Arts Funding in Florida

If you're an artist in Florida, it's time to get active:

Cinematic vs. Stageplay Thinking - Technology

I titled this post because I think these two issues overlap. Cinematic storytelling relies more on technology whereas dramatic storytelling does not.

I am furiously looking for an article I read within the last week about how theatre lags technically. I agree with that. I can't believe how reluctant people are to use technology. Often the protest is that it will take away from the performance. I can see that (and agree) if it's over used. But let's take something simple, like sound. Sound's ability to immediately put an audience in a time and space is incredibly effective. Why wouldn't you want to do that, especially with the impatience of today's audiences?

Cinematic vs Stageplay Thinking

In this day and age of technical advancement and shortened attention spans, it seems to me that theatre will naturally move toward more cinematic story telling. Your thoughts?

Artists Speak to Your Representatives!

Hill Staffers talking about the importance of artists making their representatives aware of their efforts in the community.

FYI: Women Musicians

San Francisco's WomenROCK Collective Celebrates Four Years of Empowering Female Artists in the Music Industry
San Francisco, CA, June 16, 2010

On Wednesday, June 16th, 2010, San Franciscans will pack The Independent to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the WomenROCK Collective, a group that has contributed to making the city by the bay a great place for women musicians and their fans.

Founded in San Francisco in 2006, the collective strives to empower female artists in the music industry at the local, national, and international level while raising awareness and money for important causes.

Women make up less than ten percent of the music industry and less than six percent in executive, producer or engineer roles. Women who do achieve commercial success are often over-sexualized and objectified, leaving women who don’t fit the mold out in the cold. WomenROCK was created in response to this situation by a group of talented and motivated women musicians, producers, and promoters (including *bernadette*, Valerie Orth, Lisa Sniderman, Sylvia Roberts, Kristin Hathaway, Zarah Gamaldi, Jessie Woletz, Melissa Rapp, Nomi Adiv, Nkechi Live, Vanessa Verlee, Eva Jo Meyers, Marianne Barlow, Abigail Picache and others) who decided to work together to raise visibility and opportunity for themselves and the other women artists in their community.

“We are organizing ourselves to work together to showcase our creative endeavors, talents, intellect, business savvy and penchant for community-building and activism,” says the celebration’s organizer and WomenROCK visionary *bernadette*, who is also one of the artists being showcased at The Independent.

Since its inception, WomenROCK has presented monthly showcase performances and special one-off shows in San Francisco, and has raised money for Bay Area and national organizations, including IMPACT Bay Area, Breast Cancer Action, Blue Bear School of Music, Women’s Community Clinic, and more.

New Seeds Salon Survey

If you've been to the Salon, please help us make it better by taking our survey.

Scriptwriting

Well, I've been working hard at polishing my latest script. (Deadlines...deadlines.) Again, it's so important to have your characters drawn well (background, goal, need, flaw) to write them naturally into the script. I'm also making sure that their actions coincide with their character, and that I successfully draw the logical ramifications of my other characters to that action. If this doesn't make sense, I guess I'm just lost in writer's world. Anyway, I can see the script really taking shape and I am sooo stoked to workshop it next month. (Maybe I shouldn't be, I will be made painfully aware of all my mistakes...) But that's the editing process, isn't it!

New Seeds Salon - June - Camelot Foundation

June's Topic: Camelot Foundation: A community-based think tank. Neil Cosentino will be presenting. Mr. Cosentino is a retired USAF Major and a founding member of the Camelot Foundation, a community-based, public interest think tank. He is also part of the LPFM Project in Tampa a local initiative of the Prometheus Project.

Playwriting

Spent 9 hours on my play (fourth or fifth draft). First two putzing around while I wrangled with a scene that wasn't working, then whammo! I can never wait for the surge to come, when you have a mind-meld with your script, and you know the characters so well that you know exactly what they need to be doing in each scene, and any change in a scene you instantly know where it has to be changed both forward and backward. I needed this--I haven't been able to work on the script for awhile, and it was a great shot in the arm.

Dramatist Guild

Great news from the Guild: anyone who has had a play produced in the US or Canada can now become a guild member. I think it's great that the Guild is recognizing that there is a huge market outside of NY. In DG's words: "limiting Active Membership to writes who have had a Broadway, off-Broadway, or major regional production is outdated, over-exclusionary and no longer reflects the way contemporary theatre works and the more varied, national venues where playwrights' work is presented". Finally, for those of us outside of NY--here's a nod!

Seattle's Creative Vitality Index

While reading through CVI again, I noticed that 60% of the index is Community Arts Participation Index. It is comprised of these factors:

-Non-profit arts organization income (10%)
- Non-profit “arts-active” organization income (10%)
- Per capita bookstore and record store sales (8%)
- Per capita music store sales of instruments and equipment (8%)
- Per capita photography store sales (8%)
- Motion picture theater attendance (8%)
- Museum and art gallery revenues (8%)

My question is this: do you think this is an accurate picture of arts participation? What does arts participation mean to you?

Arts Think Tank II

As I have been conversing with various artists about this idea of an arts think tank, it occurs to me that the first order of business should be 1) looking at the Tampa Bay area in the context of what is and what is not working for the artists outside of the big houses; 2) define the economic impact using newer, sustainability measures; and 3) making arts councils aware of these new measures and request that they be considered criteria of the grant-making package.

Most likely we will need meetings to achieve these goals, in addition to a yearly conference.

Arts Think Tank

After reading Scott Walters and Tom Loughlin for awhile now, it has occurred to me that perhaps an advocacy think tank for the arts is in order. Advocacy think tanks, unlike older (supposedly) non-partisan ones combine ideological bent with aggressive salesmanship in an effort to influence current policy debate. Then I'm reading Michael R. Gagliardo's post on ARTSblog, and walla! He's talking about Influencing policy at the local, state, and national levels Sounds a lot like think tank speak to me. It's great to read all these new ideas (localization, arts education etc.) in the blogosphere, but perhaps it's time for a definitive paper that delineates these ideas on paper and an effort be made toward making the media and public aware of them. After a quick check on the net, I see Collective Arts Think Tank which is encouraging because they have had meetings that include presenters, a critic, artists, service organizations and grant-makers. I know Paul Mullins had spoken of a discussion recently with the comment that talk is cheap, so perhaps creating a think tank in Seattle with various representatives of the artistic community would be more influential. Perhaps steps have been made out there that I am not aware of. I would be happy to hear about these initiatives.

New Seeds Salon - Apr - Guantanamo

Don't miss this one!

Guantanamo and Terrorism from a Civil Liberties and National Security Perspective. Mike Pheneger will be presenting.

Mike Pheneger, Colonel, US Army (R), represents Florida on the ACLU's National Board and, until this month, served on the ACLU's National Executive Committee. He frequently serves as a public spokesperson for the ACLU of Florida on issues involving civil liberties and national security.

Salon starts at 9, presentation at 9:30!

New Seeds Salon - Mar 2010

A great night Thursday night! The Corporate Personhood presentation was followed by an enlightening discussion with intelligent perspectives from everyone involved. QFraz and Naj performed excellent poetry on thestate of society today; and Shannon also read poetry. Thanks to everyone who came out! Next mic Apr 15th! Keep abreast of the salon here.

New Seeds Mic - Mar - Corporate Personhood

Mark your calendars! In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on corporate funding, March's topic will be on the legal "personhood" status of corporations and its ramifications.

New Seeds Mic - Feb - Mass Media and the Sexual Exploitation of Women

Another amazing night! Vanessa Brown gave a great presentation on Mass Media and the Sexual Exploitation of Women. In the ensuing discussion, she related a poignant personal story about a 14-year old caught up in a world of stripping and gangs. Issues brought up were: the pros and cons of stripping; and is the exploitation of women a consumer driven event? Venus Jones presented challenging pieces, including one on the female paradigm of beauty and another on getting attention through violence. Robin presented comedy ranging from motherhood issues to Iraq. Vanessa sang her wonderful "Ten Past Eight", and "Slipping Through". Suzanne presented pieces on women's images in the media and pay and the women's psyche.

Women Ski Jumpers Frozen Out of Olympics

Check it out on MSNBC.

The world record for that Olympic hill is held by a woman,
Lindsay Van, yet she can't compete.

What's astounding is after going through the courts to change
this, Dick Pound's (from the IOC) arrogance.

He says, "Perhaps it's disappointing, even frustrating..." If it
were a man's athletic career he was talking about, would he
be so trite?

He goes on to say perhaps it will take longer to accept the
women if they embarass us.

Did you not embarass yourself first by excluding the women?

Astounding, absolutely astounding...

Seattle's Creative Vitality Index

First of all, apologies for not posting sooner. I was coding a major project and that took up most of my time.

However, since my last post on measuring the economic impact of the arts or how well an art house 'serves' the community I went looking for any similar measurement. The Seattle Arts Commission has a measurement, called the Creative Vitality Index. While this index does not strictly measure the 'well-being' an art house imparts to its community (it bills itself as measure of the health of the creative economy), I think it deserves mention.

The Creative Vitality Index draws its data from 3 sources: the Dept of Labor; the 990 and 990 EZ forms filed by non-profits; Claritas, a database of consumer and b-2-b marketing. The index has 2 components: 60% is community participation and 40% occupation. In looking at the sub-index for community participation, music store sales and photography sales are included (are internet sales included in this figure?). Baseline score is 1, above is stronger than average and vice versa.

Although this index measures the arts in a community more generally, kudos to the commission for making inroads in quantifying the arts community.

I think, then that the Arts Development Index I proposed would still qualify as a measurement on the 'well-being' a community specifically receives from an arts house.

Arts Development Index

I have been thinking about Paul Mullin's article on local theatre. I agree that many other businesses are "localized" while the arts still has a long way to go. But the movement for localized economies is based on a re-evaluation of "economies of scale". That is, while corporations will be more efficient in the classical (monetary) economic sense, they may not be contributing to their well-being. Translating this to the arts, while big arts houses will be more efficient in the classical (monetary) economic sense, they may not be contributing to their well-being.

So, how does one measure how well an "arts house" contributes to the communities well-being?

Perhaps we can borrow from current indices. Relying in the UN's Human Development Index, and transposing this idea to the arts domain, we could get a concrete measurement of how well an arts house serves its community. We could calculate an Arts Development Index. Calculation of the the ADI would be as follows: 1/3 (arts life expectancy) + 1/3 (education index) + 1/3 (Arts GDP).

Arts life expectancy would be the achievement of an arts house in arts life expectancy at birth; education would be the adult literacy plus combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrollment; and Arts GDP would be the GDP per arts house. How well the arts house serves the community would be included under the investment parameter that makes up the GDP.

This is absolutely a quantifiable value and one, if taken up, would be invaluable in demonstrating the role that arts houses play in their community and in the lives of its patrons; and lastly, one that could figure in the awarding of grants based on these parameters.

Gainesville

For those of you who know, smile now. Parking at UF sucks. But after going to campus police and getting my "do not go to jail" decal, I trucked up to the Library East and spent four more fascinating hours researching. You know you're researching the past when the boxes they bring up from the vault are cold...

Oh, and Friday evening traffic getting out of there also sucks...do I see another smile?

Tallhassee Part II

I'm beat. Got to Gainesville and basically collapsed. But what a great day! Eight hours of research and the FSU librarian was really helpful. Felt like I took a trip to the mid-twentieth century. It's amazing to hold pieces of paper in a person's handwriting on some stationary where they worked or the hotel they stayed at, and it makes it all very real. Also listening to tapes of people's voice makes them come alive to you and it really helps you to draw a character that is closer to the reality of who that person was. Let's hope tomorrow/today in Gainesville is just as sweet!

Tallahassee

Well, I'm finally at my hotel in Tallahasse, and I can honestly say, I can't wait to do research tomorrow for my play. I've got all my research points, I've set up an appointment with the librarian who specialized in my topic, so it's about as much as I can do. Then it's on to Gainesville tomorrow for more research on Friday. It'll be like a time warp for me. Wish me luck!

Locally Grown Art

Paul Mullin's piece on local arts in Seattle has many parallels to the Tampa Bay arts scene. His point about art being local throughout history dovetails with my point that most artists in NY come from somewhere else. He also talks about collaboration between artists. As far as I've seen in the Tampa Bay area, in the past few years, I've seen a rise in the collaborative process and people making efforts to collaborate. His play that was "about Seattleites, for Seattleites, by a Seattleite" made me smile. Maria's Song is a play "about Floridians, for Floridians, by a Floridian". And I will say, they did embrace it. As for the "Big Houses" that pay "lip service" to the local artists, here again we have another strong parallel in this community. But that's not the only community I've seen pay "lip service" to the local artists. In the numerous festivals I performed in, many gave most of the advertising and TV spots to "big names" to the detriment of the smaller artists--this and yet the reason for the founding of the fringe was because uninvited theatre companies showed up to the Edingburgh International Festival. But I do disagree with Paul about the "big house" responding. If it does, great, if it doesn't, self-produce, and sell out. That way you begin to establish your reputation for your future works. Actors and directors want to work on challenging projects. Patrons will want to see your work again. "Word of mouth" is the top reason patrons attend an event--more than any other type of advertising. Good luck!

New Seeds Mic - Jan - Feminist Economics

Next New Seeds Mic goes down Jan 20st--THIS IS A SCHEDULE CHANGE--and we will be presenting information on feminist economics, and differing perspectives on how aspects of nation's well-being is defined. Looks like it will be a great night again!

New Seeds Mic

As part of my non-profit, I have started a mic from a feminine perspective. This goes once a month and there is a topic that will be presented and from that, I ask that the artists try and create some art based on that subject. Last month the topic was mass media--history, conglomeration, and influence on the public. Venus Jones wrote a great poem on the subject, Karyn Lomyn did a poem on the war, and Vanessa Brown sang about homelessness We had great discussions afterward ranging from the war to the prison industrial complex. Looking forward to next month!

Long Break

Well, it was quite a ride doing Maria's Song. We had a great cast, great reviews, and sold out all our shows, so I have to say the process is more than I expected, and what a great way to start my non-profit! You can see more at: http://www.silverglassprods.org/migRevFrame.htm . I think the Tampa Bay community is more supportive of new challenging theatre than most people give it credit for.