Arts & Culture

Arts and culture define a community and celebrate its diversity by touching and inspiring us individually and collectively. As a sector, the arts are backbones to thriving economies. OMG’s 30 years of experience in arts and cultural investments includes work that demonstrates the value of the arts in 21st century economies, the contribution of community arts projects to all aspects of community building, and the role of the arts in a high quality public education. As researchers and strategists, evaluators, and capacity-builders for single programs, foundation portfolios, and national change agendas, OMG’s work in the arts has underpinned innovative, scaled up programming. It has created shared regional arts education agendas, advanced national arts education policy, supported exciting experiments in local cultural identity, and increased the organizational and leadership strength of arts organizations to deliver quality arts programming.

Arts for Youth Assessment for the William Penn Foundation
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OMG performed a community-wide needs assessment of arts education programming in Philadelphia to inform program design and implementation of the Arts for Youth initiative -- an effort to build a sustainable arts education delivery system in Greater Philadelphia. As part of this work, OMG collaborated with members of six committees to develop and field a request for proposals (RFPs) to choose an organization to manage Arts for Youth; create a framework for Art for Youth’s implementation; and formulate a 10-year vision for this initiative.
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Mural Arts Program
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OMG led a strategic planning process with the Mural Arts Program as it entered its eleventh year of operations in Philadelphia. Working closely with a strategic planning advisory committee comprised of Mural Arts Program board members and staff, OMG conducted 30 interviews, analyzed financials, and facilitated a retreat to inform the organization’s future strategy. Goals were established to increase program integration and build organizational systems for adaptability and sustainability. OMG also detailed strategic objectives, developed an action plan, and formulated an organizational theory of change for this program’s next five years.
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Market Demand Studies and Business Planning
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OMG conducted a market demand study and business plan for the Surdna National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). SNAAP is a visually engaging online survey system to collect, track, and disseminate national data about the artistic contributions of alumni who have trained at arts high schools, arts and design colleges, and conservatories whether or not they have chosen artistic career pathways. With overwhelming evidence of the need for this data, the business plan effectively identified a lead management team and successfully launched the new survey entity.
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Ford Foundation's Arts Education Initiative
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OMG evaluated the Ford Foundation’s Arts Education Initiative, which intended to build sustainable local partnerships in support of integrated arts education. The grantees used ongoing feedback to strengthen multi-stakeholder partnerships and strategic communications in their work to strengthen arts-integration school programs. In addition to leading program-wide and site-specific evaluation and theory of change work, the OMG team has developed a field-oriented theory of change paper to advance arts education systems-building.
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Chicago Community Trust's Chicago Arts Initiative
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OMG evaluated a five-year initiative sponsored by the Chicago Community Trust to demonstrate successful approaches to delivering quality and sequential arts education in the four arts disciplines in the Chicago Pubic Schools. Eighteen kindergarten through eighth grade schools participated in the demonstration. The evaluation was both formative and summative, and began with theory of change work. OMG’s research focused on the impact of an arts education curricula on administrators, students, teaching practices, other schools, and the policies of the Chicago Public School system.
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The Heinz Endowment’s Arts and Culture Program
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Through grantee interviews, strategic plan reviews, and financial data analysis, OMG evaluated the progress of the second phase of The Heinz Endowment’s core operating and support program for its Arts and Culture program. Recommendations from the evaluation were incorporated into the program’s redesign.
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Youth Artworks
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For Youth Artworks, a program supported by The Heinz Endowments and Youthworks that helps local arts organizations provide work experience to youth, OMG conducted an evaluation planning process that included the development of a theory of change and an appropriate set of short-term outcomes. OMG also conducted a formative evaluation of the program’s start-up and its RFP process, and assisted the program team by creating a user-friendly data collection plan.
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Multi-Cultural Arts Initiative for the Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments
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This evaluation focused on assessing how joint foundation support strengthened multi-cultural arts in Pittsburgh, and offered recommendations for how the foundations might better work together to support this effort.
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