Mile-High Musings on Arts, Culture, Creativity and Philanthropy

A few days ago I spoke at a reception for the Philadelphia region music education organization Musicopia . Because so many other speakers were already attesting to the value of their work (which IS wonderful - check out their website), I decided I would focus on the larger issue of the value of arts education, with specific emphasis on what sorts of direct impact on a community quality arts education provides. To me, and to those of us in the field, this information, this perspective may seem self-evident. But to many, this may not be the case. A corporate foundation director came up to me afterwards and asked if could share my remarks with her to be distributed to her board, so they could understand the larger civic and economic value of arts education investments. Unfortunately, I spoke without notes, but I thought it might be helpful to try and recreate my key points on my blog, with links so others can use it if they wish. Arts education is a crucial civic imperative for an arr...

This past Friday, our local PBS station, WHYY , profiled the work of me and the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy on its monthly arts news-magazine program, "Friday Arts". The episode also featured a segment on the wonderful Wharton Esherick Museum , The Fruit Guys (a business devoted to promoting fresh fruit as an alternative to junk food in workplaces and schools), and Orchestra 2001 (a contemporary/new music ensemble that is associated with Swarthmore College. The embedded video below only features my segment but I encourage you to click through and watch the entire episode. Watch the full episode . See more Friday Arts. It may seem like shameless self-promotion, but since many may have missed the episode, and since those outside of the Philadelphia market were not able to tune in, I thought it would be helpful if I included the segment in my blog. I do think it captures pretty well the work that we are trying to do here. It also highlights some ...