New Report: Aligning Arts Programs with Community Values

If you’ve ever felt caught between what your programs require and what your communities truly value, you’re not alone. A new report from the Oregon Folklife Network, Finding Shared Values: Methods for Aligning Cultural Management with Practitioners, illuminates a way forward. 

Prepared in partnership with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (NYC) and Texas Folklife, and supported by Live Oak Consulting, Creative West and the National Endowment for the Arts, the report offers a replicable, community-engaged model that helps cultural managers surface the values deeply embedded in their own programs, then align policies, applications, and evaluation approaches with what genuinely sustains cultural practice. 

Folk and traditional arts have long supported the communities facing the greatest barriers to resources – yet the tools we use to fund and evaluate that work don’t always reflect what culture bearers hold dear. This report aims to close that gap. 

Whether you’re a cultural manager, state arts agency, folklorist, or funder, this report offers a shared language for programs across the region.