I’m suggesting that its easier to rally people to the banner of the arts than it is to the banner of arts education. The endless rhetoric of how much working artists add to the cultural strength of our city motivates “the troops” as Max calls them, far more than the telling people that the Prescott Circus Theater won’t be getting their 35 grand to teach kids clowning or that Attitudinal Healing Connection won’t be receiving 15 grand to teach kids to draw superheroes that reflect their self-esteem. No doubt these programs have tremendous value for the children, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that I don’t think they add much to the arts/culture scene that your average citizen might want to check out during the evening (However, I’ve seen First Friday shows that look like they’re more about the artists attempt at juvenile self-affirmation than a sophisticated engagement with the question of art)

Mike, I’m betting that the guys on your rugby team are getting much the same value on the pitch that those kids under the big top are. However, “sports grants” don’t play as well as “arts grants” do in this town. Moreover, I’m betting you volunteer your time right? If you had a whole non-profit structure set-up upon which your livelihood depended (as do many in these arts education organizations) you’d also be more motivated to head down to City Hall and claim that if you don’t get your grant than the cultural life of the city would wither on the vine (as would your salary)

Finally, what does the Crucible need with 50 grand of our money? If you want to learn to weld you can head down to Laney for a fraction of the cost of the Crucible. Whenever I get invited to one of their events the price tag is always like $50 which doesn’t seem especially community friendly. Besides, teaching people fire performance doesn’t add to the cultural scene in the City of Oakland; it contributes to the scene at Black Rock City, which doesn’t need any encouragement as far as I can tell.

About the wizard-of-oz moment. It seems like whoever designed that whole 2-minute experience, with the entire city council sitting behind that massive desk and kind of towering over you and the clock ticking away, to make sure that you only do that once and never come back. Even I broke into a cold sweat and I was only watching on KTOP! Anyway, good job pulling it off. The artists usually get kicked around by the cops, developers, businesses, you name it. It was surreal to see you artists wield some actual power for a change.

I think you and Dave might be differing here on wording or line items, not the effect.
Didn’t the parade and festival funds originally come out of Cultural Arts Grants? If it did, there’s a net loss of grants.

Thank you for hosting this dialog on your site.

I think some of the what what may seem like mis-representation over the call to save arts funding in Oakland has been in what we mean by ‘funding’.

When I talk about last night’s budget eliminating art funding in Oakland, I am talking about the elimination of Oakland as a funding source for artists and organizations. It is true that the “percent for art” public art program was not being shut down, but that money is specifically purposed for commissioning site-specific artworks. It also, as I understand it, has no stipulation that the money be given to Oakland artists. So while it can be called “arts funding” in that it is money that is going towards increasing the amount of art in Oakland, it does not “fund the arts” because it does not necessarily support Oakland’s artistic community.

The truth of the matter is that, the city of Oakland’s cultural funding program is the only avenue individual artist projects, artists in schools, and arts organizations have of getting support from Oakland. With every dollar we receive, we are able to leverage an average of $9 form funding sources outside the city. Without the city’s support over a dozen organizations like mine would be forced to close our doors.

We can disagree as to how relatively important the services provided at those arts organizations are compared to other programs that were in danger of being cut, but for the the vast majority of artists, art is school programs, and arts organizations, the Cultural Funding program is the only support available to us from the city of Oakland. I’m glad they made the decision to reduce, rather than eliminate it.

NN doesn’t take from the general fund, David. And remember, I finally came around and voted no on that one.

As for the devil’s advocate question… I encourage you to get out and look at what some of the grantees are doing. That’s all the answer I feel I need to give. Nobody likes all art, but if you went looking at what private money does in Oakland, and what public money does in Oakland, I’d bet you’d give thumbs up to at least an equal percentage of public and private projects.

So what about NN? Shouldn’t you apply the same logic to NN?

I saw part of the council meeting on KTOP and I caught your wizard-of-Oz moment in front of the great and powerful city council. So congratulations on keeping the arts funding. However, doesn’t taking money from the city for arts lead to your expression being dumbed down by pedestrian, banal interests from so-called religious people, the business community, cultural bigots, etc? Personally, I support the arts at every opportunity, but I had to ask this devil’s-advocate question.