 |
|
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
Philadelphia Inquirer For a reality check, sometimes you have to hear the unpleasant facts of life from someone outside your immediate family. The chief value, then, of the latest comprehensive review of the challenges facing the Philadelphia region's arts and cultural groups could be that it's an outsider's view. As such, the RAND Corp. think-tank report issued Friday adds substantial credibility to a long-held local agenda item: the need to create stable funding for the region's cultural attractions. In the study done for the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and William Penn Foundation, the California-based consultant also confirms some familiar assertions: The arts have not been tapped to the fullest extent as a means of boosting the region's visitor industry and broader economic development. Government and corporate financial support in this region lags behind that of other major metro centers. Nobody with serious Harrisburg connections has taken up the torch yet to shore up these regional assets. Another landmark study, the September "Portfolio" report - also commissioned by the Cultural Alliance - already alerted elected and civic leaders to the bleak outlook for many cultural groups' balance sheets. Nearly half show a deficit; one in four teeter on insolvency. As for local government support, the September review showed that it is anemic - just 3 percent of cultural groups' revenues. That's substantially below Pittsburgh and Denver, two metro areas that, no surprise, long ago mustered the political will to enact regional cultural taxes. Comparisons with those two cities and eight others - including Boston, Chicago, and Charlotte, N.C. - place the Philadelphia region in the solid middle on a number of criteria for support of culture. On the positive side, it has world-class institutions unmatched by most places, and robust ticket sales. To build on those strengths, RAND correctly notes the need for a strong, central agency promoting the arts. In fact, Philadelphia had the makings of one. But Mayor Street closed the city's Office of Arts and Culture amid a 2004 budget crisis. The next mayor should restore the office. Beyond repairing that symbolic misstep, the next mayor should empower a key aide to come up with a sellable, regional strategy for a stable arts funding source. To his credit, Street has had a point person on culture: city Commerce Director Stephanie W. Naidoff, who helped bring the Kimmel Center into being. Street helped the cause by creating a $65 million capital fund created to cover infrastructure costs of cultural groups around the city. Making a similar pot of money available to subsidize cultural groups - say, about $60 million a year - would be the Academy Award-winning idea for this region. The RAND report calls an arts tax "highly unlikely," given other pressing needs. Sounds as if those researchers spent too much time in Nega-delphia. A region that could raise the funds to keep The Gross Clinic in Philadelphia should be able to muster the wit and the will to keep all of its cultural treasures on firm ground.
Back to Top |
|||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|