Maine Arts Commission News

The New England Cultural Database: Cutting Edge Tool Allows Data Sharing Among Arts Groups

The arts community in Maine - and throughout New England - is continuously looking for effective ways of promoting their artists and art projects. Oftentimes, funding and staff issues make it imperative organizations work wisely and collaboratively to share information and research about their projects and campaigns.

The development of the New England Cultural Database (NECD) goes a long way towards this end. The database is an online data warehouse containing financial, demographic, geographic and other related information about businesses, cultural organizations and individual artists throughout Maine and New England. This comprehensive information gathering tool allows the compilation of various means of data that can be shared among various state arts agencies, members of the cultural community, industry groups, researchers and the general public. Building on the New England Foundation for the Arts' (NEFA) previous work in cultural mapping, all information in the database is geographically coded to allow searches by location and support a variety of analyses based on geographic area.

Prior to the development of the NECD, this information had no storage home and necessitated the kind of duplication of effort that can be fatal to small arts groups and other similar organizations. With its development, the database becomes a cutting-edge means of data sharing which other groups from all over the country will want to know more about. The recognition of this is evident according to Bryan W. Knicely, assistant director and accessibility coordinator for the Maine Arts Commission.

"The New England Cultural Database will be the leader in the nation as far as online and current census-type data for artists and cultural organizations to have access to and use as a resource. It will also be a tool in defining the Creative Economy by putting numbers to research and theory about what really exists in our cultural and creative communities, not only in Maine, but in all of New England."

According to Aria Goldenbaum, communications and research manager for NEFA, "The development of the NECD was rather fortuitous. While it was being developed, the Internal Revenue Service released digitized Form 990 data, which allowed us to compile this information in the database. Now it is possible to access nonprofit organizations by financial records in a way that was never possible before. It also allows us to comprehensively house the various economic impact studies that have been done on the Creative Economy."

The economic impact studies have been conducted every five years or so and document information about the nonprofit cultural sector, support various advocacy initiatives and give cultural groups and organizations data they need in making their cases to various governmental agencies.

The database will unfold in stages throughout 2004-2006. Currently, the NECD houses over 18,000 records and will eventually represent all of New England's Creative Economy, by expanding to hold a comprehensive set of records such as for-profit creative industry businesses, nonprofit cultural organizations and individual artists.

The NECD will serve as a back end to NEFA's developing Online Cultural Marketplace, a transaction-based online booking service that allows New England artists to market their products and interact directly with presenters.

For additional information on the NECD, you can visit the New England Arts web site at www.newenglandarts.org.

The US Regional Arts Organizations are six nonprofit entities created to encourage development of the arts and to support arts programs on a regional basis. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, these organizations, which include Arts Midwest, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, Southern Arts Federation and Western States Arts Federation, provide technical assistance to their member state arts agencies, support and promote artists and arts organizations and develop and manage arts initiatives on local, regional, national and international levels.