9:00 a.m – Opening Remarks and introductions

Joan Shigekawa, NEA Senior Deputy Chairman and Sunil Iyengar, NEA Director of Research & Analysis

9:30 – Panel One: What We Know About Artists and How We Know It

• NEA Research on Artists in the Workforce
  Tom Bradshaw, NEA Research Officer
• Artist Labor Markets
  Greg Wassall, associate professor, Department of Economics, Northeastern University
• Artist Careers
  Joan Jeffri, director, Research Center for Arts and Culture, Teachers College, Columbia University
• Artist Research: Union Perspectives
  David Cohen, executive director, Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO

11:00 – Panel Two: Putting the Research to Work

• Cultural Vitality: Investing in Creativity
  Maria Rosario Jackson, senior research associate, The Urban Institute
• Artists and the Economic Recession
  Judilee Reed, executive director, Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC)
• Teaching Artists Research Project
  Nick Rabkin, Teaching Artists Research Project, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago
• Strategic National Arts Alumni Project
  Steven Tepper, associate director, the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, Vanderbilt University

1:20 – Panel Three: Widening the Lens to Capture Other Cultural Workers

• Artists in the Greater Cultural Economy
  Ann Markusen, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
• Creative Class: Who’s in, Who’s out?
  Tom Bradshaw, NEA Research Officer
• American Community Survey: An Emerging Data Set
  Jennifer Day, assistant division chief, Employment Characteristics of the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, United States Census Bureau

2:20 – Comments and questions from panel participants   

3:00 – Discussion: Summary and Recommendations for Future Research

Moderated by Sunil Iyengar and Tom Bradshaw

Lead discussants: Holly Sidford, president, Helicon Collaborative and Paul DiMaggio, professor, Department of Sociology, Princeton University

4:30 – Adjournment

N.B. There will be 15-minute breaks at 10:45 a.m. and 2:50 p.m.; and an hour break for lunch at 12:15 p.m.

In addition to the above presenters, the NEA Cultural Workforce Forum included the following respondents:

• Randy Cohen, vice president of local arts advancement, Americans for the Arts
• Deirdre Gaquin, consultant
• Angela Han, director of research, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
• Ruby Lerner, president, Creative Capital Foundation
• Judilee Reed, executive director, Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC)
• Carrie Sandahl, associate professor, Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Mary Jo Waits, director, Social, Economic & Workforce Programs Division, National Governors Association

An archive of the event will be available on www.arts.gov during the week of November 23rd.