Old New Festival

The Avignon Festival in Avignon, France has been around since 1947. Primarily focused on theater productions, the festival also presents concerts, lectures, dance and multidisciplinary works. What's unusual about the Avignon Festival, other than the extremely high caliber of the productions and the attendance of over 100,000 people, is the variety of historically significant locations where the performances take place. Avignon becomes a summer “city-theatre,” with audiences enjoying outdoor productions in sites like the Cour d'Honneur of the Pope's Palace, whose construction dates to the 1340s. The Festival lists over 20 venues around Avignon, each with its own interesting history and atmosphere. Of course the live productions are accomplished with the latest, technically advanced lighting, sound systems and other stagecraft. The performances include everything from classics to brand new pieces. Opportunities to experience the performing arts in the context of carefully preserved historic sites with high tech infrastructure are made possible partly because of France's dedication to preserving, appreciating and using its cultural heritage, or “patrimoine.” A sizable chunk of the French government arts support budget -- at the federal, regional and local levels -- is directed at preserving ancient sites and making them accessible to the public. Putting on plays and concerts in old (very old) outdoor amphitheaters and courtyards is a way of both preserving the past and presenting contemporary works in a dramatic environment. It's also a way of presenting art as a part of the cultural continuum: our predecessors performed in this space many centuries ago, and we still perform our works here today. The past is alive in the present, and vice-versa.

New Old Festival

The Rivertown Revival in Petaluma, California, is a one-day celebration of the town's history as trading post along the Petaluma River. It's also a free event, although proceeds from an affiliated development campaign helped raise funds for the Friends of the Petaluma River and the Petaluma Arts Council. This seems like a great way to combine community support with local history, visitor participation (people are encouraged to wear vintage costumes of their own design) and just plain fun -- like an art boat competition and live music featuring local performers. People wandering along the river with parasols, top hats and handlebar moustaches…what could be better? Event organizers say they anticipated around 1500 visitors, but reports indicate that around 4000 showed up. Needless to say, discussions about next year's Rivertown Revival are already in the works. Petaluma is about an hour north of San Francisco, so many people probably came from out of the area. The fact that the organizers were able to successfully launch a new event with an old-timey vibe is also intriguing: people like costumes and banjoes, especially along a riverfront. Using the momentum to support the Petaluma Arts Council is icing on the cake, since local budgets for the arts have been on a steep downhill slope for years. Hats off to the Rivertown Revival folks -- they managed to combine history, participation, fun, and much needed budget support in one attractive package.

Blog-be-gone

This item on Culture Monster (the L.A. Times blog on the arts and culture) announces the expiration of The Arts Blog from the nearby Orange County Register, which had been running contributions from three well-regarded arts journalists since 2006. Does this signal the beginning of the end for blogs focused on the arts and culture?

It's easy to dismiss this development because of the location. People must be thinking, “Well, in Orange County nobody cares about the arts.” This is far from true. I happened to have grown up in the area and know from relatives and friends still living there that OC has a thriving arts community: theaters large and small, numerous concert venues, museums, you name it. So the explanation must be that the writers were no good, right? According to one of The Arts Blog's farewell notes , contributions by classical music critic Timothy Managan “made it one of the most widely read blogs about classical music in the world.” So why pull the plug?

Apparently the readership levels simply didn't justify continuing The Arts Blog. According to Rebecca Allen, the Register's deputy editor for features, the blog's demise was due to a lack of reader activity on the site. Allen wrote that the arts blog "hasn't gotten much traction online.” The three OC Register writers assigned to the arts will continue to produce columns and reviews for the paper's print and online editions.

Is a signal of things to come for blogs in general, not just those focused on arts and culture? Are readers already bored with the phenomenon - despite the quality of the writing and relevance of the content - and abandoning the blogosphere in search of the next new thing?

le quatorze juillet

Celebrating Bastille Day means acknowledging the overthrow of tyrannical monarchies by The People. The storming of the Bastille prison by French citizens on July 14, 1789 was - and continues to be -- a rallying point for the nation around democracy and the rights of the common man. What was the effect of le quatorze juillet on the French tradition of government arts support?

In his book “The Politics of Cultural Policy in France,” Kim Eling cites the year 1635, the year that Cardinal Richelieu, under Louis XIII, created the Académie Francaise as guardian of the “official” conception of art. Members of the Académie held their first “official” exhibition in 1667, and later these became “salons” where official art was displayed. In 1680, the Comédie-Française was established under Louis IV as an “official” theatre company with federal support, a status it has in some ways preserved to this day. After the French revolution, the roles of government patronage and censorship were actually strengthened. Academic artists were recognized and encouraged by public commissions, and the government became more involved in running individual cultural institutions. State support for the arts was established during this period, and the issues of control and appropriateness have not faded over time.

Today, the cultural sector in France is heavily dependent on a system of government programs and agencies operating at the federal, regional and local levels. Although the French revolution radically changed the form of government - from monarchy to democracy - the expectations and responsibilities regarding state arts sponsorship have in many ways remained intact. The levels of arts support may have dropped dramatically in recent years, but the idea of a state cultural support system itself seems permanently ingrained in the fabric of French society.

The art of denim

Here's a new and unusual approach to private companies supporting the arts: Levi's is co-sponsoring a “new series of community-based pop-up spaces that act as functional workshops, event spaces, and retail storefronts.” Called Workshops , the first one is a community print shop, located near Levi's original headquarters in San Francisco's Mission District. Operating over the next 8 weeks, this Workshop offers free classes (printmaking, letterpress, screenprinting, photocopying and typesetting), book signings and special events featuring Bay Area celebrities like locavore/organic food pioneer Alice Waters and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. Their list of Collaborators includes the San Francisco Giants, numerous local artists, galleries, publishers and other arts venues. The concept combines the trendy “pop-up” retail concept -- where stores like Target set up shop temporarily in an urban neighborhood - with community outreach, arts education and appreciation of traditional practices, all under the Levi's brand. As easy as it might be to react cynically to this novel concept, I have to say I'm intrigued by the idea of offering free public arts workshops under a corporate banner. And learning how to set type and make posters seems like a refreshing antidote to our obsessive digital age, even if people are encouraged to Connect via Facebook for the next demo of traditional screenprinting techniques.

Of course Levi's can use all of the media exposure and attendance around this program for publicity of their products (you can take a class on using your old denim jeans to make paper). Still, the idea of engaging the public this way strikes me as both laudable and productive. I'm reserving final judgment until I've had a chance to visit one of Levi's upcoming Workshops, but for now I'm enthusiastic. Maybe it's because I like typography, printing and free public workshops…and also denim jeans. What's next: free music recording and mixing workshops sponsored by Apple? Make your own iTune? Count me in (for now.)

Arts Support: location matters

A comparison of two community arts centers -- The Crucible in Oakland, California and La Friche La Belle de Mai in Marseille, France – reveals some interesting differences in the French and American approaches to arts support at the local level.

Located in an industrial neighborhood in West Oakland, The Crucible is a “non-profit collaboration of arts, industry and community.” They offer a range of educational programs in fire performance, welding, blacksmithing and so forth for adults, children and families. They also present an annual Fire Arts Festival, Fire Cabaret and other live events that attract large crowds to their mixture of music, lights and amazing fire dancing and sculpture. On their Donors Page you’ll find a list that includes a few government programs (NEA, Alameda County Arts Commission, City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program), but the vast majority are grants from corporate and private foundations such as the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, Inc., the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the IBM Corporation and many others. Together with their individual memberships, gifts and donations, we can see how the Crucible relies heavily on the American tradition of private giving.

La Friche La Belle de Mai operates within a very different support structure. Located in a rehabilitated tobacco factory in central Marseille, La Friche houses a wide range of projects in the arts: from theater, dance, music, film and circus to computer research, stagecraft, literature and street art. Their facilities are inhabited by some 400 technicians, artists, producers and researchers, and their calendar features an amazing variety of festivals and art events of all sizes and types. The “partners” of La Friche include a few private companies that make or distribute theatrical equipment (scenery materials, lighting and sound gear), but the overwhelming majority of their support comes from government agencies such as le Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (federal), la DRAC Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur (regional), and la Ville de Marseille (local).

One-Way Kaiser

In his article “How Helpful Is Cultural Diplomacy?” in the Huffington Post on September 21, 2009, Michael Kaiser (President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) argues against sending more American artists overseas. Instead, he suggests, “…the State Department could support a program that allows other American arts organizations to teach abroad.” He goes on to say, “…Americans have a great deal to teach abroad. We can teach how we build sponsorship by corporations and especially individuals. We can teach how we use marketing to expand the reach of our arts organizations. We can teach the importance of long-term program planning for building new sources of support.”

Michael Kaiser is a strong advocate for the arts in this country, as his many writings and other efforts consistently attest. However, I think his one-way proposition about spreading American arts administration practices (“We teach; you learn.”) ignores half of the equation and actually damages the cause of U.S. cultural diplomacy rather than advancing it.

The State Department clearly lays out the mission for its Cultural Programs Division on its web site:

“The Cultural Programs Division supports a variety of cultural exchange programs that further our nation's foreign policy, foster America's artistic excellence and promote mutual understanding and respect for other cultures and traditions.”

Mutual understanding and respect come from a two-way dialog, not a one-way lesson. Yes, we have much to offer other countries with our expertise in arts marketing, management and fund-raising…but we also have at least as much to learn from other nations about widespread access to the arts, interest in and support for diverse cultures and artistic forms, and the positive aspects of government arts subsidies for society at large. We can talk convincingly about our knowledge and skills, but unless we also listen we haven’t engaged in diplomacy at all…we’re just lecturing other people on how they should think and act.

Instead, I propose a real international exchange of arts administration ideas, practical techniques, and lessons from specific programs and case studies. An International Exchange Program for Arts Administration could have some real benefits for all parties: presenting our effective strategies, learning about how and why foreign peers develop their tools for arts administration, finding areas of mutual interest and cooperation, and building a resource where future culture workers can examine the results of our labor and make their own contributions. In other words, a real forum for promoting “mutual understanding and respect” that fully supports the cultural diplomacy goals of the State Department’s Cultural Programs Division.

Welcome to Culture Confit!

My new blog was inspired (demanded?) by a course in Writing for New Media that I'm taking as part of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) eLearning MA program in Arts Administration.

The focus of Culture Confit (which translates nicely as "culture crystallized") will be the intersection of cultural policy and arts administration, especially in the U.S. and France. In addition to being the topic of my master's thesis for the SCAD program, this has been an interest of mine since 2003 when I developed and taught a course on the topic for the University of California Education Abroad Program. I'm interested in French cultural support -- how did it evolve, who's interests has it served, where is it going -- and compare it to the U.S. experience to ask questions about how and why different policies, institutions and practices develop.

How do cultural policies evolve and what guides their development? Who are the players in these systems and what are their roles? Is cultural support an expression of national character, and, if so, how does that influence access, accountability, diversity and our understanding of l'exception culturelle?

I first became interested in this topic in the late 1990's. Traveling to France on business for the UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), I was initially driven by the need to understand our foreign partners in order to write grants, negotiate contracts and formulate collaborative projects in research, teaching and public events, but soon I developed a general interest in the French cultural support system and began researching the subject with interviews, reading and site visits.

I believe there is much to be gained by understanding -- and sometimes implementing -- different approaches to arts support. My goal is to contribute to the dialog around these issues and inspire a broader view of what's possible for people involved in the arts: students, administrators, public agencies, private foundations, artists and art patrons.

I'm looking forward to sharing some ideas, links, pics and other info in the coming weeks and months...and especially hearing from folks out there!