Research
Overview
I study issues of public policy and management as they relate to the use of community assets and resources to build public value. Nonprofit and community organizations, such as arts institutions and libraries, produce mission-related benefits while also delivering opportunities for social and economic gains. The COVID-19 pandemic increased public awareness about the community impact of temporarily and permanently closed organizations. As communities move through the effects of the pandemic and the ever-evolving economic landscape, it is critical that individuals working in community development understand 1. the significance of organizational ecology and sustainability, 2. the connections between geography and organizational resources, and 3. commit to the holistic evaluation of placemaking initiatives to measure public value in communities of all types. In this statement, I outline these areas of my research and connect them to the discipline.
1. Organizational ecology and sustainability
The vulnerability of nonprofit arts has been the subject of scholarly exploration for more than half a century with multiple scholarly works (Baumol & Bowen, 1966; Bowen, Nygren, Turner, & Duffy, 1994; Hager, 2000; Hager, Galaskiewicz, Bielefeld, & Pins, 1996; Kaiser, 2015) underscoring the importance of quantitative, longitudinal studies of the nonprofit arts and culture population. I used organizational ecology to quantitatively research the population dynamics of nonprofit arts and culture organizations and evaluate the impact of ecological variations. Organizational ecology uses statistical analyses to understand environmental factors that contribute to the birth, transformation, and death of organizational forms.
My dissertation applied organizational ecology to the nonprofit arts and culture sector to explore how different sub-national funding mechanisms impact population dynamics and thus the sustainability of these organizations. Most public arts agencies rely on legislative appropriations for funding. As such, they are vulnerable to changes in politics and the economy. More than half of US states have incorporated alternative mechanisms to generate additional support for the state arts agency. These include revenue from taxes and fees, lotteries and gaming, license plates, tax check-offs, and public trusts. Using negative binomial regression, I tested the relationship between these different mechanisms and counts of organizational entries (or births) and exits (or deaths) for the period 1990-2004. My analysis revealed that two alternative mechanisms, the use of fees from specialty license plates and public trusts dedicated to the arts, are influential at statistically significant levels. They reduce both the number of exits and entries of nonprofit arts and culture organizations in states where they are used.
I expanded my dissertation data set from 25 to 34 years. The resulting article was published by the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society in 2019 (SJR2019 0.3; JIF H-index 17). I applied additional models to this data, resulting in three published works. First, working with Voss and Aughinbaugh, I contributed a chapter on the influence of public policies on both commercial and non-profit film organizations to a text on film finance in 2018. Second, I examined the influence of entrepreneurship on the population of arts and culture nonprofits (published in Artivate in 2020). Finally, I looked at the impact of catastrophic, natural disasters on the population of nonprofit arts and culture organizations, forthcoming in the Journal of Emergency Management (SJR2019 0.35;JIF H-index 8). The topic is inherently relevant at present, as nonprofits closed at an alarming rate as a result of the pandemic. State and local governments must respond to the impact these closures have on stakeholders.
Publications
Gallagher, B. K. (2021). Sometimes the unthinkable happens: How do natural disasters impact the population of arts and culture nonprofits? Journal of Emergency Management, 19(5), pp. 425-437.
Gallagher, B. K. (2020). The roots of great innovation: Entrepreneurial climate and the sustainability of arts and culture organizations. Artivate, 9(1), https://doi.org/10.34053/artivate.9.1.92.
Gallagher, B. K. (2019). Passing the hat to pay the piper: Alternative mechanisms for publicly funding the arts. Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 50(1), pp. 16-32. DOI: 10.1080/10632921.2019.1664690.
Gallagher, B. K., Aughinbaugh, A., & Voss, Z. (2018). Beyond the studio system: Public support for films in the United States. In Murschetz, P. & Teichmann, R. (Eds.), Film Finance: Theories – Practices – Futures. New York: Springer.
2. Geography and organizational resources
Geography, in addition to organizational characteristics, shapes the resources available to organizations. Attention to the declining conditions and increasing needs of rural communities has increased. Small, local economies have been eroded by the global market and knowledge worker economy. Residents of rural areas are less likely to pursue higher education and more likely to experience poverty. Those with the ability to move have; the young and educated migrate for opportunity leaving rural areas with an ageing population and declining resources. A preponderance of public administration research is rooted in the urban landscape and there has been an increased call to consider non-urban settings. Strategies leveraging the creative industries, placemaking, and tourism have been proposed as opportunities for countering community decline in rural areas, but performance is inherently influenced by access to resources.
In this stream of research, I considered the impact of geography on organizational resources and capacity. In “Arts at the intersection,” published in Public Performance Management Review in 2019 (SJR 2019 0.91; JIF H-index 20), my co-author and I present the case of creative placemaking efforts in a small, midwestern city serving a diverse, geographically dispersed population. The qualitative analysis contributes to the limited body of work on collaboration in small and medium cities and illustrates community challenges to cross-sector collaboration. Building on findings from the case study, I led three additional projects and co-led a fourth. First, I considered the potential of libraries to partner in rural creative placemaking initiatives. This manuscript was published in Journal of Rural and Community Development (2020). Next, I examined indicators of organizational capacity across geographic dimensions. The resulting article was published in the International Journal of Arts Management (2021, SJR 2019 0.46; JIF H-Index 11). Third, I prepared a book chapter (2021) dissecting the juncture of geography and state designation of cultural districts. Fourth, I co-edited a special issue of Local Development and Society dedicated to the use of arts initiatives to support community development.
Implications of organizational access to resources and the sustainability of cultural venues is not a new phenomenon. I was given the opportunity to provide commentary for a documentary film, “Rising: The Hall of Negro Life.” In my research and preparation to provide commentary, the importance of access to financial, political, and social capital was evident in the creation of the Negro Hall of Life, as well as its closure at the end of the Texas Centennial.
Publications
Hersey, L. N. and Gallagher, B. K. (Forthcoming). Special issue: Supporting community development through the arts (Editorial). Local Development & Society, https://doi.org/10.1080/26883597.2022.2085896.
Gallagher, B. K. (2021). Death and life: The promise and problems of arts in rural communities. International Journal of Arts Management, 23 (2), pp. 30-42.
Gallagher, B. K. (2021). Cultural districts on the horizon: The intersection of policy and practice outside of metropolitan centers. In Bobick, B. & Hersey, L. (Eds.), Engagement in the City: How Arts and Culture Encourage Development in Urban Areas. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Gallagher, B. K. and Ehlman, M. P. (2020). When in doubt, go to the library? Libraries and rural creative placemaking. Journal of Rural and Community Development, 15 (2), pp. 95-113.
Gallagher, B. K. and Ehlman, M. P. (2019). Arts at the intersection: Cross-sector collaboration and creative placemaking in Rapid City, SD. Public Performance & Management Review, 42(6), pp. 1333-1350. DOI 10.1080/15309576.2019.1601113
Documentary film commentary
Gallagher, B. K., Contributor. (2022). “Rising: The Hall of Negro Life.” Southbroad Pictures. (Premiered on Dallas PBS Station KERA on March 25, 2022.) Sizzle Reel: https://vimeo.com/578568423
3. Evaluation of placemaking initiatives
Evolving from my work on organizational ecology, sustainability, geography and access to resources, I am now leading a collaborative project to develop a holistic approach to evaluating the public value of placemaking projects. Placemaking is a bottom-up, collective approach to reinventing public spaces in communities and neighborhoods of all sizes (Ellery & Ellery, 2019; Markusen & Gadwa, 2010; National Endowment for the Arts, 2021; Redaelli, 2018). Placemaking projects can provide numerous intrinsic and instrumental benefits including, but not limited to, economic impact, community revitalization, attraction of the creative class and cultural tourists, educational benefits, social healing and cohesion, increased tolerance, preservation of heritage and history, and civic engagement (Florida, 2004; Markusen & Gadwa, 2010). Popularity of these projects has resulted in a proliferation of placemaking initiativesunderwritten by a variety of government agencies, nonprofits, and private foundations. Variations in policies, communities, and project goals resisted establishment of common or universal performance indicators. With more than 300 state-designated cultural districts, over 1,200 National Trust for Historic Preservation Main Street Communities, and an excess of 500 Our Town grants provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the population warrants establishing a holistic, multi-dimensional set of performance indicators to assess performance of placemaking initiatives. My current projects explore evaluation practices and indicators of interest (economic, diversity/equity/inclusivity of governance, and other indicators of public value) in order to develop a multi-dimensional dashboard that will benefit individual communities while facilitating comprehensive research on placemaking.
Publication
Hersey, L. N. and Gallagher, B. K. (Forthcoming). Examining the “specialness” of cultural districts. Public Administration Quarterly.
Conference Presentations
Gallagher, B. K., Hersey, L. N., Turrini, A. and Patterson, D. (Accepted for Dec. 14-17, 2022). “What are the benefits of creative placemaking?: The evaluation practices and performance indicators used. The Conference on Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts 2022, Seoul, South Korea.
Rushton-Reed, L. and Gallagher, B. K. (Accepted for Dec. 14-17, 2022). “Policy without funding is poetry: Specialty funding in cultural policy.” The Conference on Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts 2022, Seoul, South Korea.
Hersey, L. N. and Gallagher, B. K. (Accepted for Nov. 17-19, 2022). “Do we know it’s working? A survey of approaches to and evaluation of placemaking programs.” ARNOVA 2022, Raleigh, NC.
Gallagher, B. K., Turrini, A., Luchetti, M. and Wright, N.S. (Accepted for Nov. 17-19, 2022). By the people and for the people: Diversity, equity, and inclusion in cultural district governance. ARNOVA 2022, Raleigh, NC.
Turrini, A., Luchetti, M., Gallagher, B. K., Wright, N., Rurale, A., Baca, J. (June 2022). “Exploring ethnic diversity in collaborative arrangements: The case of Texas cultural districts.” AIMAC 2022, Mexico City, Mexico.
Hersey, L. N. and Gallagher, B. K. (April 12-14, 2022). “Urban Public Libraries: Meeting the Needs of the Community.” Conference of the Urban Affairs Association, Washington, DC.
Hersey, L. N. and Gallagher, B. K. (April 8-10, 2022). “The Scholarship of Cultural Districts: A Systematic Literature Review.” Midwest Political Science Association conference, Chicago, IL.
Turrini, A., Wright, N., Gallagher, B. K., Lucheti, M., and Baca, J. (April 8-10, 2022). “Diversity and Decentralization: An Assessment of Inclusion and Representation in the Governance of Cultural Districts.” Midwest Political Science Association Conference, Chicago, IL.
Turrini, A., Lucheti, M., Gallagher, B. K., Wright, N., and Baca, J. (January 2022). “Numerous and indefinite: Does a decentralized cultural policy system support inclusion and representation?” Presented at conference of the Southern Political Science Association, San Antonio, TX.