Culture and Urban Revitalization: A Harvest Document

Advocates have long argued that the economic benefits of the arts and culture provide a firm rationale for public support. Recent scholarship on the "creative class" and "creative economy" is simply the latest effort to link cultural expression to community prosperity. In contrast, the social benefits of cultural engagement have received relatively little attention, even though -- as we shall see -- they provide a stronger case.We need to avoid a simplistic either-or choice between the economic and social impacts of the arts. People who live in our cities, suburbs, and countryside are simultaneously consumers, workers, residents, citizens, and participants. Culture's role in promoting community capacity and civic engagement is central to its potential for generating vital cultural districts. To separate the economic and the social impacts of the arts makes each more difficult to understand.This document provides an overview of the state-of-the-art literature on culture and urban revitalization. In Part 2, we place the creative sector in contemporary context with a discussion of three social dynamics. The "new urban reality" has restructured our cities by increasing social diversity -- fueled by new residential patterns, the emergence of young adult districts, and immigration; expanding economic inequality; and changing urban form. Shifts in the economic and political environment have changed the structure of the creative sector. Finally, the changing balance of government, nonprofit, and for-profit institutions in social policy development -- the shift to transactional policymaking -- has profound implications for cultural policy and the creative sector broadly defined. These three forces -- the new urban reality, the changing structure of the creative sector, and the emergence of transactional policy-making -- define the context within which culture-based revitalization takes place

The Social Wellbeing of New York City's Neighborhoods: The Contribution of Culture and the Arts

This report presents the conceptual framework, data and methodology, and findings of a two-year study of culture and social wellbeing in New York City by SIAP with Reinvestment Fund. Building on their work in Philadelphia, the team gathered data from City agencies, borough arts councils, and cultural practitioners to develop a 10-dimension social wellbeing framework—which included construction of a cultural asset index—for every neighborhood in the five boroughs. The research was undertaken between 2014 and 2016.The social wellbeing tool enables a variety of analyses: the distribution of opportunity across the city;identification of areas with concentrated advantage, concentrated disadvantage, aswell as "diverse and struggling" neighborhoods with both strengths and challenges; and analysis of the relationship of"neighborhood cultural ecology" to other features of a healthy community

The Social Wellbeing of New York City\u27s Neighborhoods: The Contribution of Culture and the Arts

This research report presents the conceptual framework, data and methodology, findings and implications of a three-year study of the relationship of cultural ecology to social wellbeing across New York City neighborhoods. The team gathered data from City agencies, borough arts councils, and cultural practitioners to develop a 10-dimension social wellbeing framework—beginning with construction of a cultural asset index—for every neighborhood in the City’s five boroughs. The social wellbeing tool enabled a variety of analyses: the distribution of opportunity across the City; identification of areas with concentrated advantage, concentrated disadvantage, and “diverse and struggling” neighborhoods with both strengths and challenges; and analysis of the relationship of “neighborhood cultural ecology” to other features of community wellbeing. Major findings include: 1) Cultural resources are unequally distributed across the city, with many neighborhoods having few resources. 2) At the same time, there are a significant number of civic clusters—that is, lower-income neighborhoods with more cultural resources than their economic standing would lead us to predict. 3) Although lower-income neighborhoods have relatively few resources, these neighborhoods demonstrate the strongest relationship between culture and social wellbeing. Notably, if we control for socio-economic status and ethnic composition, the presence of cultural resources is significantly associated with improved outcomes around health, schooling, and personal security. Qualitative study highlighted how neighborhood cultural ecology also contributes to other dimensions of wellbeing—in particular, social connection, political and cultural voice, and the public environment and public sphere

The Arts, Civic Engagement, and the “Tragedy of the Commons”

In this essay, historian Mark Stern uses the metaphor of “the tragedy of the commons” to reflect on the rewards and frustrations of conducting research on the social and community impacts of the arts. He suggests that thinking about community culture as a “field”—rather than as a collection of individual programs—might prevent the logic of the commons from killing the many benefits the arts and culture can bring to communities and their residents

Culture vs. Policy: Introduction and Summary of the Research

This summary provides a descriptive overview of SIAP’s research from 2003 to 2005 in metropolitan Philadelphia. The authors argue that the papers produced by the Dynamics of Culture project document an early 21st century American city with a flourishing cultural sector--a community infrastructure full of vitality and promise, in spite of social policy, not because of it

Cultural Ecology, Neighborhood Vitality, and Social Wellbeing—A Philadelphia Project

From 2011 to 2013, SIAP with Reinvestment Fund undertook new research that featured development of multidimensional indexes of social wellbeing for the city of Philadelphia. This report presents the results of that collaboration. Chapter 1 documents construction of a neighborhood-based social wellbeing index for the city. Chapter 2 uses the social wellbeing index to analyze patterns of advantage and disadvantage in Philadelphia neighborhoods. Chapter 3 draws on SIAP\u27s historical data to examine changes in Philadelphia\u27s cultural ecology between 1997 and 2012. The summary highlights how the policy tool helps conceptualize and measure culture as a dimension of social wellbeing as well as a contributor to equitable communities

Arts Resources for Children and Youth in Philadelphia

This report, commissioned in 1995 by The Pew Charitable Trusts, presents findings of a study of arts and cultural resources for children and youth in Philadelphia. The purpose of the project was to examine access to and opportunities in the arts for young people and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the citywide system. The project used two perspectives to assess resources. First, the research team developed a geographic data base of existing nonprofit youth arts providers and arts in the public schools. This was combined with US census data to examine the geography and socio-economic context of existing services. Second, the team conducted over 40 interviews with cultural organizations and city agencies to understand relationships among different providers as a network of children’s arts resources. Appendix A lists the 229 nonprofit youth-serving cultural organizations in Philadelphia and identifies the 47 providers that participated in the qualitative phase of the study

Culture Builds Community Evaluation: Summary Report

In 1997 the William Penn Foundation undertook the Culture Builds Community (CBC) initiative as a way to link its commitments to urban communities and to the arts and culture in the Philadelphia region. The initiative eventually funded 29 programs involving 38 organizations to test a variety of strategies to expand cultural participation and strengthen community-based cultural organizations. Some organizations received core operating support while others were funded to undertake programs focused on expanding cultural opportunities, enhancing artistic quality, or fostering community-based collaborations with a focus on young people. The Foundation provided technical assistance as well as funding to CBC grantees, from June 1997 through February 2001, and awarded a grant to Penn’s Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) to evaluate the initiative. SIAP\u27s assessment had two objectives: (1) to provide a better understanding of the dynamics of the community cultural sector and (2) to determine whether CBC achieved its goals with respect to strengthening organizations, expanding cultural opportunities, and improving the role of cultural organizations in building community. This report presents the findings of that assessment. SIAP concludes that overall, at the end of the initiative, the region’s community cultural sector was much stronger than it had been three years earlier

Cultural Asset Mapping Project: Progress Report

This report describes SIAP work undertaken from December 2011 to December 2012 as part of the Philadelphia cultural asset mapping project. SIAP research and data analyses underway, in collaboration with Reinvestment Fund, included: a cross-sectional analysis of associations between cultural assets and social and community indicators by neighborhood; a time-­series of the geography of cultural assets between 1997 and 2010, using SIAP’s historical database; and a Philadelphia livability/social inclusion index that links information on cultural assets with other community indices on neighborhood vitality and social wellbeing

An Assessment of Community Impact of the Philadelphia Department of Recreation Mural Arts Program

This 2003 report is a first assessment of community impact of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program since its start in 1984 under the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network. The study, undertaken from 2000 to 2002, incorporated a variety of methods. SIAP developed a geographic database on the location of murals to assess whether their density was related to other characteristics of a neighborhood. The team also developed a detailed mural production database to examine the nature of community involvement in MAP\u27s process. Finally, the team employed a “community leveraging model, based on a method developed by Penn’s Program for the Study of Organized Religion and Social Work, to estimate voluntary and in-kind contributions to mural production. The report concludes with a set of organizational and programmatic recommendations intended to maximize the potential of the Philadelphia Department of Recreation Mural Arts Program to mobilize resources and build connections among the city\u27s neighborhoods, its young people, and its artists