Stern, Mark
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Arts and Humanities
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Faculty Member
Introduction
The Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP)is a research project of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy & Practice. SIAP's mission is to develop methods to study how the arts and culture influence urban neighborhoods. Over the past 15 years, SIAP has conducted a variety of research projects, focused on metropolitan Philadelphia.
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Publication Housing Markets and Social Capital: The Role of Participation, Institutions, and Diversity in Neighborhood Transformation(2001-06-01) Stern, Mark JThis paper examines the housing markets described in the Philadelphia Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), launched by Mayor John Street in April 2001, through the lens of social capital indicators. In SIAP’s view, the lack of hard data on the city's social and human assets made it difficult for NTI or other urban revitalization efforts to evaluate urban assets with the same rigor as urban deficits. The paper uses SIAP data on three categories of assets to examine their potential implications for the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative: social institutions, individual participation, and economic and ethnic diversity. The paper argues that each of the three dimensions measures a different temporal aspect of social capital. Using economic parlance, institutions was proposed as a lagging indicator, participation as a concurrent indicator, and diversity as a leading indicator of social capital. Specifically, the paper sought to assess whether differences in social capital reinforce or cut across housing markets, and whether a social capital perspective could help identify neighborhoods with a better than average chance of succeeding in transforming themselves.Publication CultureBlocks: Bringing Arts & Culture into the Urban Policy Mix(2013-10-01) Stern, Mark JThis presentation was prepared for the Grantmakers in the Arts 2013 conference on "The NEW Creative Community" held October 6th-9th in Philadelphia. The CultureBlocks panel discussion was organized by Moira Baylson, Deputy Cultural Officer of the Philadelphia Office of Arts Culture and the Creative Economy, with Mark Stern, University of Pennsylvania. Stern's talk focused on use of CultureBlocks--as a data tool, a research tool, and a policy tool--to integrate the arts and culture into urban policy-making.Publication The Geography of Cultural Production in Metropolitan Philadelphia(2000-02-01) Stern, Mark JIn previous work on Philadelphia, SIAP found that nonprofit arts and cultural organizations tended to concentrate in economically and ethnically diverse neighborhoods. This paper uses data on for-profit cultural firms to document whether they too cluster in diverse neighborhoods or if they have a different logic of agglomeration. The paper uses two data sets for the five-county Philadelphia region: the nonprofit inventory of over 1,200 cultural providers—including incorporated and “informal” programs—compiled by SIAP in 1997; and a for-profit database of approximately 1,300 cultural firms derived in 1999 from a yellow-pages compilation of selected industries. The paper concludes with a description of five “natural” cultural districts in metropolitan Philadelphia with a focus on the mix of firms in each. It calls for further analysis of the synergies between the for-profit and nonprofit cultural sectors to understand how they share resources—especially audiences and artists—and what sustains these “natural” cultural districts. The implication is that cultural district planning could expand from tourist destinations to arts and cultural production districts.Publication Culture and Neighborhood Revitalization(2008-04-01) Stern, Mark JThis presentation was prepared for a convening of the Delaware Valley Grantmakers in Philadelphia in April 2008. The purpose of the talk was to draw on SIAP research--in particular, insights from the SIAP/Reinvestment Fund collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation--to shed light on the emerging role of philanthropy in culture-based neighborhood revitalization.Publication Beyond Discrimination: Understanding African American Inequality in the Twenty-First Century(2008-01-01) Katz, Michael B; Stern, Mark JPublication Communities, Culture, and Capabilities: Preliminary Results of a Four-City Study(2014-08-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan CThis paper reports early findings of a multi-city study of social wellbeing, neighborhood transformation, and the arts that builds on SIAP's Philadelphia research (Cultural Ecology, Neighborhood Vitality, and Social Wellbeing--A Philadelphia Project, Stern and Seifert, December 2013). The team used new data on Philadelphia to investigate ways in which two capabilities—economic wellbeing and social connection—influence four others—social stress, personal health, school effectiveness, and security. The appendix provides preliminary comparative data on four cities under study: Philadelphia, Austin, New York City, and Seattle. The paper was prepared for the Human Development and Capabilities Association September 2014 conference in Athens, Greece on the theme “Human Development in Times of Crisis: Renegotiating Social Justice.”Publication Age and Arts Participation: A Case against Demographic Destiny(2011-02-01) Stern, Mark JThe author used the National Endowment for the Arts' 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts and previous versions of the survey to examine changes in the role of age and cohort in arts participation since 1982. The study concluded that age and cohort had a relatively minor effect on arts participation ranging from live attendance at events to personal participation as well as literary reading and media-based participation. In short, despite concern about the graying of arts audiences, the findings suggest that age is not destiny. The ability of established or emerging arts groups to attract audiences will have less to do with the age distribution of the population than with their ability to connect to the creative aspirations of potential participants.Publication An Assessment of Community Impact of the Philadelphia Department of Recreation Mural Arts Program(2003-04-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan CThis 2003 report is a first assessment of community impact of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program since its start in 1984 under the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network. The study, undertaken from 2000 to 2002, incorporated a variety of methods. SIAP developed a geographic database on the location of murals to assess whether their density was related to other characteristics of a neighborhood. The team also developed a detailed mural production database to examine the nature of community involvement in MAP's process. Finally, the team employed a “community leveraging" model, based on a method developed by Penn’s Program for the Study of Organized Religion and Social Work, to estimate voluntary and in-kind contributions to mural production. The report concludes with a set of organizational and programmatic recommendations intended to maximize the potential of the Philadelphia Department of Recreation Mural Arts Program to mobilize resources and build connections among the city's neighborhoods, its young people, and its artists.Publication Cultural Asset Mapping Project: Progress Report(2012-12-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan CThis report describes SIAP work undertaken from December 2011 to December 2012 as part of the Philadelphia cultural asset mapping project. SIAP research and data analyses underway, in collaboration with Reinvestment Fund, included: a cross-sectional analysis of associations between cultural assets and social and community indicators by neighborhood; a time-series of the geography of cultural assets between 1997 and 2010, using SIAP’s historical database; and a Philadelphia livability/social inclusion index that links information on cultural assets with other community indices on neighborhood vitality and social wellbeing.Publication “Natural” Cultural Districts and Neighborhood Revitalization(2009-06-01) Stern, Mark JIn this presentation, Stern argues for a policy approach that recognizes creativity as deeply embedded in urban social structure and the importance of diversity (economic, ethnic, and household) to the social production of the arts and culture. Only then can we come up with strategies that stimulate a creative society, not just a creative economy.