A Vision for an Interim Office of Cultural Affairs
The city needs to slash its budget and has proposed cutting the Office of Cultural Affairs altogether, merging it with the library. But eliminating the department is not only a mistake, there’s no need. Here’s how to moth-ball the OCA until times are again brighter.
Photo via pbase.com
One of the most illuminating things about reading what services and positions City Manager Mary Suhm has proposed to cut in her 2009-2010 draft city budget is that it reveals what some city departments have been doing during all these fattened years. Did you have any idea that the Office of Cultural Affairs helped pay marketing and printing costs for a number of cultural institutions? Or that the OCA was slotted to pick up some of the utility bill at the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts? Or that the city funded the acquisition of three to five works of public art a year?
Well if you did know about these things, forget them. They’re getting cut. And that’s not all that’s in line to be cut. Dozens of staff positions are on the chopping block; security and maintenance services are being scaled back. Recreation center hours are being shaved. Have you heard of the Therapeutic Center at Bachman Lake which provides recreational services for citizens who are mentally, physically, and emotional disabled? It’s going to be cut.
Cuts, cuts, cuts, and still the city is having trouble knocking off $190 million in services and purchases to make its budget balance.
But there is one cut in the 2009-2010 draft budget that is excessive: the proposal to eliminate the Office of Cultural Affairs and merge its functions with the Dallas Public Library. Surely City Manager Mary Suhm, who rose through the library ranks herself, has great confidence in the Dallas Public Library. It is one of our city’s finest institutions, and there seems to be some correlation of interests between the library and the city’s culture at large. However, eliminating the Office of Cultural Affairs is a mistake.
Why? Because if we cut the OCA in 2009, who knows when it will return? Distribution of funds for cultural projects will remain an afterthought of the library administration. We are about to bill ourselves as a great arts destination. The international spotlight will be turned onto Flora Street this fall, and Dallas needs its TV makeup on. What will we say when a reporter for the Daily Telegraph calls city hall and asks the cultural affairs department for a quote? How we will blush when the New York Times publishes this lede: “Big cars, big hair, and, now, big theaters, but the city that has funded the most ambitious arts district in the nation has the smallest culture affairs department – it doesn’t exist.”
The existence of an independent Office of Cultural Affairs, even if only in name, is almost as important as a fully-funded department. What the city needs to do is moth-ball the Office of Cultural Affairs – keep the department alive even if it has no real funding. Here’s how:
-Gather a list of all of the artists who have contributed to any of the many arts organizations that have been funded by the OCA in the past five years.
-Televise a black-ball drawing on the city’s public access channel that will determine the new Interim Executive Director of the Office of Cultural Affairs (IEDOCA), who will be chosen from the list of artists. The position will be unpaid and will possess virtually no real power.
-The drawing can be orchestrated either as a single lottery pick or as a round-robin tournament – the city council will vote on this.
-The position of IEDOCA will be held for six-month terms. No individual may hold consecutive terms (thought the odds of that occurring are already mathematically low). If during a subsequent budgeting cycle it is determined that the OCA can be properly funded, then the IEDOCA position will be dissolved with the adaption of the new budget.
-The IEDOCA will be on call to handle any media requests about Dallas arts and culture.
-As is currently planned in the proposed budget, the library will handle the distribution and administration of any remaining funds for cultural organizations, events, or venues during the existence of the interim OCA.
-The library will produce a quarterly report for the IEDOCA outlining what funds have been distributed and to whom.
-The IEDOCA will produce a reaction to the funding decisions made by library staff in the appropriate artistic medium. If the IEDOCA is a sculptor, then he or she will submit a sculpture. If he or she plays the viola, then a solo composition for the viola must be submitted to the library. If the executive director is a choreographer– you get the idea.
-Upon receiving the work composed in reaction to the distribution of Dallas’ cultural funding, library staff will issue the following memo:
“We appreciate your thoughts and concerns regarding the work of the Office of Cultural Affairs. In the future, we will make our best effort to take your ideas into consideration. We thank you for your continued support of the arts in Dallas, Texas.”
-The IEDOCA’s reactions will be displayed on the fourth floor of the J. Erik Jonsson Library. The memos from library staff will be posted in the lobby of the Dee and Charles Wyly Theater.
A Wild And Crazy idea, Peter, and I’m just naive enough about city affairs in general to not know if you’re serious.
But even if not, you have, for me, put your finger on a common thread running throughout some of the misinformed, if not misguided, efforts I see Dallas taking to become that “great arts destination” it so earnestly wants to be.
That is our tendency here to leave artists and hands-on cultural leaders out of the process and expect real estate developers, bureaucrats and other high profilers to manage something they don’t completely understand in the first place.
6 July 2009 at 11:10 am