by Patricia Frischer
I have been pushing to re-form a San Diego County Arts
Council since I found out that there used to be one that did not survive. Now,
it appears that will happen in my lifetime! The
Reimagine Vibrant Communities Through Arts & Culture report
has now been made public and is in the hands of the SD County Supervisors. It
advises that criteria be set for Commissioners to be chosen and so we are
heading in the right direction to bring back an art commission or art council
for the county of San Diego.
But perhaps San Diego should not adhere to any existing
outline for a county-wide arts and culture commission even if it is deemed
“best practice”. Don’t we need to create
a new structure suitable to our own population? San Diego has an arts scene like
no other community that I have experienced. There is no central power structure and I deem
that a good thing. A re-formed county arts and culture administration should
not rush in to fill that void. In fact, most agree that we can’t see this step
as a panacea for all our problems. Let’s manage our expectations and allow time
for some creative failure along with much needed aid.
I really applaud that equity will be the cornerstone of
that revised organization. And a big part of what needs to be done is not only
broadcasting successes, but to also support well intentions experimentation
even when not successful. The question is, how do you assure both of those
goals will be reached.
When forming any organization, it is essential that all
involved have a basic agreement on their shared values and beliefs. So that is
a starting place; artistic excellence, accessibility to all, inclusivity for
all regions, ethical and professional behavior, enabling and empowering,
collaborative and cooperative, seeking economic viability, respectful equity.
Do we need another layer of administration to assure
eventually agreed upon objectives, goals and strategies? My answer is yes, but I don’t see this as an
either/or proposition, but one with potential added value. Just like there is a
big push for the arts to be help social services, there is also a place for art
to simply be that thing that adds immense joy to our lives.
Yes, we have waited a long time for the county to add more
to the conversation about the arts. Now we have to hurry up and slow down to
get it right.
This year for my State of the Arts report I decided to take
a look back at all of the support for the arts that was mentions in our RAWcolumns in 2021. This is just a snapshot and is not every call for applications or
every funding report. Can you see some trends?
Jan
Good news for the creative industries and artists from the CA’s
$227 billion budget. CA is in good shape financially with a $15 billion
projected surplus. Preliminary proposal for creative industries state arts
agency includes a one-time $15 million CA
Creative Corps pilot program and no decrease overall in
ongoing funding for the CA
Art Council plus $25 million for Cultural
Institutions in grants in the next round of $575 million for small businesses
recognizing the disproportionate impact of the shutdown to our sector. It is a
great start now its need to get it through the legislature. Arts advocates, be
ready, you’ve got more work to do.
Congratulation to the California Arts Council Administrators of Color Fellows and Host Organizations which include Luisa MartÃnez from the Museum of Us who is a transfronteriza cultural organizer, artist, and educator. Her practice develops from the trans-border context of Tijuana-San Diego, but looks to understand borders, and their imminent destruction, beyond geographical parameters.
Feb
Building on the longstanding partnership between the California
Alliance for Arts Education (the Alliance) and Create CA and their
shared mission to make sure that a quality arts education is part of every
student’s life, they are merging into a new, united organization using the
Create CA name. By coming together, they will join the power of Create CA’s dynamic
communications and innovative data
project with the Alliance’s proven policy and advocacy
track record and statewide
network supporting districts and counties to provide a
full arts education to all students.
March
We all know how bad it is out there for the arts, but here
are four links put out by USD research team: 2020
Annual Report: State of Nonprofits and Philanthropy in San Diego, Nonprofit
Sector Response for COVID-19 March 2020 , Unprecedented
Disruption: COVID-19 Impact on San Diego Nonprofits May 2020, 2020
Culture Shift: Measuring COVID-19 Impact on San Diego Arts and Culture
Nonprofits. Nope, we are not going to summarize
these for you, but we asked and they did it for us.
Arts
Advocacy Week is April 19-23. Hundreds of advocates will meet (virtually)
in Sacramento to illustrate the creative industries and artists impact on
our economy and wellbeing, and to meet directly with elected officials to
encourage them to support increased public funding for the arts and legislation
and policies that are pro-arts, arts education, culture and the creative
sector. We hope you will engage in advocacy and for you to be inspired to
participate but you must sign up with Californians for the Arts. Raise your
voice for the arts and join us for advocacy week April 19-23 by becoming
a delegate. Attend ACCM
Virtual Convening – April 27. The keynote speaker is
our own Todd Gloria!
Of the $78 million awarded in
the first winter 2021 cycle of the Conrad Prebys Foundation,
$8,517,500 was granted to Visual and Performing Arts organization. These grants
requested $28,767,500.00, but at least 41 different grants were given out.
California
Arts Council is changing the name
of its Arts in Corrections to Transformative Arts. This
is its prison arts program and the change is in honor of its participants &
the possibilities creative expression provides.
April
A
big pat on the back to the Commission for Arts and
Culture for their newsletter that is lively and
informative about happenings at the commission. They also have a data-driven,
interactive map that
shows the impact of 160+ partner organizations.
May
Of the 11
San Diego County arts organizations who received a combined $203,000 in grants
from the National Endowment for Arts in San Diego only two were for visual
arts: Outside the Lens in San Diego, $10,000 and the San
Diego State University Foundation’s Prison Arts Collective program, $35,000.
Bonita Museum & Cultural Center (BMCC) will join museums nationwide in the
Blue Star Museums initiative, a program that provides free admission to
currently-serving U.S. military personnel and their families this summer. The
2021 program begins on Armed Forces Day, Saturday, May 15, 2021, and end on
Labor Day, Monday, September 6, 2021. Find the list of
participating museums at arts.gov/bluestarmuseums.
June
The Balboa Art
Conservation Center (BACC), welcomes new staff member Andrea “Angie” Chandler as
Cultural Strategist, to support the organization's recent shift into Inclusion
as its Audience and Engagement Specialist. Chandler has already made an impact
in the Southern California region with her project, Culture Mapping: San Diego,
a community informed initiative to identify the Black, Indigenous, and People
of Color cultural sector and ultimately connect them with much needed resources
such as funding and space. Chandler from Brooklyn, New York, most recently
served as the Education Manager at the San Diego Museum of Art where she
oversaw a department that included a museum art school, adult and youth
programming, the museum’s library and more. For more info: Leticia
Gomez Franco 619.236.9702.
July
The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and
Culture recently announced
174 funding awards for the fiscal year 2022. More than $7.7 million will be
distributed to nonprofits that make meaningful impacts in communities and
expand access to arts and culture throughout the city. See the award at these
two links: Organizational Support Program
(OSP) and Creative Communities San Diego
(CCSD). P.S. We love seeing the
Commissioner Spotlights in the newsletter as this gives us a chance to know
more about this select group of citizens supporting the arts in San Diego.
Contact them for more info: arts@sandiego.gov
Did you know that the previous
federal government promised the arts and culture industry $16 billion in emergency funding? They have received 14,000
applications for a total of $11 billion and as of June 22 have only given out $834 million to 1400 applications. Not only that but each
application was 30 to 100 pages long. Does anyone else see a flaw here? Read more
from the New York Times. There is
emergency federal, state and county
funding for the arts.
State funding included in the main budget bill has now been signed by the
state governor and include an historic investment of over $600 million dollars
to arts, culture and live events in California with $128 million to California
Arts Council of which $40 million is for Creative Youth Development, $60
million for CA Creative Corps Pilot program and remaining for local assistance
programs and staffing. Read more in our summary: California
Arts Council Funding Update: July 2021 by Patricia
Frischer
The California
Arts Council is officially
launching DREAM, the
state arts agency’s new arts and culture magazine. The annual
publication features voices and stories from across the state, sharing a
glimpse into the depth of impact of creativity and cultural expression in a
region as large and diverse as California. The premier issue explores what it
means to dream, introducing artists and culture bearers from communities
throughout the state. Subscribe to DREAM magazine and receive your free copy in the
mail, followed by subsequent yearly issues. A digital edition of the magazine,
with both English and Spanish versions, is available also for free on the
California Arts Council website at www.arts.ca.gov/dream.
Aug
The Commission
of Arts and Culture for the City of San Diego is trying to move mountains of policy to bring in a new era of equality.
Led by Jonathon Glus, the executive director, the proposal which still
has to be passed the city council, aims to make the grant process easier for
small organization with less stringent auditing and more importantly access to
money before the project instead of after the fact. Individual artist or even one-off campaigns,
as long as they use non-profit fiscal agents, will now be eligible. Although
inclusion will be emphasized, project that serve the city but are located
elsewhere will no longer be permitted.
This makes it even more important for communities like Chula Vista,
Lemon Grove and Poway to have new funds by bringing back a county wide office
of arts and culture. BTW, the City has made a call for fiscal agents to step forward and be pre-approved to offer a
choice for these underserved groups.
California Arts Council Round 8, the
Nonprofit Cultural Institutions Program, will open on August 27, 2021. If you
have already received a CA Relief Grant, you are not eligible to receive
another one. ONLY one award per organization/individual/business. For more information, sign up for the FREE
webinars to learn more.
Sept
The Carlsbad
Arts Commission approved the Fiscal
Year 2021-22 Community Arts Grants Funding Plan on Aug. 5, 2021 including 29 arts projects and capacity
building projects for local schools
and arts organizations taking place in Carlsbad through Aug. 31, 2022. This
includes $8461 for North County Arts Network.
In August, the Creative Economy
Revitalization Act (CERA) bill was introduced. CERA is a $300 million
dollar program that will mitigate creative worker displacement, stimulate local
creative workforce growth, strengthen connections for local creative small
businesses and networks, create a pipeline for new creative jobs, enrich
communities, increase access to culture, and invest in creative workers and
local economies harmed by COVID-19. Ask your member of Congress to sign on to H.R. 5019 as a cosponsor to support
the creative economy in your community. This is the 21th century
version of the WPA.
Oct
It is time to apply for your City of San Diego Commission for Arts and
Culture funding. Organizational Support Program (OSP): Provides general operating support to arts and
culture nonprofits and Creative Communities San Diego (CCSD):
Provides support for projects in a variety of artistic and cultural forms, from
film and video screenings, art exhibitions and performances to festivals and
parades (projects produced by organizations that do not hold tax-exempt
nonprofit status may be eligible for funding using a fiscal sponsor) RFQ
Application Timeline: September 27,
2021 – October 31, 2021. Access all application materials HERE.
Reminder: Non-profit
Neighborhood Reinvestment $5000 to
$25,000 ($2 million per supervisor) and Community Enhancement ($1
million per supervisor) County Grants $5000 to $40,000 are available from your
own district. District 3 is concentrating on green issues, those with
disabilities, equity issues, emigrants help, youth resources, but there are
still county stimulus grants for small
businesses including non-profits who have suffered from the effects of the
pandemic. These are all available every month until the money runs out.
We are thrilled to announce
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed SB-628 The Creative Development
Workforce Bill introduced by Senator Ben Allen and co-authored by Assembly
members Sharon Quirk-Silva and Laura Friedman and Senators Susan Rubio, Josh
Newman and sponsored by California Arts Advocates, the lobbying arm of
Californians for the Arts and, Arts for LA. Here is a link to
the article I wrote on California Creative Corps Pilot Program Development Update A+ Art Blog by Patricia Frischer. I waded through the 217 page document for the
Sept 22 California Arts Council meeting to summarize this and it contains
a time line for the new program.
Nov
The San Diego Foundation gave a total of $11,094,777 to Arts and Culture
this year. Of that over $2 million went to our museums. Orchestas and
Symphonies got over $4 milliion but arts education only $193,606. Can anyone
else see an lack of balance here?
The California
Arts Council (CAC) announced that
it has awarded a total of $2.185 million in support of 182 recipients who
applied for an inaugural 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship. These are the 13 who were awarded from San Diego County and mix of performing
and visual artists: Victor
Orozco Ochoa (muralist), Alyce Smith Cooper (story teller, actor) (Legacy $50,000) Bhavna Mehta, Cat Phillips, Angelica
Tolentino, Macedonio Arteaga, Karla Cordero, B. Deaton, Josemar Gonzalez,
Anishka Lee-Skorepa (Established
$10,000) Dia Bassett, Yasmine
Kasem, Maxwell Lofano, (Emerging $5,000).
About 75 went to Los Angeles applicants and only 18 and no legacy award for
those in San Francisco. We think perhaps
that is partly due to “…themes such as race, diversity, equity, inclusion, and
accessibility…” in the requirements of those applying. San Diego simply does
not support enough BIPOC artists so they don’t exist or didn’t know about this
award. Remember only 182 out of probably a huge number of applicants even got a
cash award.
The County of San Diego Board of
Supervisors approved a Regional
Film Office presented by Nathan
Fletcher. Right now, only the
city of San Diego has a Film Office as the SD Commission for Film was abandoned
in 2013. The proposal is to negotiate the creation of a Regional Film Office
with the City of San Diego and the Port of San Diego, among others in the
county.
World
Design Organization has announced that
the cities of San Diego-Tijuana (USA/Mexico) have been jointly named World
Design Capital® 2024 as a result of
their commitment to human-centered design and legacy of cross-border
collaboration. The theme is HOME, and the US-Mexico border cities win historic designation to become first
binational World Design Capital
Dec
Good news! The
Reimagine Vibrant Communities Through Arts & Culture report
has now been made public and is in the hands of the SD County Supervisors. It
advises that criteria be set for Commissioners to be chosen and so we are
heading in the right direction to bring back an art commission or art council
for the county of San Diego.
A very nice summary of this year’s
accomplishments for the arts comes from the Californians for the Arts: Historic investment of the Arts of $600 million nationally,
first state creative workforce act (SB 628), senate resolution of artists as
second responders, double amount of CAC California Arts Council funding for
2021 to $12 million, federal venue grants for CA of $1.3 million, guidelines
for re-opening.
