The Social Impact of the Arts Project, based at the University of Pennsylvania, was founded in 1994 with the intent of studying the connection between the arts and community life. Over time, SIAP has established mechanisms to help us measure how the arts benefit the areas they inhabit. Culture and Community Revitalization is the result of two years of research done between 2006 and 2008 and consists of summary materials, a literature review, three policy briefs, and a community investment prospectus. The Rockefeller Foundation, which commissioned Culture and Community Revitalization, asked SIAP to partner with The Reinvestment Fund, a community development financial institution, and find ways to “merge cultural data with other types of information on urban revitalization.” Despite some promising findings from the research overview, Stern and Seifert end on a pessimistic note, cautioning that more research is needed before policy decisions can be based off of SIAP’s linkage of cultural engagement to community revitalization.

The literature review covers a vast array of research on the relationship between the creative sector, economics and social benefits, ultimately determining that while most research explores the connection between culture and economic gains, more work needs to be done better understand the less-quantifiable social impacts. The policy briefs make the case for local policymakers to place more of an emphasis on the arts as a way to unlock the human capital in urban areas. Finally, the community investment prospectus provide practical recommendations and case studies that demonstrate different approaches to investing in cultural clusters.

The main strength of the report is its innovative approach to quantifying the ways arts and culture contribute to community revitalization. One of the main highlights of the Culture and Community Revitalization project is a methodology called the Cultural Asset Index. Stern and Seifert were able to build upon The Reinvestment Fund’s Market Value Analysis methodology to demonstrate that a concentration of cultural assets can be connected to a rise in real estate value. Conversely, the study fails to fully grapple with the potential downsides of neighborhood cultural investment strategies, particularly when it comes to issues around gentrification and displacement. Stern and Seifert’s research leads them to conclude that the benefits of creative clusters are not only about economics but also creating and strengthening social bonds across different types of networks.

Stern and Seifert suggest that cities can encourage the development of “natural” cultural districts by attracting private investment; focusing on “quality of life investments” such as regular trash pick-ups, and more green space;  pursuing workforce development policies that help young people gain entry into the creative sector; and gathering more data and background information about how these cultural clusters work.

Stern and Seifert’s research has been applied in practice since the publication of Culture and Community Revitalization. Most notably, the national creative placemaking initiatives Our Town and ArtPlace have used SIAP’s work in varying degrees to shape their approach to arts funding.

On to the news:

YOU’RE FIRED

• The orchestra world has been shaken to the core this month. The largest institution yet to face such troubles, the Philadelphia Orchestra, has filed for bankruptcy (the restructuring kind, not the “we’re throwing in the towel” kind). On the one hand, I am sure that the Fabulous Philadelphians’ financial troubles are very real. On the other, it does strike me as curious not only that (as others have noted) an organization with a $140 million endowment would file for bankruptcy, but that the move precedes the announcement of a $160 million fundraising campaign to save the orchestra. Andrew Taylor digs into the bankruptcy filing docs.
• The Syracuse (NY) Symphony Orchestra has filed for Chapter 7 (we’re throwing in the towel) bankruptcy, after canceling the rest of its season a week earlier. Looks like it’s lights out for this one, not to mention the SSO’s 95 musicians and staff.
• Albuquerque’s New Mexico Symphony has filed for Chapter 7 as well. 80 musicians and staffers will lose their jobs.
• On the plus side, the Detroit Symphony musicians are back to work, albeit six months later. The new three-year contract calls for 25% cuts in salaries (to $79,000 base pay, hardly slave wages) and additional funds available for optional community-service work. The orchestra’s size will be reduced from 96 to 85 musicians.
• The artistically successful but financially troubled Intiman Theatre  in Seattle has cancelled the rest of its season due to money problems. Its artistic director, Kate Whoriskey, has now left as well.
• The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival is kaput after 17 years in operation, making it the second major Baltimore arts organization to fold since the start of the Great Recession (after the Baltimore Opera). The article contains this quote that would make Tyler Cowen smile: “‘We started as a non-Equity company, and if we had dropped our contract, it would have cut our costs,’ Toran said. ‘But that’s exactly what we weren’t going to do. You want to pay your actors, just like you pay lawyers and doctors and teachers. Our goal wasn’t survival at any cost.'” So because they wanted to pay the actors so badly, they decided to give them fewer work opportunities?
• The New York City Opera, two years after spending the 2008-09 season inactive and raiding most of its endowment to stay alive, is facing a possible strike and the delay of its season announcement for next year.
• Pittsburgh arts groups are exploring increased collaboration as a survival strategy.
• Meant to write about this a while ago, but Pepsi Refresh has relaunched with a different process and set of rules after complaints of gaming the system last year.

I QUIT

• Ellen Rudolf is stepping down as longtime director of the Surdna Foundation’s Thriving Cultures Program, which she had initiated with the foundation 17 years ago.
• Jeremy Nowak, a noted advocate for the power of the arts in revitalizing communities, will no longer be the President and CEO of The Reinvestment Fund – for good reason: he’s about to become the new head of the William Penn Foundation. (via GIA News)
• Nina Simon, author, blogger, and museum design consultant extraordinaire, is quitting her consulting and speaking business to be the new Executive Director of the Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA. Thankfully, she is not quitting her blog.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

• Whoa…a donor’s estate in Bermuda is withdrawing an £82 million donation to Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival for no reason at all, apparently.
• Chad Bauman riffs on the recent cuts to DC’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission from a marketer’s perspective.
• Michael Kaiser takes a dim view of the trends in corporate giving to the arts. Here are some numbers from the Foundation Center.
• Americans Gave a Lot Less in the Recession Than Experts Predicted, reads the Chronicle of Philanthropy headline. Among other things, this story is a pretty big black eye for Giving USA, the annual report on individual giving that had estimated that donor activity was holding steady or barely dropping during the same period.
• Meanwhile, foundations gave (slightly) less in 2010 than 2009, despite the fact that their assets increased by 5%.
• Why don’t more foundations publicly explain the rationale behind their gifts?
• It looks like the growth of new 501(c)(3)s has finally slowed (and the numbers will actually drop considerably once the IRS releases the names of the nonprofits whose status it has revoked as a result of nonfiling). Of course, this hasn’t stopped composer Philip Glass from founding a new festival in Carmel Valley, CA.

SHOW ME THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE

• My colleagues at Fractured Atlas have a new publication laying out what the health insurance reform law means for artists.
• A new publication from the Boekman Foundation in Amsterdam: Cultural Policy Update. And check out this fab cultural policy blog salon put together by my friends at Emerging Arts Professionals – San Francisco Bay Area, featuring an admirably diverse range of voices.
• Not surprisingly, the social media cognoscenti are all abuzz about the new report from the Knight Foundation, “Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril, and Potential of Networks.” Beth Kanter is all over it here.
• CEOs for Cities reports on the residential clustering patterns of the “young and the restless” – college educated 25-34-year-olds. Seems cities’ “close-in neighborhoods” are more important than ever.
• Partners for Livable Communities reports on strategies for arts organization outreach to senior and immigrant audiences.
• Shannon Litzenberger is back with a massive report on cultural policy in the Windy City.
• Won’t you help Devon with her epic Facebook experiment? (It begins tomorrow.)

SEE YOU IN COURT

• David Byrne has come to a settlement with former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who had used the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere” without permission during Crist’s unsuccessful campaign for Senate last year. (Seems a rather auspicious choice, no?) The settlement terms apparently included Charlie recording this apology video, which actually almost makes me feel sorry for him.
• Matthew Guerrieri reports on a dispute between the Music Publishers Association (UK) and the International Music Score Library Project.

BEAUTY CONTESTS

• Bubble sort as demonstrated by Hungarian folk dance.
• Eric Whitacre is back with the Virtual Choir 2.0, this time performing his “Sleep” and featuring over 2000 performers. Sounds great, but fair warning: the video is even cheesier than in the last one.
• To draw in new audiences, an orchestra plays for cows.
• I find a lot of public art less than inspiring, but I have to admit, this is pretty awesome:
  

  After more than a decade of disagreement, Berliners have settled on a monument to celebrate German reunification and the 1989 peaceful revolution: a giant, rocking dish.

  The 55-metre, 330-tonne glittering steel wing can hold up to 1,400 people at any one time, but it needs at least 20 people to get it moving.

  The monument to unity is called Citizens in Motion, and is apparently all about people coming together. If you want to make it move, you have to get a group together and all go in a particular direction.

• I didn’t realize that Jeff Skoll, in addition to being the first chairman of eBay and one of the more important supporters of social entrepreneurs in the world, also owns a media company that has produced movies including An Inconvenient Truth, Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, and others. And he’s younger than Barack Obama. Talk about net impact.
• I attended an interesting lunch session on “The Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage” in which Robert Strand spoke about the cross-sector partnerships undertaken by various Scandinavian companies. One of the more interesting of these is the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, spearheaded by Nokia as an alliance among telecommunications companies to increase leveraging power against suppliers in the sustainability arena. I noted in a question that Scandinavia also happens to have some of the highest arts participation rates in the world and wondered whether there was a connection. I mean, you’ve got all those company choirs promoting listening skills….
• An afternoon talk about “Opportunity Finance” revealed the following insight: community development loans of the kind made under the Community Reinvestment Act are perceived as “high risk,” but it’s only a perception. As one panelist put it, he bets Goldman would trade its balance sheet for his at the moment. Even during healthy times, the claim was, security (if not actual performance) is comparable to that of large financial institutions. The same panelist, Donald Hinkle-Brown of The Reinvestment Fund, talked about how CDFIs are a “tiny little speck of tendon” connecting the financial industry to low-income communities, and thus, are an important infrastructure point in the fabric of society. Hinkle-Brown also provided the best quote of the day when a questioner asked what the compensation in opportunity finance was like compared to traditional banking jobs. His answer: “Well, we still have jobs.”
• At a session on Measuring Impact, Debra Natenshon from the Center for What Works shared a story about an avant-garde theater company that came up with a way to measure audience reaction to its performances with a minimum of financial and labor investment. After each show, the director would come out on stage and tell the audience, “Thank you for coming tonight. There are three exits, one with a green sign, one with a yellow sign, and one with a red sign. If you enjoyed the show and will definitely buy a ticket again, exit through the green door. If you think you enjoyed it but are not sure if you would come back, exit through the yellow door. And if this was just way too weird for you and you hated it, exit through the red door.” Then, three volunteers would stand by each door and use clicker devices to record exactly how many people chose each door. Now, I’m sure my Program Evaluation professor would like me to say something here about statistical conclusion validity related to the reliability of measurement (who knows how the public declaration of choice or the group dynamics between friends who may have arrived together might affect the results), but hey, something is better than nothing, right?