In other words, the arts can yield civic engagement and social capital, sometimes while addressing pressing social concerns. The charrette focused the group s attention on how best to deepen the social capital impact of the Hallelujah Project. It is one thing to calculate economic impact, but social effects such as trust and reciprocity are less quantifiable. While considerable data has measured social capital at the state or national level, some are skeptical of measuring the social capital impact of specific programs, artistic or otherwise. Despite the difficulty of tracing long-term programmatic impact, examples do suggest that the arts indeed have an impact on civic engagement.
Artists vote at higher rates than the general public.
And it has been widely reported that youth participation in non-school arts programs leads to increased academic and civic achievements. Shirley Brice Heath's research on the arts as a means of increasing the social capital of at-risk youth shows that these artists perform community service and participate in youth groups roughly four times as often as their peers. These youth are also three times as likely to take other music, arts and dance classes. And specific results have been obtained in relation to creative-writing residencies in prisons, as conducted by Grady Hillman in more than 50 centers since 1981. These programs enable prisoners to develop self-understanding and interpersonal skills through a process that builds trust and understanding.