The Arts Research for Communities of Color (ARCC) Fellowship was established in 2021 by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), in partnership with The Wallace Foundation, to support research on arts organizations rooted in communities of color in the United States. 

ARCC is part of The Wallace Foundation’s Advancing Well-Being in the Arts initiative, which supports arts organizations working in communities of color as they strengthen their organizational health and long-term sustainability. As part of this effort, the SSRC matched 18 early-career research fellows with the 18 participating organizations with annual budgets of $500,000 or more. The fellows were to document elements of their organizations’ histories or practices that were important to the organizations. This work could then serve as a resource for the organizations while also contributing to research literature related to the arts. Over the course of a year, fellows conducted collaborative research with their partner organizations, followed by six months dedicated to producing a case study and a tailored research-informed deliverable for each organization's use.

ARCC included two cohorts: eleven fellows who began in 2022 and seven who began in 2023. Fellows represented disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and art history. Most fellows held faculty appointments at colleges or universities. The SSRC provided funding, mentoring, regular convenings, and opportunities for fellows across both cohorts to learn from each other’s work.

This report draws on the fellows’ research to identify patterns across cases.