Craig Watson, Executive Director of the Arts Council for Long Beach, writes about the evolution of the Long Beach Arts Council and becoming a "change agent" in the community.

A New Beginning
When I arrived at the Arts Council for Long Beach in May of last year, the organization had been without full-time executive leadership for almost 18 months.  While good interim leadership and committed board members had held the organization together,  it was clear that the Arts Council was struggling due to a  number of legacy issues. The relevance of the organization was very much in question...artists were suspicious,  arts organizations saw the Council as competitive instead of collaborative, bloggers criticized and the public didn't seem to care one way or the other.

Re-invention
The immediate mission for us was to reinvent the Arts Council and that began with an attitude change. We started referring to ourselves as “the NEW Arts Council”....rejecting the notion that we were stuck in anyone's past associations, no matter how valid. Of course that only goes so far. Attitude may open a door, but action is what sustains anything worth sustaining.

First came lots of discussion and plenty of “what ifs....?”. What if we could show that improving the entire cultural ecology was our most important objective? What if we created events and opportunities that really mattered to our constituents rather than repeating tired practices of the past? What if our interest in Long Beach neighborhoods and culturally diverse communities was more than lip service?

Fast Forward
Jump ahead to March 2nd of this year, the City Council chambers at City Hall was filled with nearly 250 passionate arts supporters, most waving placards that read, “Art Works! LB”. It was a dramatic moment in the rapid evolution of our image from “self-interested, navel gazer” to “change agent”. That night, speaker after speaker rose to testify on the importance of the arts to the neighborhoods, to the businesses and to the people of Long Beach.  In the end, five arts initiatives passed unanimously, 9-0.   Two of the five have the potential for far-reaching impact. Due to action that night, a soon to be completed cultural Master Plan, known as Create Long Beach, will be officially integrated into the City's new General Plan...the “2030 Plan”. This will make Long Beach one of only a handful of American cities with a cultural element imbedded in their core planning document.

But perhaps most importantly, one initiative called on the Mayor to create a Blue Ribbon Committee on Funding for Arts and Culture. The Blue Ribbon Committee is now in place and actively deliberating on strategies to create a more sustainable  municipal revenue source beyond the perennially beleaguered General Fund. The  seven members represent a cross-section of the city including a developer, a hotel owner, an arts volunteer/lawyer, a Business District association leader, a community activist, a media professional and a member of the Redevelopment Agency.

The Committee is looking at the current approach to “Percent for Art” to consider its expansion to include public infrastructure. At the same time, considering its use beyond projects that involve the City's Redevelopment Agency and to go city-wide. And while the “transient occupancy tax” (Bed Tax) is already at a competitive rate and fully used by the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), our committee can see the potential for more collaboration and a stronger commitment to promoting “cultural tourism” by our friends at CVB working in partnership with local hotel leadership.  Our goal is to develop a “menu” of ways that the City can help the arts...from more liberal policies for the use of City-owned facilities to inviting the arts to have a “seat at the table” when the City is taking up critical, community issues.

Beyond the very real need for financial investment, artists and arts groups expect to bring value back to their neighborhoods and the community.

We Have a Bias Toward Action
We see the arts community as teeming with problem-solvers and collaborators. It is in our DNA to say, “let's put on a show!”... “no problem, we can do that”... “give me a little space and we can create magic”.   Whether it’s working to improve low-income housing, supporting programs offered through the Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine or helping to design a digital media arts training curriculum.  As you look through each floor of City Hall, the arts can be there, helping solve problems.  That is what artists do every day. 

We recently hosted our new Chief of Police Jim McDonnell in a meeting with the arts community at the Long Beach Museum of Art.  Our enlightened police chief wanted to understand what we are doing in the way of arts programming for youth, particularly during after-school hours and in the summer months. Virtually every arts leader present took their turn sharing their commitment to young audiences and their delivery of a variety of youth-serving programs. Rather than follow the classic characterization that the arts compete with “public safety” for support and funding, the Chief's attitude was, ‘that is a false choice.’  He acknowledged that the police can’t do everything, and he wants the arts community as his partner. 

Expanding Resources
Much of our past history in Long Beach has been predicated on the notion that “the pie is only so big and if you get a bigger piece, than we get something smaller”. And while that belief is ingrained here for a reason, the Council is working hard to demonstrate a path toward more resources, not less. 

If the City’s investment can only go so far, we must find ways to grow our own resources.  Our new partnership with the International City Bank Long Beach Marathon is an example of that.  We just launched ‘We Love Long Beach Arts,’ a fundraising cause in partnership with the Marathon and local community groups like We Love Long Beach.  ‘We Love Long Beach Arts’ is recruiting runners, walkers and bicyclists to participate in the Marathon and raise money for arts education and community arts programs. Check out our active giving page at www.active.com/donate/welovelbarts.

What Else Makes Us Relevant?
We are empowering artists and organizations to become better, stronger and more self-sustaining.  Our recent collaboration with the Center for Cultural Innovation paved the way for sixteen artists to complete the ‘Business of Art Bootcamp,’ and their testimonials from the experience are amazing.

We are also investing in arts leadership.  We recently established a new partnership with Leadership Long Beach, an organization that provides an in-depth, yearlong leadership training program to the Long Beach community.  There are two arts professionals in this year’s class representing the Long Beach Shakespeare Company and the Living Love Foundation... the Arts Council is largely covering their tuition.

Also, the complete “make over” of the Arts Council’s “October is Arts Month” program has been key to our transformation in the eyes of our constituents.  GLOBAL, our re-imagining of this annual observance is an example of everything we’ve tried to accomplish since May of last year.

GLOBAL, which also stands for Greater Long Beach Arts Lab, promotes local arts assets and artists in Long Beach each October, but we take it much further.  We promote hundreds of local events, host a gala kick-off mixer, infuse other local community events with the arts, and we promote local artists.  To collect events for our calendar and to raise awareness about GLOBAL, we contact hundreds of local arts organizations, galleries, government agencies, and arts-friendly businesses that often have in-store music or exhibitions by local artists.

We have created a unique website for GLOBAL at www.globallb.com and it’s already filling up with a very diverse calendar of events.  Our “Art Links” page is also unique, it has more than 70 web links to local arts assets ranging from non-profit organizations to performance venues, retailers, galleries, museums and more, so you can spend hours uncovering arts opportunities with just the click of a mouse.

We Are Just Getting Started
The challenge for us going forward is to maintain momentum even in the face of intense economic realities. But with a year ahead already filling with a major Arts Education Summit; an explosion of temporary and permanent public art; the launch of a new contemporary exhibition space to be co-managed by the Council and MoLAA; the development of a TEDx conference that includes a major arts commitment; and an even larger GLOBAL festival, the Arts Council and Long Beach are on a very positive trajectory.