Advocacy doesn't run on a legislative calendar alone, it's a twelve-month cycle, and there's rarely a quiet stretch. We continue to move several efforts forward at once: helping shape a new contracted role focused on culture and creativity in Downtown Pittsburgh, piloting the Fair Deal Checklist and Index with three local arts organizations, and leading a regional study of the arts funding landscape. It's your continued support, encouragement, and engagement that keeps this work moving forward, even in the months between budget cycles and headlines.

Comparing Notes on Cultural Planning in Cleveland

At the end of July, I traveled to Cleveland to participate in a City Club of Cleveland panel discussion titled "What Is a Cultural Plan? Lessons from Four Cities,” at the invitation of Assembly for the Arts. The panel brought together arts leaders from Cleveland, Akron, Rockford, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh to compare notes on culture’s role in a city and how cultural planning can be approached and implemented. Moderated by Jennifer Coleman of The George Gund Foundation, the conversation touched on questions we're exploring here too, like how communities build shared ownership of a cultural vision and keep it alive well past the planning phase.

It was a valuable chance to compare notes with peer cities. If you'd like to watch, the full forum is available on video.

Outside the panel, I had time to get to know Cleveland a little better, and to think seriously about how Cleveland and Pittsburgh might collaborate more, given that we're only two hours apart. Read what I discovered in my essay, The Distance Between Pittsburgh and Cleveland: We're Closer than We Think.

Advising the City on a Downtown Culture Strategist Role

We continue to work with the City of Pittsburgh, in an effort now more than a year in the making, to help shape a contracted position focused on enhancing and expanding culture and creativity within the city, beginning in Downtown. We're grateful to the City for staying open to our suggestions and feedback throughout this process, and we anticipate an RFQ for the position will be published by September.

While in Cleveland, I spent the day with Rhonda K. Brown, who started in a similarly grant-funded role within Cleveland's city planning department. After two years, her position was reimagined, and she was brought directly into the Mayor's cabinet. Her path offers an aspirational roadmap for what this contracted position in Pittsburgh could grow into over time.

We'll keep you updated as the RFQ moves forward.

Piloting a Path to Fairer Contracting

Through our partnership with the Equity | Impact Center, and with support from the Tremaine Foundation, we're moving forward with piloting The Fair Deal Checklist and Index, a tool designed to help arts and cultural organizations assess and strengthen their contracting practices with artists and creative workers. The Checklist and Index offers a way to see where an organization currently sits on the equity spectrum, and to identify concrete, actionable steps toward fairer, more transparent contracting.

We're pleased to welcome three piloting partners: Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Shiftworks Community + Public Arts, and Assemble. Over the next few months, each organization will work with the Equity | Impact Center and the Arts Council to map where their contracting practices currently fall within the equity spectrum, surface the resources and support they need to advance those practices, and help track outcomes for equitable contracting.

Thank you to these three organizations for being early adopters of this work. Their experience will help ensure that other organizations have onramps, not obstacles, when it comes to building more equitable contracting practices.

Mapping Arts Funding Across the Region

Arts funding is at an inflection point. Federal investment is being scrutinized, state agencies have restructured their funding programs and strategies, and philanthropic foundations are reviewing priorities and eligibility criteria. To help the field navigate with confidence, we're leading a regional analysis that goes directly to funders, through structured interviews, to better understand the current funding landscape rather than rely on websites or secondhand information.

The result will be a published executive summary of funding trends, along with a public-facing roadmap to help arts organizations, non-arts nonprofits with arts programs, fiscally sponsored projects, individual artists, and creative businesses know where to start.

At the end of July, we reached out to 28 regional foundations with a history of funding the arts, inviting each to participate through either a phone interview or an online form. We're grateful to the funders who have already engaged with us, and we look forward to sharing what we learn as this work continues.

Planning Our Next Policy and Action Roundtable

If we want to see different outcomes for arts investment, we need to be willing to consider different approaches, including how we make the case for support. That means drawing clearer, more direct lines between the work of our field and both the primary and secondary benefits and outcomes that work drives. This fall, we're convening the field to explore two frames for doing exactly that: Purpose, Belonging, and Identity, and Cultural Capital, alongside expert voices from beyond the arts sector.

We also see this as an opportunity to think about collective impact: the idea that lasting, population-level change comes not from individual organizations working in isolation, but from a network of community members, organizations, and institutions learning together, aligning their strategies, and integrating their actions toward a shared goal. That collective approach is exactly what our next Policy and Action Roundtable will hone in on, working toward a shared measure the field can track together, sector-wide, year-over-year.

More details on date, location, and registration to come.

The Devil is in the Details

A recent trip to see the Danzas de Diablos in Chitré, Panama, brought back a question Joseph Hall from Kelly Strayhorn Theater asked me soon after I moved to Pittsburgh, and one that's stayed with me for years: Pittsburgh is undeniably an arts city, but is it a cultural city? I share some of my thoughts from my trip in a new blog post, and would love to hear your thoughts after you give it a read: What feels like Pittsburgh culture to you?

Other News of Interest:

September 8: Radically Ridiculous Midterm Accelerator Kickoff | Virtual

» Register here
 

The Center for Artistic Activism hosts this 7-8 p.m. training with L.M. Bogad, Mark Kendall, and Ian Madrigal on using humor and creative spectacle, or "tactical frivolity," to support voter mobilization and protection ahead of the fall midterms. The session kicks off a broader Accelerator program that will fund selected election-related creative projects with $1,000 in direct support plus mentorship and promotion.

September 9: Legal Webinar: Lobbying & Electioneering for Nonprofits | Virtual

» Register here
 

PANO, the Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations, hosts this legal webinar on what nonprofits can do, not just what they're restricted from doing, when it comes to lobbying and election-year advocacy. Topics include the Johnson Amendment, voter registration drives, candidate forums, and how to differentiate lobbying from advocacy. Cost is $45 for PANO members and $100 for non-members.

September 15–19: PGH2050 Draft Plan Review Workshops | Multiple Locations

» Register here
 

The Department of City Planning invites residents, community organizations, and stakeholders to review the draft PGH2050 plan, Pittsburgh's first comprehensive plan, at one of four neighborhood workshops. Each session presents updated draft recommendations, shaped by thousands of comments from earlier rounds of community input, and offers a chance to ask questions and weigh in before the plan enters its 60-day public comment period this fall. Workshops are held:

A Teenager Finds His Sense of Self through the Arts

We met Robert "RJ" Reed-Williams while visiting Alumni Theater Company to prepare for a visit from Sen. Lindsey Williams and quickly recognized a strong, distinct voice. We connected him with Pittsburgh's Public Source, and we're thankful RJ wrote this piece, titled I found myself on stage. Gen Z shouldn’t forget the arts, and that Public Source published it. In this first-person essay, RJ, a rising senior at Westinghouse Arts Academy, reflects on how theater and the literary arts helped him hold onto his sense of self and calls on Gen Z and Gen Alpha not to turn away from the humanities in an age of AI and rising materialism.

Do you know a person or organization worth a spotlight? We'd love to learn more! Use this form to send us their info for consideration in a future newsletter.

Share Your Experience on Generative AI's Impact on Performing Artists

SMU DataArts, with support from the Mozilla, Doris Duke, and Ford Foundations, is conducting a survey on how generative AI is affecting performing artists working in theater, dance, and live music. The survey is open to anyone in the performing arts, at any career stage or creative role, including performers, directors, choreographers, designers, and technicians. There's currently little data on how these technologies are shaping artists' income, career opportunities, and creative practices, and the findings will help inform policy discussions, funding priorities, and field-wide advocacy going forward. The survey is open through Sept. 8.
 

Turn Passion for the Arts into Powerful Advocacy

Established arts and culture leaders and senior staff members of organizations in Southwestern Pennsylvania are encouraged to apply for the Advocacy Leadership Institute. The six-month program licensed from CreativeOhio prepares participants to advocate with clarity, credibility, and confidence at the local and state level. This is the inaugural cohort in the Greater Pittsburgh region, and we’re thrilled to bring the program here to help seed a growing network of advocacy champions.  
 

» Missed our ALI info session? Watch our recording here. 

Participants will meet monthly from January–May 2027 to build knowledge of legislative and funding processes, hands-on advocacy skills, and lasting relationships with peers and policymakers.

Thanks for helping shape Pittsburgh’s future through advocacy and action,

Patrick Fisher
CEO, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council

PS. Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up now to be part of the movement. New here? Welcome! We send a few different emails. If you’re just here for Advocacy in the Arts, click 'Manage email preferences' below and select 'Advocacy Newsletters.'
 

CORRECTION: In last month’s newsletter, we celebrated the Allegheny County arts and culture-related recipients of the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) grants. Unfortunately, we mistakenly missed that the official RACP announcement included both applicants and awardees. We apologize for the error and have updated the list in our archives.