 |
|
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
The Philadelphia Daily News IN THE LAST four years, reports that the region's arts and culture organizations are on shaky financial ground have become more frequent. And troubling. Last year, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance found that though arts and cultural organizations are important assets to the region - they bring in $573 million in revenue annually and do wonders for tourism - far too many live hand-to-mouth. With operating margins at a lean 1.7 percent, many groups lead a precarious existence. Just under half of the 218 groups that participated in the comprehensive "Portfolio" report operate in some deficit. Last week, the RAND Corp., in a study that examined how to sustain the area's arts organization, recommended that the art sector identify and recruit an "arts champion" to promote the sector. The study, paid for in part by the Cultural Alliance and the William Penn Foundation, had this among its good recommendations: Create a strong central office of cultural affairs integrated with other offices of city government. This is not a new idea; the city once had just such an office. But in 2004, Mayor Street dissolved the department, preferring to spread out the department's responsibilities to other city agencies. As the mayor sings his proposed $3.8 billion budget swan song, with plans to keep intact the pillars to his legacy such as $7.7 million for his Neighborhood Transformation Initiative and $3.9 million to fight homelessness (and to pull back $250,000 from the city's annual $2.25 million contribution to the Philadelphia Museum of Art), the opportunity is there for the next mayor to put a cultural-affairs department on the agenda. Why not expand or revamp the city's Sunoco Welcome America! Office to turn it into a central office for the regional arts, and lead the way to organize arts groups to think and act together. That office would need a new name, of course, but at least some foundation would be in place to rebuild a much-needed city arts office. The energy directed toward organizing the several days of Welcome America! fun during July could be refocused to run an efficient cultural-affairs office that acts as a center for the region's arts, and benefits citizens every day of the year.
|
||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|