Steven Earl
Webber’s art
installation Like
Lambs presented
by HiddenCity
Philadelphia at
Shiloh Baptist
Church. Photo by
Joseph E.B. Elliott.
within Center City. The study found that there is a
strong potential for sacred places to host art galleries
or artists’ residencies – the latter a mutually beneficial
relationship since visiting artists often enhance the
spaces they are given to work in.
space. Center City Philadelphia currently has only
four legitimate theater spaces available for a pool of
more than 40 small professional companies looking to
produce here. We have the audiences and we have the
artists to serve them; what we need now is more space.”
A second case study focused on emerging dance and
theater organizations, confirming that there is a
marked interest in congregations to work with the
performing arts, and that sacred spaces within Center
City present many opportunities to provide affordable
space to emerging performance groups. Organizations
that have had relationships with sacred spaces
emphasized that long-term commitments, such as
those of two years or longer, aid in the building of trust
between the two groups.
Service organizations see sacred places as one solution
to this well-recognized problem. They called for
engagement between arts groups and congregations
as well as capacity-building programs for each. It is
clear that efforts to align arts organizations with sacred
places can be streamlined by working with service
organizations and their related projects. All of these
suggestions have been incorporated into the Making
Homes for the Arts in Sacred Places program.
Lastly, CultureWorks listened to the views of leaders
of various service organizations in Philadelphia such
as Dance/USA Philadelphia, the Theatre Alliance of
Greater Philadelphia, GPCA, and the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania. Margie Salvante, Executive Director
of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, noted
that lack of space could be a significant threat to
Philadelphia’s steadily growing theatre industry: “The
theatre industry of Greater Philadelphia is in a solid
period of sustained growth. However, the industry’s
potential…is being limited by access to performance
Moving Ahead with
Making Homes for the Arts in Sacred Places
Based on these findings, Partners, along with
CultureWorks, Dance/USA Philadelphia, the Theatre
Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, the Center for
Emerging Visual Artists, and GPCA, is implementing
a two-phase program that will transform underused
space in sacred places into thriving arts spaces.
Initially, Partners will target a few arts groups that have
great potential to benefit from new partnerships with
congregations that have significant space to share and
Sacred Places • Summer 2011 • 16