Current Team: Dennie Palmer Wolf, Steven Holochwost, Kathleen Hill, Aleksandra Kazakova, Anusha Mohan, Tess Kelley, Claire Pavlik Purgus
In 2018, Bloomberg Philanthropies first engaged WolfBrown as the evaluator of its Bloomberg Arts Internship (BAI) program, an arts program for high school students in cities across the U. S.: New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Boston. In 2024, the BAI program expanded to include high schools in Detroit and New Orleans and will also open the program up to college students in all seven cities.
The expansion of BAI to two new cities is fueled by the success of the program to date. Program evaluator WolfBrown has found that internship alumni are improving their writing proficiency and enrolling in college at rates higher than the national average. This demonstrates that BAI offers not only sector-specific work experience, but also trains interns in transferrable skills, like oral and written communication, that place them on the path to college.
To evaluate the experiences of participants, WolfBrown designed a comprehensive mixed-methods evaluation to identify both the short- and long-term effects of program participation. Short-term effects are measured using a randomized control design featuring quantitative measures, student work samples, along with program observations and interviews. A longitudinal component of the evaluation follows program alumni to see what impacts persist in their educational, professional, and cultural lives. Additionally, WolfBrown facilitates peer-to-peer learning between cities to transform local innovations into national approaches.
In light of the growing recognition that arts and cultural institutions owe their communities programming which prioritizes inclusion and belonging, the BAI program encourages cultural institutions to engage with diverse youth, staff, and audiences. In that work, nothing is more important than opening doors and providing pathways to the next generation of cultural consumers, producers, and administrators.
Learn more: