated back into the search categories and the profile form. NEFA learns from the data that users add to profiles in the directory, using it to improve how it's coded for research.

This allows New England to be more consistently represented in national creative economy studies, comparisons that are helpful for local advocates. Once the NEA started doing state-level analysis of creative industries through their partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Economic Data (BEA) and the Arts and Culture Satellite Account, NEFA made a strategic shift away from static commissioned reports toward a real-time, inclusive and representative primary data resource accessible to partners for their own integration and analyses. For example, Americans for the Arts licensed the data from CreativeGround to create the starter lists of nonprofits for the New England communities participating in Arts & Economic Prosperity 6. Local leaders and researchers also license the data for a range of analyses that support their advocacy for and with different segments of the New England creative community. The list of people and places can be cross-referenced with other data sets and complemented with direct surveys to help advocates make a specific case relevant to their geography or cause.

Get involved in NEFA’s advocacy efforts

We invite you to join this participatory research effort and add your voice! Get listed or update your profile on CreativeGround to help NEFA create a sustainable, inclusive, and connected New England creative economy that is recognized, supported, well-informed, and connected to each other and the broader creative ecosystem.