So yesterday I attended a grants workshop held by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. It was an interesting experience on many fronts. For one thing, they are on a biennium grant schedule which means you apply this year for money for the next two years. Now for a laid back place like Hawaii, it seems strange that you have to get so organized you know what you are going to do for the next two years!

I can’t but think that they are essentially encouraging people to lie their butts off. Arts organizations make things up for annual grant writing, but it pretty much goes without saying a two year cycle essentially encourages people to try to fund their wildest dreams.

Now all this could be moot because of the (big surprise) arts funding problems in the state. When the arts foundation submitted their proposed budget in April/May, all their funds were frozen and remain so. There was a big uproar and the governor allocated money from health and human services earmarked for drug prevention for the arts foundation. (One of the criteria now for getting money is serving at risk youth)

Back in June or so I read a report that said Hawaii had the most per capita spending on the arts. (Which isn’t a heck of a lot given that there are only 1.2 million people living here, but still, a good proportion.) Ah how quickly they fall.

In any case, the people leading the workshop essentially said to live this year as if it were the last we were being funded because it probably is.

Okay, I retrieved the last of the notes I made while at the WAA conference. They are short, but sour I am afraid. The conference was doing a session on trends in government funding and had the NEA representative for presenters and a woman from the Western Arts Federation (WESTAF) there as well. Because the conference was in Spokane, they invited the head of the Spokane Arts Council to sit on the panel.

Unfortunately, between the time she was invited and the time the conference occured, the arts council was pretty much reduced to one person. Apparently in deciding where funds should be allocated, the city asked each division to talk about their accomplishments. The divisions with lots of people who could make concrete claims like paving hundreds of miles of road or fixing so many miles of water mains faired well. The arts council got dissolved.

Now this isn’t any surprising news if you have been watching the trends around the country this last few years. What was really interesting was the assumptions the head of the arts council had made.

She thought based on the small portion the arts council received in the budget, it would be more trouble than it was worth to dissolve it. Wrong.

She thought the loss of political capital the mayor and city council would face would dissuade them. Nope.

She thought the outcry from businesses and individuals whose partnerships with the arts council intertwined their fates with it would provide an impediment. Didn’t really emerge.

Now someone at the conference said that she said the irony of dissolving it as a major arts conference was bringing lots of money to town kept them from destroying it completely. I didn’t hear her say that when I was around. Given that the other situations she had mentioned didn’t give them pause, I doubt the disappointment of a group that was only in town for a week was a real consideration.

Now the head of the arts council is trying to keep many of the initiatives she started going by farming them out to other organizations. For instance, she hopes another company will take on the responsibility of maintaining the arts calendar which is a major source of arts information for the entire region and not just the city.

I know that that according to the rules of writing I learned in school, this is the place I should insert a summation statement for my entry. But I gotta say, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound trite and stupid.