The Arts Research with Communities of Color program (ARCC) explores how social science approaches can advance a thriving and more equitable arts field through collaborative empirical research, theory building, and analysis. This program forms part of the Wallace Foundation’s arts initiative centering arts organizations led by and embedded in communities of color in the United States. Through its innovative fellowship program, ARCC will support early-career researchers as they conduct in-depth, mainly qualitative year-long studies with select arts organizations funded by the Wallace Foundation, to document their organizational histories and cultures. 

The program aims to develop a cohort of early-career researchers deeply engaged with the realities of community arts organizations of color, participating in a shared conversation with each other and a broader network of researchers and practitioners. It will also advance new models for collaborative, community-engaged research, and social scientific approaches to the study and practice of the arts.