Overview

Overview for The Big Canvas Issue Guide

Ask someone from the Philadelphia region what they like about living around here, and a frequent response stands out: There’s such a wealth of things to do.

For some, sports are at the heart of that, or recreation. But for many, many people, this sense of richness flows out of concerts, festivals, plays, museums, historic sites, parks and libraries. All of these form a cornucopia called arts and culture.
The phrase brings to mind the tap of the maestro’s baton at Verizon Hall or the eager burble of opening night at People’s Light or Arden theaters.

But it can also mean a brassy Sousa march on a summer night at the township park or the excited cries of third-graders just back from dance class at the arts center. It can mean a community painting day sponsored by the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program or a cooking class at an ethnic culture center.

In Philadelphia, the true cradle of liberty, it also means history, the wonderful, world-changing stories embedded in our bricks and singing from our trees.

Around here, arts and culture create a big and varied canvas. That picture includes not only the big-ticket organizations that are known as far away as Berlin or Beijing but also the quiet, indispensable programs that serve just one neighborhood or town.

There’s just so much going on. Between performances, exhibits, film showings, lectures and classes, more than 37,000 events are offered a year. To keep up with all of it, you’d have to attend more than 100 events a day.

At Big Canvas forums held this summer, more than 300 participants testified enthusiastically to the many uses to which they put the region’s arts and culture assets, and the deep, rich value they derive from those experiences. One survey has found that 83 percent of the region’s  residents attended an arts or culture event in the last year – 12 million annual visits in all.

Forum participants noted that the users of arts and culture span all ages, classes and counties. They cited uses extending beyond enjoyment and spiritual enrichment, such as therapy, community building, employee recruitment, and the fight against social problems.

They talked about the benefits that arts and culture bring and the values they nurture. The values ranged from the intensely spiritual to the relentlessly practical. Among the themes heard again and again about the arts and culture experience:

■ “It helps me feel alive.”
■ “It connects us to other cultures, and other places and times.”
■ “It provides an escape from the everyday.”
■ “Educates the whole person, right brain and left.”
■ “Makes us more civilized.”
■ “Builds personal and community identity.”
■ “Employs creative people.”
■ “Attracts tourism and employers.”
■ “A source of pride, a calling card for our region.”
■ “Life would be pretty darn dull without it.”

The economic impacts of arts and culture are not to be ignored. The Cultural Alliance of Greater Philadelphia has reviewed them in several recent studies.

Some key findings: The region’s nonprofit arts and culture sector accounts for $1.3 billion in spending annually, including audience spending on things like meals and hotels. The sector employs 21,000 people directly, and an additional 19,000 indirectly (i.e. from the spin-off effects of direct spending). Spending in the arts and culture sector generates $158.5 million in state and local taxes.

Sounds like a beautiful picture, right? Lots of things to do, with lots of people taking part, deriving both spiritual and economic benefit. So what’s the problem? What’s there to worry or talk about? Well, inside this bustling picture, all is not well. Participants in forums also talked in depth about the barriers they see to all the uses and values that they extolled. Those conversations produced every bit as much energy and detail as the happier ones. Among the issues:

HIGH COST, LOW ACCESS: Throughout Philadelphia, the average price for a cultural event ticket, about $20, compares well with the figures in other East Coast cities. That is, many noted, far less than the average professional sports ticket.
Still, many citizens said, when the full cost of attendance – including transportation and parking – is factored in, it’s a tough go for many in an economically stagnant region with a lot of working-class residents. Access, many participants noted, is about far more than cost. Nearly everyone complained that the region’s mass-transit systems do not serve the needs of the arts patron at all well; they don’t connect to the right places at the right times.

Also much discussed were subtle issues of race, class and snobbery. A common feeling was that many people don’t sample arts experiences that they might savor if they got the chance. People stay away out of fears about being looked down upon, not fitting in, not knowing what to wear or how to behave, or fearing that the art would be harder to understand than it really is. Similarly, fans of traditionally high-brow venues sometimes have no clue about the diverse cultural offerings elsewhere on the regional spectrum.

A CONFUSION OF RICHES: A frequent comment at forums was: “There’s almost too much to do; it’s too hard to keep track.” As a result, people miss out on events they would have enjoyed. Performances play to empty seats or exhibits sit in lonely galleries. Despite the best efforts of organizations such as the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. and the Cultural Alliance, many residents said they felt the lack of a single, easy-to-use regional clearinghouse for information about the arts. Listings and reviews by the traditional news media have sharply fallen off, they said. Online resources are too scattered, too little known, or intimidating to older residents. Among suburban residents, a strong complaint was voiced that marketing and information focused too much on big-name city venues, at the expense of very fine suburban organizations closer to their homes.

KIDS LEFT OUT: Cuts to arts and music education in Philadelphia public schools frustrate and frighten many city residents. Money woes have not been so severe in most suburban schools. Even out there, though, many observers claim that the testing focus of the No Child Left Behind Act has undermined arts education, as schools target time and resources only to subjects covered on the tests. Arts and music too often are viewed as “frills” ready for the scalpel when budgets are tight. Now, rising gas prices raise fears that the school field trip to the museum, the orchestra or the zoo might become a thing of the past.

Kids account for almost two out of every five visits to cultural organizations in this region, but people who work in the sector worry that a) an ever-growing percentage will be made up of children from affluent areas, as other children get left behind in a tight economy and b) youth education programs, while popular, put a huge strain on arts organizations, without bringing in compensating income.

THE STRAINS OF MAINTAINING EXCELLENCE: For those who work in the arts and culture sector, money woes weigh heavily. Many of the institutions that preserve and present the region’s arts, culture and history are cash-poor. They struggle to survive from year to year. Energy that should go toward creating art or building community goes to the dollar chase. A 2006 Cultural Alliance study found that nearly half of the region’s cultural organizations operate at a deficit. Many organizations depend heavily or entirely on volunteers, but the supply of willing hands is limited and huge burdens usually fall upon a dedicated few. As ripples from the troubled national economy wash over this already fragile region, worry grows that the squeeze on ticket revenues and donations will increase.

Earned income – ticket sales, subscriptions, merchandise sales, ads, etc. – accounted for about half of $573 million in revenues for the 218 cultural organizations the Cultural Alliance surveyed. The other half came from contributions. Individuals are far and away the biggest source of contributed revenue (16 percent of all revenue). Corporate contributions, by contrast, account for only 2 percent of total revenue. Business support for the arts is declining nationally; Philadelphia’s situation is compounded by its lack of corporate headquarters.

Foundations are generous locally, providing 14 percent of total revenue, but that money is often earmarked for special programs. Meanwhile, the slice of revenue from government sources is small, 9 percent, with a puny 3 percent (roughly $18 million) coming from local governments. Of that, the vast majority comes from the city of Philadelphia. Suburban counties contribute only about $2 million to support arts and culture, though the figure in Bucks should rise now that county commissioners recently dedicated a portion of hotel tax revenues to this cause.

That is a sharp contrast with some other metropolitan regions, where local government support of the sector ranges from 5 to 10 percent of total arts and culture revenues. This includes places whose cultural assets, while significant, do not approach Philadelphia’s in world renown or economic pop.

Pittsburgh, Denver and Cleveland are three examples of regions that have earmarked taxes for a fund
whose purposes include support of arts and culture. Each works slightly differently:

■ THE ALLEGHENY REGIONAL ASSETS DISTRICT covers the entire county in which Pittsburgh lies. A state law passed in 1994 gives the county the right to levy a 1 percent sales tax on top of the regular 6 percent state tax. Half of the revenues from that go directly to counties and municipalities for their regular needs. The other half – about $83.4 million this year – is distributed by the Regional Assets District as grants. Of that, 31 percent goes to libraries, 28 percent to parks, 10 percent to “regional facilities” such as the zoo, and 10 percent to arts and culture organizations. The rest pays for stadiums and arenas. Those who backed the idea in the ’90s consciously tried to expand the possible uses for the fund, to broaden the constituency needed to approve the idea.
■ THE SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL FACILITIES DISTRICT covers seven counties in the Denver region. Begun in 1989, this program was reauthorized in a 2004 referendum with 65 percent support. The district administers a fund to support institutions that promote either the arts or science, which is fed by a sales tax surcharge of one-tenth of a percent everywhere in the seven counties. The fund distributed about $40 million last year. The majority of the money goes to a small group of major regional arts or science institutions, with the rest reserved for smaller grants to a wide variety of local arts or science programs.
■ CUYAHOGA COUNTY, which is part of the Cleveland area, in 2006 approved a 3 cents per cigarette tax to feed a Cuyahoga Arts and Culture fund. The tax is expected to generate $17 million to $20 million a year. Qualifying cultural organizations have received receive operating grants as large as $1.8 million.

The Philadelphia region has talked for 20 years about coming up with a similar strategy to put its cultural organizations on sounder fiscal footing. A bid to emulate Allegheny County by going the regional sales-tax route found a legislative champion in the mid-1990s in former state Sen. Earl Baker of Chester County. But the effort, which was mostly a dialogue among political and cultural leaders, fell apart over disputes on how to divvy up the money. Another big obstacle was the reluctance of Philadelphia, fighting its way out of bankruptcy under then-Mayor Ed Rendell, to give up any of its sales tax revenues to this regional cause. After that, the idea of a “culture fund” became a sort of third rail of local politics. For a long time, even ardent culture advocates were afraid to bring up the idea.

But in that time, assets such as the Avenue of the Arts have flowered. History and culture became the heart of the city’s very successful tourism economy. A new administration in Philadelphia City Hall now seems far more interested in outreach and cooperation with suburban counties, and so far has more credibility to do so. The Cultural Alliance has worked hard to generate meaningful data to support the case for enhanced support of arts and culture.

The alliance has suggested a number, $60 million a year, for a fund that would adequately support the region’s cultural assets. (For context, Philadelphia’s 1 percent sales and use tax generates $135 million a year; the four suburban counties levy no sales tax and would need state approval to do so.) Are the region’s residents and taxpayers interested in supporting such an ambitious initiative? The only way to find out what citizens are willing to do is to ask them – in a fair, thorough, broad, welcoming dialogue.

The Big Canvas, an initiative of the Great Expectations project, is a beginning on that dialogue.
The Big Canvas’ goal is to kick-start a truly regional public conversation, one that tries to develop an arts and culture strategy based on the public’s views, values, goals and ideas, expressed in the public’s language.

The Arts and Culture Issue Framework distills input and ideas from the five Big Canvas forums held in July. The framework offers four distinct possible approaches to a regional arts and culture strategy. Each assumes some kind of increased regional support is a good idea. Each makes the case for such support in a different way, though, and would spend that money in pursuit of different goals. We hope that, by talking through the framework with others, you can get a firmer sense of just what steps you’re willing to support.

We hope this guide helps you have lively, useful conversations – whether you do it at a Big Canvas forum or over the back fence with neighbors. The goal is to find out what the public – if informed on the basic facts, aware of practical limits, but aiming for important goals – will or will not support in an arts andculture strategy.

The results should provide useful, compelling guidance to the region’s political and cultural leaders on how to preserve and enhance this vital piece of our community life.

(Photos from the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the Mercer Museum Folk Fest, and the Musicopia youth program.)