Seattle's Creative Vitality Index

First of all, apologies for not posting sooner. I was coding a major project and that took up most of my time.

However, since my last post on measuring the economic impact of the arts or how well an art house 'serves' the community I went looking for any similar measurement. The Seattle Arts Commission has a measurement, called the Creative Vitality Index. While this index does not strictly measure the 'well-being' an art house imparts to its community (it bills itself as measure of the health of the creative economy), I think it deserves mention.

The Creative Vitality Index draws its data from 3 sources: the Dept of Labor; the 990 and 990 EZ forms filed by non-profits; Claritas, a database of consumer and b-2-b marketing. The index has 2 components: 60% is community participation and 40% occupation. In looking at the sub-index for community participation, music store sales and photography sales are included (are internet sales included in this figure?). Baseline score is 1, above is stronger than average and vice versa.

Although this index measures the arts in a community more generally, kudos to the commission for making inroads in quantifying the arts community.

I think, then that the Arts Development Index I proposed would still qualify as a measurement on the 'well-being' a community specifically receives from an arts house.