Plymouth Meeting - Group One

The Big Canvas - Oct. 21, 2008

The group was comprised of 12 individuals, with three men and nine women.  Three of the participants were younger than 30 years old, one could be identified as African American, and all but two or three were directly involved in the arts or an arts or cultural institution.  Most in the group were engaged, though two spoke only after being prompted.

In general, the group was focused on two main themes — making sure people know what there is to do and how to get there, and combining outreach and “in-reach” when crafting an action plan.  In the first case, they believed that there are many things already being done or offered but that people don’t know about it.  In their opinion, this was due largely to the unbalanced coverage given to the arts, especially for smaller institutions or groups.  They also wanted to stress that organizations, whether museums or schools, should be better able to reach out into the surrounding communities and beyond, but also work to pull in people (“in-reach”), especially young people, from communities that may be lacking in arts and culture activities.

The majority of the group was most impressed with Approach 3, though there were a few members who wanted to see Approach 4 put into action.  The debate was mostly about making sure the plans are spread across the region, not just localized in one or two areas.  While some thought the “trickle down” benefits of Approach 3 would stimulate job creation, others believed the power of the arts to heal and build the community was most important and that the other approaches would succeed most with that foundation. 

Moderators: Harris Sokoloff and Christopher Steinmeier

Common
ground:

• Public relations is essential—people need to be told what is going on, and there needs to be a concerted effort to “make the arts cool” so that young people will be drawn to the field and venues.

• There has to be web-based database that can be searched with different filters, so that people can find out what is going on, where, how to get there, and how much it will cost. (There was debate about whether or not everyone could access the internet, and ultimately people seemed to believe this was not an issue.)

• There needs to be balanced coverage of the arts, with most everyone saying it should be on par with sports in the region
Belief in lifelong learning of and with the arts, which can be used to heal and build communities.

• Whatever plans are made, there must be regional coordination so that there is equitable representation across and within counties, including diversity of race, gender, ethnicity, income, elite art, big institutions, popular art, local organizations, etc.

• The main tensions in the group were centered around how much arts and culture could be brought into the schools and how much had to be done outside, but possibly in conjunction with, schools.  There was also a lot of emphasis on the role of the media in any approach taken and the fact that approaches that serve “at-risk” youth need to understand the term on a deeper level. (Suburban kids who have little to do are just as likely to get into trouble as lower income kids in the city.) 

• A common theme running through this tension was the idea of “coolness” and the belief that if the arts are advertised as more interesting other problems would work themselves out.  As a final note, as the group was wrapping up, one member pointed out that we need to understand and accept the shift in how people interact with the arts (rather than sitting quietly at the opera, people sing, dance, and nod their heads to their iPods).