Friday, February 01, 2008
Arts Seeking New Lifeblood
An alarming report in today’s newspaper: nearly half of the region’s performance-art going patrons are 55 and older. Higher than the national average, higher than the average in other “rust belt” cities with cultural attractions, such as St. Louis and Baltimore.
One academic pointed out that the problem with attracting younger attendees is that “the arts are "just another leisure choice…To get somebody to say, 'Yeah I'll go to the exhibit rather than go to [a restaurant] you have to help them understand why that's a better choice.”
The article goes to great lengths to detail the strategies that cultural outlets like the Cultural District, the Symphony, and the City Theater are going to employ to attract younger patrons. Here are the two big omissions, however: first, the attendance is simply a by-product of the age distribution in Allegheny County. The County has experienced more deaths than births and the age cohort of people 18 to 29 has fallen significantly from where it stood in 1980. Simply put, there are just fewer young people for the amenities to court.
Second, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County have had a 1 percent sales tax (the Regional Asset tax) in place since 1994 which was sold as necessary to make such cultural amenities attractive, especially to the young demographic. People here of all ages have much more skin in the game than in other regions by virtue of their tax dollars being invested in cultural and arts institutions.
Since 1995, the arts and cultural organizations have received a cumulative total of $90 million, or about 10% of all the money the District has dispensed of since its inception. An official of one cultural venue stated that “We can't just keep maintaining the same loyal fans, as extraordinary and important as they are…We need to keep reaching out to build a younger core, and get them in the door at a younger age, and then they will be our core in later years.”
But what he fails to realize is that the 1 percent tax crafted to shore up venues like his, when combined with other burdensome levies, including the new one on poured drinks, are driving the younger core out of the region, the exact opposite effect all the boosters of the tax and other development plans claimed we would see. Instead of using a 1 percent tax to invest in infrastructure to grow the local economy which would produce the disposable income needed to spur cultural amenities, the regional brain-trust eschewed the strategy.
One academic pointed out that the problem with attracting younger attendees is that “the arts are "just another leisure choice…To get somebody to say, 'Yeah I'll go to the exhibit rather than go to [a restaurant] you have to help them understand why that's a better choice.”
The article goes to great lengths to detail the strategies that cultural outlets like the Cultural District, the Symphony, and the City Theater are going to employ to attract younger patrons. Here are the two big omissions, however: first, the attendance is simply a by-product of the age distribution in Allegheny County. The County has experienced more deaths than births and the age cohort of people 18 to 29 has fallen significantly from where it stood in 1980. Simply put, there are just fewer young people for the amenities to court.
Second, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County have had a 1 percent sales tax (the Regional Asset tax) in place since 1994 which was sold as necessary to make such cultural amenities attractive, especially to the young demographic. People here of all ages have much more skin in the game than in other regions by virtue of their tax dollars being invested in cultural and arts institutions.
Since 1995, the arts and cultural organizations have received a cumulative total of $90 million, or about 10% of all the money the District has dispensed of since its inception. An official of one cultural venue stated that “We can't just keep maintaining the same loyal fans, as extraordinary and important as they are…We need to keep reaching out to build a younger core, and get them in the door at a younger age, and then they will be our core in later years.”
But what he fails to realize is that the 1 percent tax crafted to shore up venues like his, when combined with other burdensome levies, including the new one on poured drinks, are driving the younger core out of the region, the exact opposite effect all the boosters of the tax and other development plans claimed we would see. Instead of using a 1 percent tax to invest in infrastructure to grow the local economy which would produce the disposable income needed to spur cultural amenities, the regional brain-trust eschewed the strategy.
