Approach IV

Approach IV for The Big Canvas Issue Guide
Foster Quality of Communication

This choice stresses that people don’t experience arts and culture in isolation, but in the context of their daily lives. People don’t live according to the line items of government budgets; they don’t live in institutional silos. They live in communities where they seek a good quality of life.

In forums, citizens said again and again that they view arts and culture as important pieces of what makes their community what it is, as a crucial element of their quality of life. They view their lives holistically.

Arts and culture are interwoven with other goals they value: open space, natural beauty, peaceful streets, vibrant neighborhoods.

They don’t view arts and culture as a distinct sector in the way those who work in the field tend to do.

They see it as part of a life lived well in a community that works. For many, arts and culture have a broad definition, from sylvan parks to historic houses to the corner library to domestic activities that bring them meaning and pleasure: cooking, gardening, scrap booking, home decorating.

Given that, supporters of this choice argue, arts and culture should be viewed as a key piece of the larger quest for healthy communities and good quality of life. They note that city residents are somewhat more likely to talk in terms of community (a shared value) while suburbanites speak more readily of quality of life (a more individual value).

This approach argues in favor of interweaving those two strands, community building and quality of life, into a single strategy that would appeal to both suburbanite and city dweller. This strategy wants to show each group that goals they might regard as separate or competing are really two sides of the same coin.

The arts can help battle crime, community tension and social isolation, while helping to promote “green values” and curb the ugliness of sprawl. (Good design is part of arts and culture.) The arts also can help people on each side of local divides experience the diversity of the region in favorable ways. All of this helps nurture communities that enhance quality of life.

HOW TO RAISE MONEY FOR THESE GOALS:
Create a Quality Community Fund, fed by all five counties of southeastern Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware and Chester). This would fund initiatives to enhance community quality of life throughout the region, with a focus on the role of arts and culture.

In this concept, arts and culture would be construed broadly to include things such as libraries, parks, historic sites, ethnic heritage and domestic arts. Each county’s contribution would be based on a formula considering population and wealth; each county could decide for itself how to raise the contribution. Counties that already have open-space funds might consider whether to incorporate those funds into the new Quality Community initiative.

SUPPORTERS TEND TO FAVOR THESE ACTIONS:
■ Make challenge grants to arts and culture organizations to perform outreach that crosses boundaries of geography, race, class and income.
■ Invest to create art colonies in neighborhoods where such projects could tip the area in favorable directions (as happened, for example, in Northern Liberties and Doylestown). These colonies could include studios, performance spaces, community centers and artists’ housing.
■ Broker and support arrangements through which community-based groups staging their signature events get to use the performance or exhibit spaces of major arts organizations, paying minimal rental fees.
■ Create regional alliances of entities such as historic sites or community arts centers, along the lines of the Theatre Alliance.
■ Give planning grants and operating support to community-based programs that show success at using the arts to combat problems such as truancy, crime, prejudice and social isolation.
■ Find ways to bring art into communities in surprising ways e.g. mass-transit performances, Philly Van Go, the British National Gallery’s Grand Tour program, art shows and poetry recitals in medical buildings, etc.
■ Promote grassroots festivals, bringing attention and audience to diverse, community-based artists.
■ Support programs that reach out to ethnic and immigrant groups by linking their native arts traditions (including domestic arts such as cooking and weaving) into the broader arts scene in the region.

ARGUMENTS FOR THIS APPROACH:
✓ Open-space referendums in three of the four counties surrounding Philadelphia have demonstrated that suburban taxpayers will vote to tax themselves to further a goal they see as having clear impact on their quality of life.
✓ In citizen forums, participants repeatedly said they saw arts and culture as a sector complementary to other goals such as open space, crime prevention, community development and education.
✓ It makes the most sense to use any regional fund to support artists and programs that build community from the ground up, but wouldn’t get support from large foundations and corporations.
✓ Other regions have generated tremendous excitement about the arts by bringing them to people where they live in innovative ways.
✓ Artists are often a harbinger of renewed vitality and rising property values in a neighborhood, so it makes sense to offer them incentives to move into areas ready for such a boost.
✓ The arts are an avenue to invite immigrant or isolated ethnic groups into the broader community culture, while helping long-time residents see newcomers in a positive light.
✓ This approach gets at the intimidation/snobbery factor that inhibits participation by recognizing that every person is artistic in his/her own way.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THIS APPROACH:
✗ It’s so broad and touchy-feely. It provides little guidance on how to allocate funds, measure results, or hold fund recipients accountable.
✗ Artists get very impressed by the Bohemian gloss that they think they offer to struggling neighborhoods. But all that does is obscure the persistent economic problems affecting long-term residents. The more artists move into a neighborhood (e.g. Northern Liberties), the more likely lifelong residents will be driven out by speculators and gentrification.
✗ Grassroots efforts would need a lot of outside help just to compete for grants form this fund, then more help on how to spend the money wisely.
✗ Sprinkling money into various communities across the region might produce some nice local successes, but they won’t cohere into a regional impact.
✗ It’s nice to dream of suburbanites and city residents singing “Kumbahyah” around the arts campfire, but it’ll never happen.
✗ This “Quality Community” idea dilutes the arts, mingling them with so many other goals and activities that they’ll get lost in the shuffle.
✗ Money from this fund will inevitably be handed out according to political connections and political correctness.

(Illustration by Tim Ogline. Photo of the Bryn Mawr Theater.)