David Paul

City: Lancaster City
Position Seeking: Mayor

Question 1: Please share the most meaningful arts and cultural experience you had growing up.

I grew up in Chicago, a city with world class museums and attractions that I was exposed to often and from the time I starred in my kindergarten play through the time I was 16 and sold buttons for the S.D.S in front of the Chicago Art Museum to pay for the bus ride to Washington DC to protest the war, I assumed everyone was an artist and an activist.

Question 2: What do you think should be the role of City Council in the development and support of the region’s arts and cultural infrastructure?

Having produced a local cable access TV show 25 years ago in another community, I have long pushed to open up our city's own cable channel for a lineup of other artists to do the same. As a city human relations commissioner I tried to promote the Heuristic Council, a theatrically based way to understand another person's position by placing yourself in it after allowing yourself to hear and understand it. As usual, entrenched interests rarely value vision or actual mechanisms of change.

Question 3: What’s your vision for the city? What role, if any, does art and culture play in achieving that vision?

Add to question 2 a sports league consisting of martial arts skill and no personal injury resulting in positive effects that prepare for a multitude of other pursuits, including dance.

Questions 4: A recent report by the Otis College of Design found that 1 in every 7 jobs in LA County is supports the creative sector and economy in Los Angeles County. What strategies, if any, would you pursue to enhance the region’s creative economy (i.e. cultural tourism, indirect and direct jobs, nonprofit and for profit organizations)?

I am an artist. What I do now is write (4 unpublished books, 1 real good one) and publicly demonstrate how one should engage in positive civic involvement.