Cleveland’s Playhouse Square and Pittsburgh Cultural Trust are two oft-studied successes. Both are mixed use developments that center on historic theatres and incorporate for- and not-for-profit artist studios, presentation and exhibition spaces, media, education, hotels, housing, restaurants and entrepreneurial efforts to turn undervalued downtowns into unique, vital destinations. The ten-year-old Safe Harbors of the Hudson/Ritz Theatre project in Newburgh, NY includes a historic hotel-theatre complex proudly built out to include galleries, artist studios, artist housing, a community ballroom, and subsidized housing. When you see someone walk through the doors you can’t tell whether she’s an artist, going to a wedding, or a seeker in need of housing support – maybe all of the above!

All of these projects look differently at something we value, or don’t value. And THAT’s a key role of artists in our society.

The NEA under Chairman Landesman has made the admirable choice of recognizing that adding to the nation’s cultural portfolio is different from making partnerships for creative communities. Recognizing that these take differing leadership, skills, and objectives is far more honest and productive than past practices, of “encouraging” artists and their support businesses to divert resources into community organizing. The “Our Town” program recognizes that artists are one important resource for looking differently at the places we value or undervalue, and a critical component in making a UNIQUE PLACE indispensable in its region.

So how do we measure the effect of arts funding on creative placemaking? One might observe that the example projects were driven by exceptional leaders who created partnerships that engaged multiple industries, and were done with largely intrinsic funding that wasn’t targeted to arts support. Perhaps a useful measure is to what extent arts funding keeps artists a key feature of the projects. Convention centers and sports have been assertive adopters of the concepts driving cultural economic development, AKA, CP. Those include encouraging pedestrian traffic, making the district an attractive destination, and creating a unique sense of place, i.e., you know you can only be in Boston. CP’s big advantage is mixed use development — human scale with creative live-work baked in. Often it claims that advantage by revolving around historic theatres. Built in another time when mixed use was the norm, historic venues carry the soul of the neighborhood. Their natural role of attracting and serving large crowds from around the region makes them the envy of convention center planners who try to create mixed use developments from scratch.

So perhaps the best measure of success for arts funding is that “cultural” is part of the place making. I’d love to talk – I’m at Lance_Olson@emerson.edu.

Hard to know if the stew needs more salt, pepper or sugar – maybe all three and that could be the special sauce. The arts as related to economic and social and educational policy making has so many attributes to measure across many numeric indexes and we cannot forget the million dollar smile factor of happiness that participants value and keep coming back for more of.

Geographic regions, states, cities, and villages have so many different preferences for the type, content and presentation of cultural and arts offerings. Individual taste is a vexing variable for case making on the value and relevancy of public and private support for “ahts and culcha”. Stew simmers on.

I would be curious what the “group” thinks of the new study from National Governor’s Association, Arts, Culture and Design: New Engines of Growth. http://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/1204NEWENGINESOFGROWTH.PDF

Here’s why.

When you make an argument on economic territory, you don’t win by proving that your activity creates economic vitality. You win by proving that your activity is the BEST way to create economic vitality. You don’t have to prove a return on the investment you propose – you have to prove a return superior to every other investment that could be made. Those are the rules of the economic game. Every CFO knows them. Apparently, arts leaders do not.

When we fight on the CFOs’ battle ground, we have to fight based on the rules of that battle ground, and those rules are terrible for the arts, because it is much easier to prove that other investments have a more direct link to economic vitality and provide a clearer return on investment.

Every Civil War general knew that you should choose to fight on ground where you can win, and, for us, THAT ground is that the arts bind us most deeply to our essential our humanity, that develops our ability to contain and profit from complexity, and that brings us together as a democratic community, regardless of whether they lead to economic vitality (though, as a collateral benefit, they do).

It is good ground to fight from. It is true that the battle right now is elsewhere, but if we want to win this fight, we should claim that ground and make the CFOs fight us there.

It is naive to fight anywhere else.