Four public hearings next weekend. The peeps in the rooms that makes the decisions. Get improv in there! Read on:
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"Participate in Austin's Cultural Planning
Over the next year, there will be numerous opportunities for people to
contribute their voice, vision, values and ideas about the future of Austin’s cultural life. These will then be transformed by participants into a concrete action plan for future cultural development to be implemented by the whole community over the next 5 – 10 years. This concrete action plan is Create Austin.
Create Austin plans four community meetings to gain input on key cultural assets contributing to Austin livability, a vision for culture in Austin, critical
cultural issues and possible strategic directions.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Conley-Guerrero Senior Activity Center
808 Nile Street
Austin, TX 78702
Friday, January 26, 2007
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Dell Jewish Community Center
7300 Hart Lane
Austin, TX 78731
Saturday, January 27, 2007
10:00 am - 12:00 pm
South Austin Senior Activity Center
3911 Manchaca Rd.
Austin, TX 78704
Saturday, January 27, 2007
2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
University of Texas
Thompson Conference Center
2405 Robert Dedman Drive
Austin, TX 78712
Everyone is invited to attend, and please spread the word!"
City of Austin 'cultural assets' meetings
Listings of upcoming shows, classes, and other events.
Moderators: arclight, happywaffle, bradisntclever
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- Christoph Offline
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- Joined: November 14th, 2006, 11:42 pm
- Location: Corner of Cameron & 51st
City of Austin 'cultural assets' meetings
Life is like trying to swim in a vat of blackstrap molasses while handcuffed. You can't win, but anger doesn't get you anywhere. - James Thurber
Cultural planning is a process that takes stock of existing cultural resources and asks how they can be maintained, enhanced, or developed to continue to improve our lives and the vitality, livability, and success of our community.
Ok, let's see...where to start.
Sitting at my table were Austin artists like:
Philippe Klinefelter (sculptor)
Sunyong Chung (potter)
Michael Melinger (Austin Jazz Workshop)
Mark Holzbach (President of the Rude Mechanicals Board of Directors)
and several others from backgrounds ranging from working in the UT theater department to economic development for the city.
The meeting was run by an outside consultant, but attended by the head of the city's Cultural Arts Division and much of his staff.
The meeting was set up around two basic questions:
1) What are the creative assests/cultural resources of Austin?
2) What would a future where creativity flourishes look like in Austin? What would the artistic headlines of 5-10 years be?
The room was broken up into groups of 6-8 people with a facilitator and note taker and each group spent an hour+ answering these questions and narrowing down responses. Then we each sent up a representative to give a report to the larger group about what our subgroup thought. Then we all discussed trends across the subgroups.
After this they asked people from the meetings to volunteer for citywide artistic task forces to be put together later by the city based on ideas proposed in our meetings--to essentially help follow up on the ideas we proposed. I said I'd be very interested in serving, but that is a ways off while they shift through results and come up with the core ideas for the task forces to focus on and pursue.
Ideas ranged from the very doable (preserving current resources, increasing funding, etc) to the "not likely" (changing zoning laws to provide cheap housing for artists, free health care for artists, etc). Some common ideas included more arts in the schools, encouraging private industries to get involved, and raising awareness in the community of artistic options.
There were about 45 people there.
About 3/5 made their living as professional artists of some sort and about half had lived and artistically created in Austin more than 10 years.
Every ethnicity, gender, and age group (20-60+) was represented and there was artistic representation from just about every community in town (theater, music, dance, film, painting and sculpture, etc).
The feeling by the end of the meeting was positive and hopeful. Several people even broke down into tears of joy.
I did some schmoozing and I also managed to snag several pieces of literature, including the AISD thumbnail on Fine Arts in the public schools--how the superintendent is planning on increasing the programs offered moving forward.
On the downside...
I also learned that we are still virtually unknown in the Austin artistic community.
Most of the people there knew each other. Sculptors were talking with producers like they were old friends, singers were talking to directors they'd worked with and artists were talking to city arts officials. When I said I did "improvizational theater and comedy" the general response was along the lines of "really? where? how often? how big is the scene?" etc.
Hopefully, by working on this project I can start making inroads with more established artists and officials in this town.
I'll discuss more details at the general body meeting.
Ok, let's see...where to start.
Sitting at my table were Austin artists like:
Philippe Klinefelter (sculptor)
Sunyong Chung (potter)
Michael Melinger (Austin Jazz Workshop)
Mark Holzbach (President of the Rude Mechanicals Board of Directors)
and several others from backgrounds ranging from working in the UT theater department to economic development for the city.
The meeting was run by an outside consultant, but attended by the head of the city's Cultural Arts Division and much of his staff.
The meeting was set up around two basic questions:
1) What are the creative assests/cultural resources of Austin?
2) What would a future where creativity flourishes look like in Austin? What would the artistic headlines of 5-10 years be?
The room was broken up into groups of 6-8 people with a facilitator and note taker and each group spent an hour+ answering these questions and narrowing down responses. Then we each sent up a representative to give a report to the larger group about what our subgroup thought. Then we all discussed trends across the subgroups.
After this they asked people from the meetings to volunteer for citywide artistic task forces to be put together later by the city based on ideas proposed in our meetings--to essentially help follow up on the ideas we proposed. I said I'd be very interested in serving, but that is a ways off while they shift through results and come up with the core ideas for the task forces to focus on and pursue.
Ideas ranged from the very doable (preserving current resources, increasing funding, etc) to the "not likely" (changing zoning laws to provide cheap housing for artists, free health care for artists, etc). Some common ideas included more arts in the schools, encouraging private industries to get involved, and raising awareness in the community of artistic options.
There were about 45 people there.
About 3/5 made their living as professional artists of some sort and about half had lived and artistically created in Austin more than 10 years.
Every ethnicity, gender, and age group (20-60+) was represented and there was artistic representation from just about every community in town (theater, music, dance, film, painting and sculpture, etc).
The feeling by the end of the meeting was positive and hopeful. Several people even broke down into tears of joy.
I did some schmoozing and I also managed to snag several pieces of literature, including the AISD thumbnail on Fine Arts in the public schools--how the superintendent is planning on increasing the programs offered moving forward.
On the downside...
I also learned that we are still virtually unknown in the Austin artistic community.
Most of the people there knew each other. Sculptors were talking with producers like they were old friends, singers were talking to directors they'd worked with and artists were talking to city arts officials. When I said I did "improvizational theater and comedy" the general response was along the lines of "really? where? how often? how big is the scene?" etc.
Hopefully, by working on this project I can start making inroads with more established artists and officials in this town.
I'll discuss more details at the general body meeting.
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- arclight Offline
- Site Admin
- Posts: 528
- Joined: August 5th, 2005, 1:07 pm
- Location: Austin, TX
- Contact:
Knock it out of the park! That's exactly what we should be doing! Thanks for going and thanks to Chris for posting it!
Makes me wonder if Improv is perceived solely as a "late night" comedy thing rather than "art" you know?
Time to start managing the perceptions!
Makes me wonder if Improv is perceived solely as a "late night" comedy thing rather than "art" you know?
Time to start managing the perceptions!
"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet." Tom Robbins
Like Terp 2 It, I think that glass is half full. It's better that people don't know us right now. That means that things can only go up.
WARNING, THE FOLLOWING IS BORING: Allow me to explain, borrowing from a presidential candidate matrix found on page 35 of this week's Time Magazine. Imagine a graph where the x axis is the public's awareness of improv in Austin and the y axis is likability of those who are aware.
If you divide the positive portion of that graph into 4 quadrants, the best place to be is the top right. I think we have a high likability rating, but a low awareness rating. In other words we are graphed along the y axis, but very high. We are in the upper left quadrant. The more visibility we get, the closer we get to the coveted upper right quadrant.
It's so simple.
WARNING, THE FOLLOWING IS BORING: Allow me to explain, borrowing from a presidential candidate matrix found on page 35 of this week's Time Magazine. Imagine a graph where the x axis is the public's awareness of improv in Austin and the y axis is likability of those who are aware.
If you divide the positive portion of that graph into 4 quadrants, the best place to be is the top right. I think we have a high likability rating, but a low awareness rating. In other words we are graphed along the y axis, but very high. We are in the upper left quadrant. The more visibility we get, the closer we get to the coveted upper right quadrant.
It's so simple.
"Every cat dies 9 times, but every cat does not truly live 9 lives."
-Bravecat
-Bravecat
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- kaci_beeler Offline
- Posts: 2151
- Joined: September 4th, 2005, 10:27 pm
- Location: Austin, TX
- Contact:
You say there was around 45 people there, that's really not that much in the whole artistic scope of Austin. Even if every one person represented an entire group, I still think that doesn't account for all the arts in the Austin area.
I don't think the opinions of 20 or so people are enough of a sample to say they we are a relatively "unknown" in Austin.
All they have to do is read a newspaper. We're in the same "Arts" listings they are.
I'm glad you represented the AIC at this meeting, but I wouldn't judge our standing in the artistic community too harshly yet.
I don't think the opinions of 20 or so people are enough of a sample to say they we are a relatively "unknown" in Austin.
All they have to do is read a newspaper. We're in the same "Arts" listings they are.
I'm glad you represented the AIC at this meeting, but I wouldn't judge our standing in the artistic community too harshly yet.
Granted, but they were 40 fairly influential artists. As I said, the President of the Rude Mechs Board was sitting next to me. The Sculptor was known by just about everybody (he did some of the fresco work for ABIA and several other city buildings). The jazz ensemble guy was one of that group's bigwigs. A table over was one of the founders of the Austin Film School. Small though the sampling was, it was not back-up players and scabs. These are the people we WANT to know who we are. These were known, established residents who've been professionally producing here for decades and knew one another from years of working together, even beyond their own artform.
I know people don't like to admit we're underknown. I know people like to say others "should" know who we are. I'm just saying that from what I experienced they don't. I'm not passing a judgement on us or them. I'm just presenting an observation and saying "what do we do about it?" We can say let's not react or we can say, let's step up and get known, then.
Also, that was 1 meeting. There were three more. Where was AIC's participatory role in those? How were we spreading the good word to the next group of 50 and the next and the next? This is the difference in becoming actively known (personal meetings) and being passively known (via a newspaper). As a community, I say we step up or quit bitching about empty seats.
Also: I followed up with the Director of the Cultural Arts Division this morning in a short e-mail, re-expressing who I represented, my desire to serve on a task force, and suggesting an appointment to discuss what our community is and what his department does.
I know people don't like to admit we're underknown. I know people like to say others "should" know who we are. I'm just saying that from what I experienced they don't. I'm not passing a judgement on us or them. I'm just presenting an observation and saying "what do we do about it?" We can say let's not react or we can say, let's step up and get known, then.
Also, that was 1 meeting. There were three more. Where was AIC's participatory role in those? How were we spreading the good word to the next group of 50 and the next and the next? This is the difference in becoming actively known (personal meetings) and being passively known (via a newspaper). As a community, I say we step up or quit bitching about empty seats.
Also: I followed up with the Director of the Cultural Arts Division this morning in a short e-mail, re-expressing who I represented, my desire to serve on a task force, and suggesting an appointment to discuss what our community is and what his department does.
Good, Wes. That's right. I agree that we are known via our newspaper ads and listings, but that is different than being players in the arts community via attending meetings, functions, other fundraisers etc, and having mega articles written about us. We are on our way and what we've done is awesome and there is still more to do.
"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet." Tom Robbins
Wes:Wesley wrote:Also: I followed up with the Director of the Cultural Arts Division this morning in a short e-mail, re-expressing who I represented, my desire to serve on a task force, and suggesting an appointment to discuss what our community is and what his department does.
I happen to know one of the Director's assistants...a gentleman by the name of Jesus Pantel. He and I attended TAMUK together as Theatre Arts majors, and he's a very cool (and helpful) guy. Make sure you get acquainted with him, as well as the Director...
Gersh gurndy morn-dee burn-dee, burn-dee, flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip.
if you want more people to know you, make a point of meeting more people. specifically, go see their shows.
although i don't always succeed, i try to see at least one theatre/comedy thing each month that is NOT associated with the AIC or any of its members. i've been delighted to see some AWESOME stuff (i was rocked by Foleyvision, recently), and get inspiration from people outside the improv community. find a couple of theatre companies that produce stuff you like and make a point of seeing their shows.
austin is flush with some red hawt performers outside the AIC, and i've grown as a performer everytime i see a show, whether it made me hot and bothered as an audience member or not.
be in the world what you want to see in the world, and all that jazz.
although i don't always succeed, i try to see at least one theatre/comedy thing each month that is NOT associated with the AIC or any of its members. i've been delighted to see some AWESOME stuff (i was rocked by Foleyvision, recently), and get inspiration from people outside the improv community. find a couple of theatre companies that produce stuff you like and make a point of seeing their shows.
austin is flush with some red hawt performers outside the AIC, and i've grown as a performer everytime i see a show, whether it made me hot and bothered as an audience member or not.
be in the world what you want to see in the world, and all that jazz.
"I suspect what we're doing is performance art, but I'm not going to tell the public that."
-- Del Close
-- Del Close