Strategic National Arts Alumni Project

SNAAP is an online survey system to collect, track, and disseminate national data about the artistic lives and careers of alumni who trained as visual, performing, or literary artists at both the high school and college levels. As an ongoing research system, it will allow education institutions, researchers and arts leaders to look at the systemic factors that help or hinder the career paths of alumni, whether they chose to work as artists or pursued other paths. SNAAP will be administered as an annual survey of alumni at specified junctures at 5, 10, 15 and 20 years following their institutionally-based arts training. Once fully operational, SNAAP findings will allow for national and other comparisons and can be disaggregated in various other ways so that institutions can better understand, for example, how students in different majors use their arts training in their careers and other aspects of their lives.

To launch SNAAP, in 2008 the Surdna Foundation provided a five-year $2,500,000 leadership grant to Indiana University in partnership with the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. The Houston Endowment awarded $600,000 over three years, and the Cleveland Foundation granted $100,000 for two years. A foundation that wishes to remain anonymous gave $450,000 over three years. The National Endowment for the Arts committed $60,000 for 2007-2008 with an invitation to submit proposals for additional future funding.

Support from other organizations is anticipated to support the various phases of the project and insure widespread participation. SNAAP is expected to become self-sustaining by 2013 by institutional participation fees.

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Strategic National Arts Alumni Project