This in an email from the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance:
The Five-Year Financial and Strategic Plan explains that the Mayor’s goal for the Office of Arts and Culture is to have it function according to the recommendation in the 2007 RAND Report titled Arts and Culture in the Metropolis, which states that it should “coordinate with the City’s economic development efforts by aligning arts programming with tourism efforts, neighborhood development, new business promotion and efforts to market Philadelphia.”
Of all these things, what will probably impact individual artists the most will be neighborhood development and new business promotion. Personally, I’m looking for some old fashioned urban planning, the sort that would create art zones and encourage galleries and studios via financial incentives to move into those zones. Also, some guarantee that the artists won’t be gentrified out would be helpful. And then there’s the business gross receipts tax–I know that there are plans to reduce it over 8 years until it disappears, but that seems so slow to me. If you’re paying it, you know just how unjust that particular tax is.
I say these things (I’ve said them before, I know) just in case someone is listening who can make a difference.
