It’s been a long time since my last arts update. In that time, the Pierce County Arts Commission held its annual Margret K Williams awards and doled out around $30,000 worth of community grants. Among the many programs we supported I was particularly proud to have played a leading role in securing funding for both Lincoln Center and First Creek Middle School to provide in-depth personalized arts education to underprivileged youth – but I failed to deprive the Pierce County Library System of funding for a short story contest. The library wanted the money to hire professional judges to select winning short stories and poems which the gifted authors could then purchase in published book form for a fee. I don’t recall how much exactly said fee was but it was considerable and led me to believe that this was more about securing business for vanity presses than anything else.

And so, I heroically – and publicly – declared to my fellow commissioners that the Pierce County Library was out to screw us and the children we support. Ironically, though in hind-sight predictably, I was met with extreme hostility and when the votes were tallied – it was 9 to 1 in favor of giving the Pierce County Library System the maximum allocation allowed. In the future, when I’m against something, I’ll just keep my mouth shut and emphasize the greatness of other programs so that non-priorities like poetry contests will walk away with a $500 pat on the back and nothing more.

The consultants from Wolf Brown that were hired some months back have developed an outline of Findings and Questions as part of their cultural planning process which has been in effect since October of 2009.

Of all these questions, the one that sticks out to me the most appears in Sec 4, paragraph D, line 3. It reads: “Are there particular approaches that can bolster vibrant but fragile entrepreneurial efforts or small arts and heritage groups?”

Imagine you serve on an arts commission – lets say, the Pierce County Arts Commission.  The economy is so bad its not even fair to say “it’s in the toilet.”  Rather, it would be more accurate to describe the economy as “in the outhouse.”  Your annual budget has been cut beyond the bone so that what revenue you do receive goes exclusively to operating costs (rent, heating etc.).  To make matters worse, legal restrictions on said commission make it almost impossible for you to improve the situation.

You serve as an adviser to the county and therefore can make only recommendations or – more often – sign off on the recommendations of Pierce County Employees.

You are unable to seek additional sources of revenue outside the county council (eliminating any hope of private sector support).

Suddenly, there is bright glint on the horizon.  Could it be a change in the economy? A second NEA stimulus package that doesn’t give 50% of its money to Seattle and 50% to the state agencies in Olympia?  No, its CULTURAL CONSULTANTS…

I know what you’re thinking.  Why is the Pierce County Arts Commission wasting money hiring consultants when we could put that money to community use like strengthening Artist in Residency grants or mobilizing a bid to have Tacoma host the 2022 Summer Olympics?  Well the truth is I can’t honestly explain fully why the decision was made to do this, except that the way the budget is structured (seemingly with railroad ties) we do not have the authority to shift funding from one division to the other.  I can say, however, that my fellow commissioners and I were universally skeptical of this decision when it was first revealed to us, and promise to do our part to make sure the county gets its money’s worth out of this project.

Anyway, who are these consultants you might ask?

Marc Goldring, Associate Principal, WolfBrown

Claudia Bach, President, AdvisArts Consulting

Bonnie Berk, President, BERK and Associates

They’ve developed a three phase plan to combat cultural decay in Pierce County.

PHASE 1 (September – December)

Research and Community Engagement.  Cultural Mapping and Data Mining.

PHASE 2 (December – January)

Analyze and Synthesize.  Pitch critical issues report to a twenty person steering committee (which yours truly is not on).  More Community Engagement and Integrate feedback into a “Cultural Needs Assessment Report.”

PHASE 3 (February-April)

Still more Community Engagement before finalizing plan via the steering committee before unveiling the final draft…..

If this at all sounds ambiguous, your not alone.  Commissioner Beth Willis did a fine job of trying to nail down the consultants’ specific definitions of success and to present a mission statement, but it was clear that they had been hired to find solutions to problems that had yet to be fully articulated.

So we spent the rest of our last meeting offering “feedback” to our new friends.  The question was, imagine that in 2012, Pierce County had a vibrant and growing cultural economy.   What happened?

The following were my suggestions:

1)  The Pierce County Arts Commission had an official website with content that was under the supervision of an assigned commissioner – not staff.

2)  The Tacoma School District was no longer dependent on volunteers to provide arts education to its elementary and middle school populations.

3)  Pierce County had somehow expanded the 1% for Art program to the private sector to include commercial real estate above a set assessed value.  (Additionally, it would be nice it we could revise the 1% for art program to include improvement on existing structures rather than the one-time payment of newly constructed government building – of which relatively few exist.)

4)  The county council had a 5:2 Democratic Majority.

Other members discussed the need to develop arts apprentice programs so students graduated with not only artistic interests and aptitudes but also vocational skills that could enable them to start earning money immediately.

You can join the discussion regarding what exactly Pierce County’s Artisistic Needs are by emailing your thoughts to the following emails

claudia@advisarts.com

marc@wolfbrown.com

mbuchan@co.pierce.wa.us

KBENSON@co.pierce.wa.us

image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/spadgy/

The Pierce County Arts Commission is currently operating on a budget that’s 40% of what we had last year, and yet another round of cuts is expected to hammer us this summer.  We continue to have staunch allies like Tim Farrell and Barbara Gelman, but it’s not enough to insure our programs’ survival.   Because we are not legally allowed to raise money for these programs from individuals or organizations outside the County Council, our position as commissioners seems largely ceremonial these days – which is hard for most of us.  We’ll be losing at least 4 members soon, and are thus in the process of recruiting enthusiastic (and preferably well connected) citizen activists to help us make the case for the arts.

Other than that, our staff is looking into acquiring a consultant to do some kind of field study to determine what our community’s artistic needs are and how we can best serve them.  My fear is that any kind of “listening tour” or “survey” we conduct will ultimately attract the same individuals the commission has been working with for the past three decades.  This commission needs to start building real relations with the community and bring new blood into the process of arts advocacy.  Not everyone needs to be a commissioner, but everyone should at least be aware that we have an arts commission.

Like most arts commissioners, I joined my county commission 14 months ago – not because I wanted a fancy name tag (which I’m usually too shy to wear in public anyway) – but because I actually wanted to make some sort of difference in the cultural conditions of my greater community.  I wanted to help shape policy that would promote both artistic and economic development; policy that would keep the arts accessible to students in our public schools.  I was even hoping the commission could become involved in helping to start a local literary magazine. But instead, I wound up spending most of my time justifying the necessity of public funding for the arts.

When I first joined, our county commission’s budget sat at around $180,000 (already down from where it sat at the same time the previous year by around $40K).  It was then cut to $135,000 in September of 2008, before being almost cut entirely in February of 2009.  Thanks to an impromptu letter writing protest, some of the funds were “recovered” so that now we expect to press on with an estimated budget of $89,000 at our “disposal” (see list of department cuts here). Even that money is not a sure thing, as the TNT ominously suggested today in an article that quoted a representative of the county sheriff’s department as saying: “maybe this money for arts and some of this other stuff needs to take a break for a couple years.”

Call me crazy, but I always believed that the purpose of public funding for the arts was to provide creative outlets and artistic exposure for those whom middle-class America had forgotten; specifically those suffering from social exclusion, physical disabilities or even those living under the most extreme forms of economic inequality.  How then can we justify cutting funding for the arts at times like these without ultimately discounting the very principals upon which our commissions were founded?

Recently, I had the opportunity to witness yet another Dance Theatre Northwest performance – this time at a Nursing Home in University Place.  While I came to support the extremely dedicated students and instructors of this fine association, I ultimately spent more time watching the audience than the performers on stage.

My grandmother (Oma) is 92 years old and in the advanced stages of Alzheimer Disease.  Both my parents lost their jobs last year in the economic downturn we’re still reading about today.  They can’t afford to place Oma in the kind of facility which Alzheimer’s patients require, so as a result she spends her days sitting in a chair watching television while my Mom struggles to find work that will simultaneously allow her to care for her mother.

Generally I visit my parents’ home in Portland (where unemployment reached 11% this past week) at least once a month, and I’ve noticed that Oma is most lucid when she’s watching either tennis or some kind of music program (usually classical symphony or choir). She was once a tremendous athlete, running a mile every day and lifting weights until she was forced to quit at age 88.  Now, televised tennis and music is all she has left.

DTN’s audience this past week was – generally speaking – in better shape than my Oma, but the underlying message of their performance was no less poignant.  For some people, THESE ART PROGRAMS LITERALLY MEAN THE WORLD.

So at the end of the day, I’m a member of a commission that spends 90% of its time beating the same drum into the ground.  But if we have to keep beating it to keep these programs alive….

Reducing our budget by any amount isn’t going to help shore up a $12 MILLION dollar short-fall, and will only hamper our ability to provide meaningful arts assistance to individuals and organizations who depend on us to help them bring a sense of relief to the less fortunate members of our community.

Again, public funding for the arts in this country was not born out of economic decadence but rather financial necessity.  Here in Pierce County, the need for public arts assistance is growing against a backdrop of shrinking support from our county council.  In other words, the very logic of an arts commission itself is being turned upside down and eventually someone is going to have to ask why we even have a commission in the first place.

I would like to encourage readers to once again remind our elected officials of why you are a patron of the arts and why you want your tax dollars to subsidize arts programs. Readers should write their county council member (which can be found here) and tell he/she to support the arts this recession.  (If you don’t know which district you live in, find out here.)

Upward Spiral by Jeremy Managan

On November 19, 2008, I joined fellow Arts Commissioner Bonnie Egbert along with: Margaret Bullock – Curator of Collections and Special Exhibitions at the Tacoma Arts Museum; Jennifer Olson-Rudenko – Gallery Coordinator at TCC/Pierce College and Elise Richman – Assistant Professor at the University of Puget Sound; in serving on the Pierce County Art Bank 2008 Selection Jury.  The purpose of this jury was to identify quality artworks for purchase by the county to be displayed in buildings occupied by Pierce County government offices.  The county allocated some $15,000 dollars for purchasing “original artworks from Pierce County artists.”  Our job as jury was to sift through the more than 300 submitted pieces by approximately 41 Pierce County artists to identify the most appropriate pieces for purchase and display.

We were not allowed to know the sticker price of the pieces submitted and as far as I know our role was purely as advisers to the County Council who can – and has in the past – overrule the Commission’s opinion.

Ultimately the jury identified 20 pieces that they liked best, ranking work by: Jeremy Managan, James A Porter, Bill Colby and Fumiko Kimura in the highest tier of its selection.

The following email was sent yesterday from the office of Pierce County Councilman (and Democratic candidate for County Executive) Calvin Goings. It was drafted in response to an email that more or less reflected the most recent Arts Update.

Read More >>

Last Saturday – August 9 – I had the opportunity to speak at Tacoma’s Museum of Glass during the second of two free recitals Dance Theatre Northwest’s (DTN) preformed that day. As many of you may know, DTN is a county-assisted dance troop dedicated to making the world of dance accessible to those traditionally marginalized by the fine arts. Specifically DTN seeks to inspire “low income and at-risk youth as well as schools, retirement/nursing homes and senior centers.” The Pierce County Arts Commission has been supporting DTN for well over a decade now through a series of modest community grants, and in 1998 we awarded them the Commission’s Margaret K Williams Arts Award for taking the initiative in being a leader in the community’s artistic development.
As about a dozen agile young ladies – accompanied by a handful of college-age men – Sus-soused and chasséd across the mobile stage before a mixed audience of some 150 people, I pirouetted my own way around uncomfortable questions about funding and whether or not the County’s Arts Commission is going to be able to provide continued support for organizations like DTN in the future.

As our readers surely know, Pierce County has some 800,000 thousand residents, many of whom lack the resources to participate in the arts. I was recently reminded of this fact by a brief article printed in the TNT last month that claimed that 55% of Tacoma’s 29,000 public school children qualify for free or reduced lunch. In other words, more than half of the children in Tacoma come from families that struggle to put food on the table; families that could never hope to offer a well-rounded appreciation for the arts were it not for civic institutions and programs like schools, libraries, and non-profits such as DTN.

Having nearly dropped out of high school myself many years ago, I can personally attest how programs like after school dance, music or drama productions help disenfranchised youth find a sense of purpose, belonging and often a kind of self-worth that the traditional three “Rs” fail to deliver. I honestly can say that had I not landed the lead role in Agatha’s Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution during my tumultuous sophomore year, I probably would not have been motivated to take my grades seriously, inadvertently become an honor student, earn a scholarship to the University of Puget Sound and ultimately come to serve my community through this arts commission.

Today, I can only reflect upon my childhood with profound thanks for the leaders of my community who wisely chose to invest their resources in the “secondary” activities that defined both my and my brother’s past. I am also left wondering exactly how much it is worth to a county government to give just one student a sense of direction and a reason to stay in school? How much is it worth to give a struggling community a brief sense of release from the restraints and harsh realities of daily life, which currently seem to grow ever more severe with each passing day? Would an annual allocation of $180,000 (roughly $0.23 per county resident) to the Arts and Cultural Services Division be too much to ask? Unfortunately, the answer for our county leadership currently seems to be “yes”, though we on the arts commission intend to fight tooth and nail to change their minds.

The good news is that the general sense among my fellow commissioners is that we do still have allies of civic arts programs currently serving on the Pierce County Council, some even have a track record to prove it. For this, we – and countless of Pierce County residents who, for one reason or another, fail to write their elected officials on even a semi-annual basis – are extremely grateful. Still, I sense a real need for our county’s arts community to actively encourage our elected officials to not acquiesce to those on both the Left and the Right who would cite vague economic forecasts or unrelated political concerns to justify a sixteenth year of cuts to our county’s arts and cultural programs/services.

Just a thought: the next time you rent a book (or more likely movie) from your local public library, send your county-councilman an email about how much you appreciate this public service. Or the next time you attend an Arts Commission sponsored event like the recent Tacoma Ethnic Fest let them know if you feel it was money well spent. At the very least, let them know IMMEDIATELY how supporting the arts ultimately supports the community as a whole.

I just wanted to thank Tacoma’s City Arts Magazine for publishing my letter regarding the need for local politicians to support our civic arts programs. Hopefully we’ll get some mileage out of it, especially given the interest State Representative Dennis Flannigan appears to be taking in our local arts projects.

Thought I should provide my community (constituents is far too strong a word) with an update regarding the state of Pierce County’s Arts Community.

THE BUDGET

The budget crisis continues to be at the forefront of our efforts, though without massive public support it is clear we will not be able to stall drastic cuts (25% or greater) to our ever dwindling budget. This will likely be our 15th year of cuts to our budget, which will make it increasingly difficult for us to serve any meaningful purpose in Pierce County’s arts community. Please write your respective county representatives and ask them to make funding public arts and arts outreach projects a major priority.

Read More >>

The following MP3 recording is a reenactment of a three minute speech I attempted to make before the Pierce County Council (PCC) at Riverside Elementary on June 10, 2008.  I was hardly so calm during the actual forum, but the council hasn’t yet seemed to post the recording, so this is the best I can do.  
I came to the PCC to speak on behalf of the Pierce County Arts Commission, which is marked for dramatic budget cuts.