The Philadelphia Inquirer
Friday, March 9, 2007
Joseph A. Slobodzian

RAND : Regional arts need guidance
It called for the creation of a strong central agency to coordinate the arts - much like one the city killed in '04.

Philadelphia needs a strong central agency to make the most of the value of arts and cultural groups to regional tourism and economic development, a study by the RAND Corp. think tank concludes.

The RAND report, released this morning, was commissioned by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and William Penn Foundation to address what some see as a looming financial crisis for the region's diverse arts community.

The report compares how Philadelphia supports the arts with how 10 other cities do it. The report found much here to praise: venerable institutions with long histories, and above-average audience support at the ticket office.

But the report also concludes that the explosive growth in the number of regional arts groups - part of the Center City rebirth that accompanied creation of the Avenue of the Arts in 1993 - could exceed the potential audience, leaving some smaller groups is fiscal trouble.

Not coincidentally, the RAND report comes out just two months before the May 15 primary in which voters will nominate candidates for mayor and City Council.

Officials of the Cultural Alliance and Penn Foundation said they decided to hire RAND Corp. in 2004 after Mayor Street, facing a budget crisis, closed the city's Office of Arts and Culture.

"We realized that there was a great opportunity this year to talk not just about how the city supports the arts in Philadelphia but in 10 other cities," said Julie Hawkins, the alliance's director of policy and government relations.

Olive Mosier, director of arts and culture for the foundation, called the closing of the city arts office "an opportunity for the city and all of us... to figure out how we move forward.

Mayor Street's spokesman Joseph Grace reiterated that the arts office was closed only for budgetary reasons: "We're proud of our record... . This administration understands the importance of arts and culture to this city. This administration gets it."

Even without a city arts office, Grace said, Street supported using $65 million in bond revenue for infrastructure costs of cultural groups in Center City and Philadelphia's neighborhoods.The 102-page RAND report recommends recreating a city arts and culture agency, but one with broader authority to develop and coordinate arts policy with tourism and economic development.

Because the region includes three states and scores of local governments, the reports says, the lack of a "principal point of contact for artistic activities" in city government has made it "increasingly difficult to coordinate the city's various arts activities and develop a coherent arts policy."

The report says cultural leaders must also be more politically active. "It is not always clear that the city government and the corporate sector see a direct link between Philadelphia's revitalization and the arts. The arts community must challenge those two sectors to back up their verbal support"

For the comparison with Philadelphia, RAND selected 10 cities: Charlotte, N.C., and Phoenix, Ariz., because they are "new and flourishing;" Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh as "older manufacturing centers struggling to reinvent themselves," and Boston, Chicago, Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul as "regional centers with diversified economies and stable populations."

RAND's findings about Philadelphia are similar to those in "Portfolio," a financial analysis of 218 area arts groups released in September by the Cultural Alliance and Pennsylvania Economy League.

Portfolio documented the explosive growth of the region's cultural community: 150 of the groups were founded after 1970. But it also found that almost half the groups have a fiscal deficit and one in four is "operating in unsustainable territory."

The RAND study concludes that cultural groups must plan now for a probable future of limited resources, especially government funding.

"After 31/2 decades of unprecedented growth," reads the 102-page report, "the nonprofit arts face an environment that threatens to stunt that growth and raises the prospect of future consolidation."

Only two of the 11 cities - Pittsburgh and Denver - had dedicated sources of public funding for the arts.

In Pittsburgh, it is the 17-year-old Allegheny Regional Assets District, which receives revenue from a 1 percent sales-and-use tax. Half the revenue is for grants to arts groups and other "public assets" including sports and recreational facilities. The other half of ARAD revenue is for general use by Allegheny County and its 128 municipalities.

A similar arts-funding scheme has been suggested for Southeastern Pennsylvania. Not surprisingly in a region that has not resolved how to fund mass transit, an arts tax is "highly unlikely," the report says.

But John McInerney, the Cultural Alliance's director of marketing and communications, said he is not willing to rule out such a solution.

McInerney said audience surveys have found Philadelphia's performing-arts venues are heavily attended and supported by non-city residents who might be willing to consider some form of dedicated public funding if equitably allocated.

McInerney said the Cultural Alliance does that now in its role as clearinghouse for state arts funding, distributing 500 grants totaling $1.3 million among the city and four suburban counties.

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