The results of the the report show that Philadelphia’s Creative Vitality Index (CVI) score is 70% stronger than the national benchmark, and our CVI growth from 2006 to 2008 ranks among the top 5 in the nation. Additionally, our Nonprofit Arts Organization revenue is 5 times the national benchmark.

The Creative Vitality Index is a comparison of publicly available data analyzed against a national benchmark. The study looked at ‘Occupational Employment’ and ‘Community Participation’ in the creative economy. For the purposes of the study, the creative economy is defined as:

“For-profit and nonprofit arts-related creative industries such as visual and performing arts, graphic design, music, fashion, public relations, and architecture.”
– 2010 Creative Vitality in Philadelphia, page 2

This study was commissioned by the Mayor’s Office of the Arts, Culture and Creative Economy from the Western States Art Federation (WESTAF) who developed the index. The Mayor’s Office was formed in Philadelphia in 2008 to improve access to the arts, and is supported by a full-time staff and an advisory committee comprised of 15 creative industry leaders. The Creative Vitality project was managed by Moria Baylson and the report was designed by Smyrski Creative.

The full report is available online as a PDF download.

Cover, designed by Smyrski Creative

What does this mean for Philadelphia’s artists? It means that the city is formalizing its support of the creative sector.  They are taking notice of the critical mass of cultural activity, quantifying it, investing in research around it, and looking at ways to help support its growth. There were two key mentions from Gary Steuer, Philadelphia’s Chief Cultural Officer, of how the city can use the report to inform the development of services for artists: one is a construction assistance program and the second was a tax benefit for independent workers in the creative economy.  He invited the community to participate in a ‘Town Hall’ on Thursday, January 27th at the Philadelphia Center for Architecture.

Steuer acknowledged that a key weaknesses in the report is the index measuring employment – this is clearly not an accurate representation of the cultural economy in Philadelphia.  Due to the availability and nature of the data used for the index, the report does not capture employment data from anyone who is self employed or an independent artist. The employment data in the index is only representative of employers who hire full-time, salaried positions in the creative economy.

Although this is simply a research report, it is also an impressive initiative which highlights the strength of the cultural economy in Philadelphia. It’s release comes just weeks before the Knight Foundation will announce the winners of the first round Knights Arts Challenge which aims to encourage businesses to invest in the creative sector by providing matching funding.

Reading through the report one might find a renewed assurance in the viability of our region’s cultural economy. The report gives a ‘business’ dress to the dialogue we’re having about the industry of creativity, selling its history in the region, while backing this narrative with analysis of hard data. It has the effect of educating the creative community about how to position itself, and how make a business case for itself.

While this might seem sterile and corporate to those outside of the business world, this way of talking about the creative economy has the result of making it accessible to a wider audience.  There is a website where participants in Philadelphia’s creative economy can submit their own stories as case studies, and Steuer’s office now has its own Twitter account: you can follow them @creativePHL.

The event will also feature pre-recorded TEDTalks, exhibitions, and local performers – the best of what’s happening right now in Philadelphia.

That’s where you come in – the TEDxPhilly Team is looking for local artists who are interested in participating in this event by producing a design for the program cover.  Any screenprinter who lives or works in the Philadelphia region is eligible to participate.

All you need to do is create and submit a digital design idea for the cover through the online form by OCTOBER 15th 2010.  The TEDxPhilly team will select the submissions that best speak to the theme ‘Right Here, Right Now’ to run in a series, alongside the prints of other selected artists.

The selected artists will be asked to attend a short meeting, where they will be provided with materials to produce a series of screenprints from their concept.

Mad props will be given to the selected artists in the printed program, and they will receive free admission to the full day event and afterparty.

Get the full details for the project here.

*NEW FEATURE* we’ve added a monthly sorting option that allows you to browse future shows and also lets you look back to shows that closed in previous months.  In addition, you can see what’s closing this week to make sure you catch not-to-miss shows before they’re gone.

This month we’ve also opened-up ongoing submissions through the end of the year.  Submit all events and shows that open in 2009.  In the current version of our listings, you must submit a new form for each show or event that you’d like to include.  In the future this will be more streamlined for our regular contributors.

Listings are updated weekly on Mondays.  Please submit listings for First Friday openings a week in advance so they can be available for artblog’s First Friday picks.

In January 2010 we’re planning to release new management features to a group of our regular contributors that will allow you to submit multiple shows and events at once, and edit your gallery’s information.  This will make contributing to Maps & Listings a streamlined process that lets you easily publish your entire calendar.

Please continue to leave your comments below, it helps us improve our maps!

Upon entering the gallery space, the Artist/Moderator who had already begun the TNPPSSF session gave us a warm welcome, and the already established circle of fellow-puberty survivors happily expanded to accommodate new participants. Once re-settled, the group plunged back into its awkward discourse around topics such as the mysterious development and changes of your body during puberty, fashion and self presentation as a prepubescent, and the discovery of media that altered an understanding of your body.

The Artist acts as group moderator at TNPPSSF

The group was predominately female, however the Moderator did a bang-up job eliciting juicy prepubescent recollections from the males in the group.  One topic where the females were unanimously clueless, and the males in absolute secret agreement was ‘The best way to hide a spontaneous erection that popped-up at the wrong time’ – ‘Tuck it under the belt’.

Other topics during the nearly three-hour long meeting ranged from periods to first ejaculations, from training bras to first encounters with pornography, and everything in between.  Irony and utter-relief ruled the tone of the room, and everyone seemed to feel lighter as they related to their peers’ recollections of that trying period of young-adult life.

Participants listen as others share their stories

The TNPPSSF session complemented John O’Donnell‘s work in an overt yet pleasantly unexpected way.  This ‘Support Forum’ of twenty-somethings held within the gallery space of the installation became a performance of his work, simultaneously informing the work in the way a traditional gallery talk might have done.  The Artist chose to focus not on the work itself, but instead on the experiences of the participants themselves.

The tone and humor that the artist used as the foundation for this ‘group exploration’ brought the work to life in a rather impactful way.  Standing at the center of the exhibition, one is immediately awash with the schizophrenic sexual discovery of that ‘special time’ in every young-adult’s life.

This and all photos below are borrowed from the Artist's website BuildFace.com

When the nurturing welcome of the ‘Support Forum’ is placed in the same context, surrounded by the colorful, middle-school aesthetic of the work, the performance becomes a hauntingly familiar re-visitation of health-ed classes of the prepubescent past.  This in turn becomes an acted-out reminder that ‘its over’, and with a sigh of relief the work becomes more accessible from that frame of reference.

The installation is largely made of plastic play-objects turned penis jokes, and colorful patterned paper backgrounds reminiscent of the typical bulletin boards that adorn middle-school classrooms.  These materials, transparently purchased at Dollar General, come together to form a Hieronymus Bosch-esque prepubescent universe.

John O'Donnell's gags are throwback-clever and unabashedly juvenile, as in the sexy dessert floating in the dessert.

Collage-figures, such as the Giant Dinosaur atop the gallery entrance made of cut-outs assembled from ‘Beer Babe’ advertisement stand-ups, are reminiscent of the middle-school chic embellishment of book covers, trapper-keepers, and lockers.

Detail of the Dinosaur collage-object.

The fervent sperm-like dolphin school diving head-in through a cartoon-like window opening in the paper-brick wall struck me as a statement about how it must have felt to my pre-pubescent male peers on the days when the most popular girl in school wore her tightest sweater.

Brick-patterned paper, balloons, inflatable dolphins, curtains

Sitting among these objects, themselves musings on the discovery of sexuality, and simultaneously reminiscing about that mysterious time in life was an extremely therapeutic experience. My thanks go out to the artist for bringing together a temporary community here in Philadelphia around his work.  The TNPPSSF made it possible to see that part of my own personal development from an informed, playful perspective, while having a laugh as I proclaimed “My name is Kelani, and I am a puberty survivor.”

You can catch the exhibit before its closing this Saturday:
Gallery Hours: Saturdays 12 – 4 pm or by appointment.

FLUXspace set-up turf right near the southern sound-stage, with a patch of grass boasting their brand to recline on while taking-in some tunes.

They also had quite a pile of art supplies and were encouraging youngsters to dive-in to the materials. With the help of the artists, the kids transformed themselves into cardboard robots. Someone in the FLUX group had the idea to equip packs of kiddies withFLUXspace flyers and colorful fake flowers and set them loose across the fair to spread the word about FLUX. What more powerful introduction to the community could any artspace ask for than the sweet smile of a jubilant youngster?

Little Berlin’s installation was much more elaborate, multi-level and multi-tasking, reflecting a kind of ‘self-portrait’ of the collective.

One could interact with the installation through a variety of means including spray-painting on the ‘Tag Wall’, complete with an array of colorful spray-paint cans to choose from.

Or getting your Polaroid taken in the ‘People Wrapped in Blankets’ photo-booth.

Other activities throughout the day included face painting by Little Berlin’s friendly artist crew, a panty-toss, paper airplane launch, and at the end of the festival under a sunny summer-like sky a refreshingly-cool water balloon fight broke out.

This installation was clearly more fun than theoretical, but certain elements of the ideas on display showed the true diversity of the work being produced by the members of Little Berlin. For example, the ‘People Wrapped in Blankets’ photobooth was a rather cheeky attempt by one of the artists in the group, my good friend Beth Heinly, to engage passers-by in the satirical handmade aesthetic of her work.

People seemed somewhat hesitant to approach the booth, yet each time someone chose to step-up an audience of passers-bys gathered to watch the spectacle. With the sun beating down on them, pairs of participants selected their blanket of choice and got comfy together.  The subtle way in which the piece toyed with both audience and participant’s expectations brought the work to life.  The absurd-dated visual style of the resulting Polaroids capture the performance’s essence – a snapshot of temporary intimacy and the awkwardness that is revealed in this everyday act when forced in front of a makeshift audience.

For those who chose to engage the work, the piece became a lighthearted performance between audience, participator, and the artist herself – everyone who played along had fun.  The diversity of this work thrives as it goes outside of the space of the Gallery, out into the community, gets poked and prodded. As a wrap, a take-away piece is produced that becomes an addition to the artist’s collection of ironic displacements-of-the-everyday that make up the larger body of her work.

The success of these two groups’ interactions with their surrounding community is extremely uplifting. Their presence in the middle of a local craft and music festival might lead one to wonder they had up for sale? Since neither group had actual goods for sale, the answer must lie in the exposure of the community to their creative act.  In other words, their ideas were up for grabs.

Many of the members of the community who encountered the artists outside in the street last weekend might never cross through the gallery walls, the sanctuary where these ideas are typically displayed, and thus would never have an opportunity to engage the work. This focus on community participation speaks to the diversity and heart of art in Philadelphia.

Secret Passage by Charles Hobbs, on display at Vox, is a somewhat awkwardly choreographed interactive piece.  As one approaches the opening to the exhibit a large, almost surreal twisted gate structure is immediately viewable, inhabiting the center of the room. As one draws nearer to this large structure, the inner-workings of the exhibit begin to expose themselves.  The entryway into the exhibit can only be traversed by navigating through a slowly moving mesh-like curtain which is rigged around the room on a motorized pulley system.  The result of this contraption is at once both restrictive and engaging – as the curtain moves into a closed position across the doorway, the choice to enter the space (or leave for that matter) is no longer available.

Unfortunately aside from the striking central gate-object which severs to initially draw the viewer in, there is not much else engaging once you’ve successfully entered the space, resulting in a backup trying to both enter and leave through the blocked opening.

The back-up creates a forced experience between viewers, as people wait to be released or permitted entry by the delicately moving curtain. It also creates a rather timid dance as people flow in and out of the exhibit at regular intervals as the curtains open and close.   The result is a displacement of the viewer, as she realizes the restrictions this exhibit places on her viewership.  This displacement is nicely complemented by the eerie dream-like quality of both the central gate-object and the mechanical curtain, as well as the background of theramin-generated lulls and the squeaking along of the pulley system.

This eerie displacement continued up on the sixth floor with the opening of Music and Sound in Progressive Sharing, a gallery space started by Maggie Manzer.  This space seemed curated to transport the viewer into a dream-like state (or perhaps it was more a result of the great beer selection at the Vox opening and all the Twin Peaks I’ve been watching).  As in the Secret Passage, music plays a central role in the exhibit, and it was also the subject of the piece displayed on the walls.  This display was less interesting, however, than the richly-real experience unfolding in the space.

As you enter, there is music being played from an antique Victrola accompanied by its owner and operator. To his left sits a parrot atop a wooden perch.  When I inquired with the man if that were his parrot, he responded, ‘No, this is my Victrola that’s his parrot.” indicating the man across from him (pictured above) who was apparently part of the orchestration of this experience.

The artist told that the man that he was free to go as the hour was getting late, but the man seemed insistent to stay and accompany his Victrola until the end.  Moving around the room one encountered various contraptions and exposed wires, related to the experiment with sound that was the subject of the opening.

I think the success of this work was perhaps less in what it intended – the experiment with music and sound – as it was in the realness of experience it created, especially when approximated by the work that is on display a few floors down in Vox.

Before I had more time to investigate the specifics of the music theory displayed on the walls in Music and Sound, an event began unfolding downstairs. It was another eerie choreographed experience; descend the stairs, migrate across the street towards the light emanating from yellow bulbs suspended at the tunnel’s ceiling under the tracks.

The yellow bulbs are an installation piece titled 'The Little Red String' which is part of 'Chinatown In/Flux'. The installation really helped to set the stage for a beautiful performance.

There everyone gathered around a table set with a number of crystal wine glasses full of water.

Each person individually wet their finger, and began to circle the rim of the glass.  The moaning of the reverberation from the glasses started out softy, then grew and morphed as more people joined in, and filled the space.  Coupled with the faint echo of the tunnel, and the dramatic soft light cast by the bulbs overhead, the sound created an engulfing other-worldly experience.

The seamless orchestration of this symphony was rather impressive, the doings of Mike Fleming and Ryan Hinkel in conjunction with the piece on display upstairs at Progressive Sharing.  The performance recalls the ‘Happenings’ of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the discordant and unfamiliar sounds emanating from the glassware seem to reference the work of John Cage, one of the originators of those performances.  The new idea in this piece lies in the artfully-intentioned way it was initiated and performed.  Earlier in the night, walking through the galleries, randomly scattered informational diagrams of how to make sound emanate from the top of a wine glass were posted throughout the space. Despite all the times I walked past and noticed the poster out of the corner of my eye, I never stopped to actually read it.  But its clean ‘visual-diagram’ style and repetition of placement in the exhibition space were enough for me to connect the two immediately, unconsciously as the performance began with the migration downstairs.

Poster image by Jon Barthmus

I am thrilled with Progressive Sharing’s experiments with-in and outside-of the traditional gallery space and am looking forward to seeing more from them.  Their thoroughly effective method of urging a happening suggests to me that looking at art in Philly is no longer so straightforward as it might seem.  Everything in the Collective space becomes on display, including the artists working spaces, which lurk at right angles all throughout the building.  Hints at what might unfold populate the space, and are as much part of the opening as the exhibits on display.  This communal approach to exhibition space, studio space, and what becomes performance space has a lasting impact.  The net result is that the work further removes itself from the white walls to go up the wooden stairs, around the corner, into a studio space (wrong turn), back down the stairs across the street and under the train tracks.