Introduction to special issue

Return to Impact: A Process of Imagining

Abstract

In the first of this double issue, we grounded the collection in Mass Culture’s Research in Residence: Arts’ Civic Impact (RinR) project. Aimed at creating a suite of impact measurement frameworks for arts organizations to assess where and how their work has impact, the SSHRC- and Mitacs-funded project embedded four individual graduate student researchers and one team of two graduate students—all from different post-secondary institutions—in arts organizations across the country. Also supported by a group of arts funders comprising an advisory, this first-of-its-kind initiative has had impressive impacts of its own in both the academic and culture sector spheres. Since publishing our first collection of articles, the landscape has changed. RinR’s graduate student researchers have all moved on in some way, be it finishing a master’s degree and starting a doctorate, finishing a doctorate and moving into a post-doctoral fellowship, finishing graduate school and working within an academic institution, and even continuing with their studies while starting a family. Other people involved in RinR have likewise changed jobs or even left the arts sector or academia altogether. Assembling this second issue has afforded us, the co-editors, some very welcome reflection on the project, the relationships we built through it, and how it continues to shape both our individual careers and perspectives on the arts’ civic impact.