Swarthmore - Group Two

The Big Canvas - Oct. 14, 2008

This group of a dozen people included a number who were very active in community arts organizations or local politics in Delaware County. It was clear throughout that the accelerating bad news out of Wall Street and the financial markets weighed heavily on their thinking.  Their optimism about finding any significant amount of new funding for the arts was nil.  Their focus was on better coordination and promotion of existing resources, to make sure they are used more efficiently and effectively.

This was a group which, with the exception of one voice, had a hard time finding major negatives with any of the approaches.  But it was also a group that grasped pretty well the notion that it would be wise to pick one approach as your dominant message to the broader community, while turning the other approaches into subordinate themes.

In this group, due to time issues, the discussion of the Approach IV got a little short shrift, though pungent points were made.

Moderators: Chris Satullo and Carol Cohn

Common ground/Themes:

• Build on Existing Programs:  This was a savvy group that knew about things such as the Philly Fun Guide, Uwishunu, the GPCA job bank, and the Arts4Youth initiative.  So a consensus emerged that the first, more important job of a strategy was not to invent new things, but to catalog, coordinate and promote what is already going on. The group agreed the status quo is harmed by too much fragmentation and too little general knowledge of individual efforts.  As noted, their skepticism about prospects for big new funding created urgency around this idea of better coordination.

• Concentrate on Access:  While not liking the administrative structure of Approach I, this group adored its focus on “access” as a key concept.  They very much supported the way that Approach I groups together the issues of cost, transportation and snobbery/intimidation under the overall rubric of “access.”

• Make “Deciders” a Broad, Representative Group:  The group didn’t like Approach I’s reliance on arts and culture professionals to run a fund.  And they worried that, under Approach III, too much of the money would flow to an “old boy” network of PR firms and connected businesses. So they want whatever strategy and/or fund got created to be run by a broad group that would include not just arts professionals, but patrons, taxpayers, youth, political leaders, corporate leaders – from all over the region, not just the city.

• Don’t Focus on One Type of Art, in One Place:  Reach as many, and as many different types, of people as you can with different kinds of art. This group had plenty of appreciation for the great, big-name Philadelphia arts venues, but didn’t want a strategy to be just about them.

• Expand Youth Arts:  While this group saw plenty of problems with Approach II as the sole, standalone strategy, it wants to make sure many of Approach II’s ideas get woven into a broader strategy that would appeal to all citizens.

Favored specifics:

• Philly Van Go.  Very popular with this group.

• Libraries as a focus. This group thought blending the Kids Passport idea with a regional library card made a lot of sense.

• Free days to attract unconventional clientele to venues.

• The Passport ideas, with the library connection noted above.

• A space bank to help community arts organizations. Big winner with this group.

• The Web 2.0 presence not just as an information clearinghouse for arts goers, but also as a “resource center” for those who work or volunteer in arts and culture.

• A very popular new idea suggested by a participant was this: Part of the a&c youth strategy should be to lobby the state to incorporate the arts more strongly into state education standards.