WE ASKED THE CANDIDATES YOUR QUESTIONS

Dear Artists, Makers, and Cultural Workers,

Artists for Democracy solicited your questions to pass on to the Mayoral Candidates. We received many thoughtful responses and distilled them into five questions, based on topics that we observed to be important:
Empowering the Arts
Effective Leadership
Support for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund
New Initiatives
Artist Participation

Two candidates responded: Rebecca Rhynhart and Jimmy DeLeon.

Are these your art mayors? It is difficult to say, but their full answers can be found here.

We also know that these candidates were asked but did not respond:
Warren Bloom, Sr.
Amen Brown
Jeff Brown
Allan Domb
Helen Gym
David Oh
Cherelle Parker

Each of these candidates claims to support the arts, which we believe to be true, to varying degrees. But we do not know how any of them would turn their support into action. Your questions are important. Please read the answers we received from the two candidates who chose to respond.

Voting day is May 16. Our loudest microphone is our vote. Be loud! In addition to casting your vote, you can help strengthen the arts community by staying engaged in the civic space. Without engagement, candidates and those who ultimately make decisions on budgets for the arts and culture sector won’t know you care. We know you care! Let them know you are passionate about funding for the arts. If you would like to get involved with Artists for Democracy, please reach out. We will be doing further postings to you and are welcome to questions and suggestions. Please contact us at editor@theartblog.org

Best wishes,

Barbara Silzle
Former Executive Director, Philadelphia Cultural Fund

Jacque Liu
Public Art Consultant
Former Percent for Art Program Manager, Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy

Roberta Fallon
Founder and Executive Editor, Artblog

Julia Marsh
Executive Director and Editor, Artblog

ANSWERS FROM CANDIDATES JIMMY DELEON AND REBECCA RHYNHART

QUESTION: Empowering the Arts – Will you create and budget a new Philadelphia Department of Arts and Culture, or do you plan to maintain the Office of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy as a program within the Managing Director’s office? Explain your answer in detail.

QUESTION: Effective Leadership – Simply establishing a Deputy or Department of Arts and Culture is not sufficient – identifying and hiring an effective leader is critical. What will be your process for selecting the Deputy/director of the Department of Arts and Culture?

QUESTION: Support for The Philadelphia Cultural Fund – How do you stand on support for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund (PCF)? Would you maintain the current PCF budget or increase it? Explain your answer fully and focus especially on funding. (PCF is an independent 501 c 3 nonprofit established by the city in 1991 as the mechanism by which the city directly, consistently, and without political influence, supports the city’s nonprofit arts sector and its community of artists.)

QUESTION: New Initiatives – How will your administration financially support the city’s arts and culture sector? Are there initiatives that your administration would establish?

Artist participation – Unlike in the past, today there is little or no representation of Philadelphia’s arts community within the Office of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy to inform its work. What do you see as the value of such representation? What level of priority would it be to you to reestablish that representation?