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What Will Transit Cuts Mean For Philly Theater Audiences

September 3, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Funding cuts for Philadelphia’s transit system known as SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) is causing a lot of concern around that city. SEPTA runs both trains and buses. I have seen a lot of concern expressed by parents and schools about how students are going to be able to get to school.

I also recently saw an article discussing concerns theaters in the city have about how the cuts may impact attendance at performances. A survey by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance revealed a number of attendees either drove or took public transportation. Difficulty parking was identified as a major barrier to attendance and now there is a concern that lack of public transportation may become an issue as well.

As the technical report shared by the Alliance shows, 58% of people in the region drove to the theater venues, while 22% take public transportation, and 20% walk. The Philadelphia-only numbers are a little different — 39% of the city’s theater audiences drove to performances, a comparable 30% took public transit, and 32% walked.

The surveyed audience skews older: Most respondents were between 58 and 77, while only 7% of audience survey respondents and 11% of public opinion respondents fell into the Gen Z (18-25) bracket. Gen Z respondents named cost and the lack of transportation are the two biggest barriers to their participation.

Source

The article notes that most respondents were white, a small number were Black. Latine and Asian participation in the survey was nearly non-existent.

I wanted to point out that while transit cuts potentially impacting 30% of audiences living in Philadelphia, the fact that 32% of people walk to performances says something about the walkability of the city and the distribution of theaters relatively close to residential areas.

Arts Facilities, Audience Relations

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Not Easy To Provide Cultural Experiences To A Nation’s 18 Year Olds

September 2, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Via a LinkedIn post by Rainer Glaap, I was disappointed to learn that Germany’s KluturPass program is being discontinued. (In German but most browsers can translate pretty well.) The program provided passes to 18 year olds that could be used to attend theater performances, cinema, purchase books, etc. The hope post-pandemic was to get young people out participating in cultural activities while also boosting the cash flow to cultural industries.

A number of European countries created similar programs which I have written about over the last five years or so.

The KulturPass program has been criticized for being a poor use of funds and has had funding cut a few times. Recently it was apparently determined the government doesn’t have the authority to fund the program.

The reason for this is an assessment by the Federal Court of Auditors, according to which the federal government lacks constitutional authority to finance the project. Based on this assessment, the non-partisan Minister of State for Culture, Wolfram Weimer, sees little chance for the culture pass. “From now on, we will intensify other projects to promote culture for young people,” Weimer said.

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According to another piece on the Politik & Kultur site to which Rainer linked, the implementation of the program was a little rough due to some young people not having the required Internet access and difficultly communicating the availability of the program due to privacy laws.

In a post Rainer made in 2023, he noted there were some pretty big hurdles to using the pass to purchase theater tickets. Apparently you could only use the pass through a central ticketing platform rather than reserving tickets directly with the theater. From what I understand, book stores had some of the best sales volume through the use of the app. It also sounds like a person would get a voucher rather than actual tickets.

Rainer wrote:

“However, anyone unfamiliar with the intricacies of booking may initially struggle to find the right price category and discount, both at Eventim and in the theater’s online shop..”

Source

The writers at Politik & Kultur suggest that the program should be provided more time to work out the kinks and a commitment to more consistent support. They note that the parallel program in France started in 2021 and reaches 60% of 18 year olds (KulturPass got off the ground in 2023)

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Government Relations

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All That You Can’t Leave Behind

August 27, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Folks may remember that in June 2024 the University of the Arts in Philadelphia pretty abruptly announced they were closing after about 150 years in operation. This came as a shock to faculty, staff, and students. Many students were left to scramble because the university hadn’t made any arrangements to help students transfer to other institutions.

One consequence I hadn’t really been aware of is that the school closed so abruptly that faculty and students weren’t able to retrieve the art they had produced. While security did walk them through some buildings, not all spaces were open for retrieval.

This past month there was a newspaper story about a salvage company which was going through one of the buildings that was offering to reunite students with their work before the building is converted to luxury apartments. Thunderbird Salvage was posting a lot of what they found on Instagram but warned people that they were removing so much that it was impossible to record every object.

Thunderbird’s Instagram post racked up several hundred comments within days, while Mathes warned users that the brutalist, nine-story classroom and workshop building had too much stuff inside to catalog.

[…]

Mathes says he’ll save what he can and haul it up to Thunderbird’s locations — a church on the 2400 block of Frankford and a hall on the 2800 block of Frankford — for a sale planned for mid-August. If an artist drops by with a credible claim to a specific piece, it’s theirs at no cost, he said.

[…]

What Mathes and Thunderbird don’t manage to save, workers from Richard S. Burns Waste Recycling Company are hauling to the company’s scrapyard. But Mathes soldiers on: The thought of junking items still precious to the artists, if not potential buyers, bugs him.

Source

*If you are thinking the title of this post sounds familiar, it was the name of an album U2 released in 2000.

Art(ist) Education, Arts Facilities, Working In The Arts

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Why You’ll Frickin’ Love This Collection

August 26, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Earlier this month, Hyperallergic had a short article about a video that actor Steve Martin made for the Frick Collection in NYC. What I appreciated was the way the information in the video was ordered.

The first 1:15 is focused on what the attendee might find interesting. The next 30-45 seconds talks about the “product features.” The remainder of the 6 minute video is about the history of the Frick collection.

I have to believe that this ordering was intentional rather than a happy accident of the way the editor pulled the information together.

That second part which I label as “product features” contains internally focused language that arts organizations would primarily use up until recently listing the qualities the organization thinks are important.

“..a singular New York City experience: A storied trove of art and decorative objects housed in a meticulously restored Gilded Age mansion….”

Source

However, the video starts with the following which is externally focused and all about the visitor experience:

“Consider what you or I might be drawn to…maybe it is a gilded beard, or a velvet sleeve, a trend setter, a love triangle, a mysterious exchange…Maybe what you see reminds you of a friend or a place you’ve been, or a book you’ve read, or a show you’ve binged.

Maybe it jogs a memory or fills you with a sense of delight, desire, power, wonder, bemusement, or calm.

Maybe you need a moment to sit and think and escape. Somewhere peaceful. Somewhere with a view….this is what the Frick collection is for. For slowing down, following your eye, and getting closer to objects of beauty and awe…”

Source

The structure of the video reflects an understanding of how people consume content online (and probably through other media experiences as well.) It starts out talking about what the visitor will enjoy. Then focused on the quality of the art and experience. And then if you are still curious and want to learn more, talks about the history of the collection’s founding by Henry Clay Frick in the late 19th century.