In keeping with the annual spate of Top Ten lists, I offer here a Top Ten list of work items for the arts sector for 2011.  In this blog I will outline the first of these.  Then, on each of the next 9 days I will deliver one each day.  I’ll then take a break for the holidays and return to blogging on January 3, 2011.

Item #1

Develop a better argument for the arts as a priority in community planning and decision making.  Let’s acknowledge that the economic development argument is riddled with holes.  And, especially in light of the Great Recession, it’s tired, and bordering on silly.  I’m impressed here in Philadelphia that the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance is grappling headlong with this challenge with their “Grow” initiative (www.philaculture.org/grow).  Yes, they still maintain the economic development element, but they cast it inside a larger series of messages.  At the very least, it’s an example of an organization working to craft a strategy with concomitant techniques to assert the power of the arts into wider and deeper community processes. 

The intrinsic value argument has merit, and may, through new iterations, find its proper footing and effectiveness.  This may be where we need to work from, on Item #1.  We arts practitioners have been lousy at expressing this position, using language that brands us as members of a political fringe.  We have quickly veered off into utilitarian or constructivist positions, making us appear even weaker. 

Tomorrow,  Item #2.