NEA Research Labs, FY2019

“An organization may submit only one proposal under this program solicitation.”

“This Cooperative Agreement will begin no earlier than March 1, 2019, and extend for up to 24 months.”

Program Description

Our five-year research agenda aims to build public knowledge about the arts’ contributions to individuals and society. Through the NEA Research Labs (“Research Labs”), we seek to extend this agenda and its impact by cultivating a series of transdisciplinary research partnerships, grounded in the social and behavioral sciences, to produce and report empirical insights about the arts for the benefit of arts and non-arts sectors alike.
Each Research Lab will define its own agenda, conduct a research program to implement that agenda, and prepare reports that will contribute substantively to a wider understanding of one of three areas of special interest to the NEA:
1. The Arts, Health, and Social/Emotional Well-Being
a. Therapeutic Approaches and Benefits
b. Non-Therapeutic Approaches and Benefits
2. The Arts, Creativity, Cognition, and Learning
3. The Arts, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation
We anticipate that a sustained engagement with these topic areas, and with the corresponding research questions we frame below, will have distinctive benefits not only for the arts community, but also for sectors such as healthcare, education, and business or management.