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Home > Voices of Innovation > Interview with Gary Steuer
Voices of Innovation
 Interview with Gary P. Steuer,
Chief Cultural Officer, City of Philadelphia
Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy
- What have been your major challenges and successes since you began in late 2008?
- You were charged with rebuilding the Office of Arts & Culture. It was reborn as the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy. What does adding Creative Economy to your work mean for the residents of Philly?
- Philadelphia has a vibrant arts community. What does that mean for the quality of life for City residents?
- Talk to us about the support of elected officials.
- What about partnerships with the business community?
- Why do you feel it is important to include arts learning in Philadelphia's schools?
- How does your office impact arts learning at the school level?
- What does the City gain from investing in arts education?
- What advice could you give to arts education advocates who seek policy change?
1. What have been your major challenges and successes since you began in late 2008?
Clearly given the timing of things, the global economic downturn has been the biggest challenge. At the local level our City budget, like most City budgets has been severely challenged and this has limited our capacity to fully implement the Mayor's vision for arts, culture and creative economy.
On the positive side, we have been able to minimize cuts to our cultural budget areas, given the challenges we are facing. For example, the budget for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, our primary grantmaking vehicle for the arts, is actually 50% HIGHER today than it was in FY08 before Mayor took office. The Mayor had doubled funding in his first budget, and was forced by the economy to cut the increase in half, but funding is still up by $1 million, and I think we are probably the only major city in the nation that can say that.
We also created a new $500,000 Creative Industry Workforce grant program with Community Development Block Grant funding from the Recovery Act, designed to stimulate job creation in creative industries and construction trades. This program has attracted national attention as an innovative use of stimulus dollars to support the art and creative industries while also fostering jobs and neighborhood revitalization.
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2. You were charged with rebuilding the Office of Arts & Culture. It was reborn as the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy. What does adding Creative Economy to your work mean for the residents of Philly?
The addition of Creative Economy to the charge of the Office was very important to me. It is increasingly difficult to draw a box around the arts that only includes nonprofit arts organizations, but excludes the many for-profit creative businesses that are also part of the larger creative economy. This also includes individudal artists, who are in effect sole proprieters of small businesses themselves. It is importnat we serve our citizens by working to maintain the health of not just arts organization, but also music clubs and recording studios, commercial art galleries, musical instrument stores, art supply stores, graphic and web design, etc. All of this is part of the cultural infrastructure of Philadelphia, and serves our citizens by providing them cultural opportunities, but also by stimulating the economy.
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3. Philadelphia has a vibrant arts community. What does that mean for the quality of life for City residents?
There are extraordinary arts organizations and arts enrichment in virtually every corner of the city. Citizens have access to world-class institutions like the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Philadelpia Orchestra, but also smaller community based organizations that serve families and people at the neighborhood level, groups like Fleisher Art Memorial, Settlement Music School, Taller Puertoriqueno, Village of Arts and Humanities and Art Sanctuary. Our citizens have a remarkable breadth of culture available to them and they take advantage of it. In 2008 15 million visits to cultural organizations were recorded in the region. Of course, it is important to note that one of the strongest culture assets of the City is our heritage, from the well-known sites Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, to lesser known attractions like the American Philosophical Society, the Atwater Kent Museum, Clivedon of the National Trust, the Marian Anderson home, and the Paul Robeson House, just to name a few.
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4. Talk to us about the support of elected officials.
In Philadelphia there is strong support among elected officials for arts and culture. The Mayor - my boss - was elected in 2007 on a campaign platform that included a strong commitment to arts and culture. This support is also shared by City Council, which ultimately must vote on the cultural budget as part of the overall City budget. Councilmembers are of course especially interested in ensuring that the citizens of their district are served, so we make a special effort to try to foster cultural development and activity equitably throughout the City. Of course, there are still natural concentrations of cultural activity in specific neighborhoods and areas of the City. The Governor is also extremely supportive, and when he was Mayor before becoming Governor, Ed Rendell promoted the creation of the Avenue of the Arts, which included the Kimmel Center and several other new theatres. But elected officials support the arts because they see it as bringing value to the citizens, fostering the economy and jobs, and promoting tourism.
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5. What about partnerships with the business community?
The Philadelphia business community is strongly supportive of the arts, but like many other cities has lost most of our corporate headquaters as a result of mergers and consolidation. We have strong support from most of the companies that are headquarted here, as well as from regional headqurters of companies based elsewhere. Business understands that a thriving cultural sector and creative economy helps them attract and retain workers. It makes this a city where their employees want to live and work, and also fosters the creativity that is increasingly important in business. The annual luncheon of the Arts and Business Council here attracts 1,700 business and arts people, more than any other comparable event in the nation.
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6. Why do you feel it is important to include arts learning in Philadelphia's schools?
Arts learning is critical in our schools for a variety of reasons. As a City we must not just attract workers from other areas, but we must grow our own. We must educate our children with the skills they need to succeed in a 21st Century economy. Quality arts education fosters an array of applied skills that have a demostrated need in today's business environment: communication, teamwork, creativity and innovation, sensitivity to other cultures. In addition, arts programs engage young people and keep them committed to school and to learning, and helps them see a vision of hope and opportunity for themselves. Philadelphia has a significant problem with crime and truancy, and we see strong arts education in or schools as key to addressing both those problems. This is a commitment of the Mayor, and of our School Superintendent Dr. Ackerman.
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7. How does your office impact arts learning at the school level?
We are working on this on several different fronts. I work very closely with our Chief Education Officer Dr, Lori Shorr. Our School District has made improving arts education a cornerstone of their strategic plan, and we support and encourage this. They have pledged to eventually have at least one art and music teacher in every school. Though we are still far from that goal, the school district has hired dozens of new art and music teachers over the past two years. On example of how we support this effort is our Parent University. This initiative of the School District offers a full schedule of courses made available to parents - some of which are inter-generational and can be done with their children. We reached out to a broad array of arts organizations and asked them to consider offering courses and programs that could be added to the Parent University course catalogue - the response has been very strong and this will help increase parent interest in arts education by directly engaging them in arts learning themselves.
The biggest effort we have helped foster is a new initiative called ArtsRising, loosely based on the Big Thought model in Dallas. This new initiative is designed to provide a systemic solution to making the art part of the life and education of every young person in the City, and eventually the region. This included both in school and out of school experiences, programs offered by the school itself, as well as programs offered by arts organizations and other neighborhood providers. It is very, very exciting, and came out of a broad coalition that included educators, arts organizations, the City and funders. The program is launching this year with pilot programs in three specific middle schools and the surrounding neighborhoods, but eventually will cover all schools K through 12 in every community.
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8. What does the City gain from investing in arts education?
Well, as I said earlier, the City's economy and livability ultimately is dependent on an educated and engaged workforce. Arts education is a key to helping us achieve that. It will improve the lives of all our young people, ensure they are have a rich and rewarding school experience, hopefully ensure the percentage of students that graduate continues to rise. This will mean fewer kids lost to gangs, crime and hoplessness. It will also make people want to live in our city, to send their kids to our schools, and that has a direct impact on our business competitiveness and tax revenues. Every child deserves, and has the right to have the arts be a part of their life. Ultimately this makes them better human beings, better citizens when they grown up.
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9. What advice could you give to arts education advocates who seek policy change?
Tie the need for arts education to the other civic goals I have discussed. For cities that are grappling with economic competitiveness, graduation rates that are too low, youth crime that is too high, the case for arts education as a vehicle to tackle these other challenges is a very powerful one. Not eveyone will understand or respond to the "art for arts sake" argument, but it is hard to argue with the need to attract and prepare workers for a competitive workplace environment, to convince businesses to locate here because they can hire good workers, to reduce crime and create economic opportunity for our young people.
I would also advise that it is critical to make this an access to quality education issue not an arts issue. If arts education is presented only as an arts issue by arts advocates, it can been as self-serving and of narrow interest. It is critical to have education advocates, educators and employers as part of the coalition. I would also advice setting realistic incremental goals, and being very patient. Success will take some time - maybe generations - but we will get there.
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