COCA (the Council on Culture & Arts) announces

Culture Club: Where the community convenes for cultural conversations.

For anyone who makes a living or a hobby of the arts or enjoys the view from the audience; plays in an orchestra or sings in a band; dances, acts, directs, costumes or lights a show; paints, takes photographs, makes films or buys local art; teaches any type of art at any level, writes books, attends or organizes festivals, explores an historic site, admires exhibitions in a museum or hangs them yourself, you are the Culture Club.

Tallahassee has the Economic Club of Florida, The Capital Tiger Bay Club, & dozens of others. Culture Club now joins them and knows that members of those clubs are also members of the Culture Club.

All Culture Club meetings will begin with light hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar followed by the sit-down portion of the meeting where “Inside the Actors Studio” meets “NPR’s Press Club” meets “The Phil Donahue Show” (for those old enough to know who he is).

Culture Club’s featured guests may be famous or infamous, citizens or politicians with opinions, do-ers and/or teachers of the arts, and more.

COCA thanks The Knight Foundation for their help in launching this inaugural meeting on Wednesday, April 27 at 5:30-7:30 pm at the Tallahassee Little Theatre. Tickets for the general public are $15 and for COCA Members are $10. It’s easy to register your attendance online at http://cocanet.org/assistance/cultureclub.html . But, it’s first come, first serve for this first meeting and space is limited.

The first Culture Club conversation begins with no politics. We welcome as our featured guests…Michael Bakan & The Artism Music-Play Project.

How does music affect children? Or, more specifically, can making music have an impact on children on the autism spectrum? Through the Artism Music-Play Project, Michael Bakan and his Artism Ensemble collaborators are exploring such questions in a very practical—and a very musical—way.

The music of Artism draws from a vast array of musical traditions, from Chinese zheng and Aboriginal Australian didgeridoo music to rumba, flamenco, jazz, salsa, gamelan, and West African drum-dance forms. At the heart of the repertoire, however, are the musical and cultural innovations of the children themselves. They are the real stars of the ensemble, and it is their original compositions and arrangements that truly define Artism’s unique musi-cultural identity and vision.

Michael, who is Professor and Head of Ethnomusicology/World Music at Florida State University, formed the Artism Ensemble as a research and public outreach project aimed at promoting autism awareness, facilitating social and creative agency, and highlighting the abilities—rather than disabilities—of children on the autism spectrum. This music improvisation collective is made up of professional musicians from diverse world cultures plus five children, ages 7-14, with special abilities, as well as the co-participating parents of these children.

Michael Bakan is using his knowledge to improve the world, one child at a time. And he is here in Tallahassee. This is your chance to meet and get to know him, and to see what the Artism Music-Play Project is doing to change our conceptions of both autism and music. Join us for this unique opportunity to explore music in a new way.

COCA is planning more Culture Club meetings for 2011 and will decide how many we can do in 2012 with the community’s enthusiasm as the barometer.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Event Information:

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 ..........................5:30–7:30 pm

Tallahassee Little Theater; 1861 Thomasville Road

5:30-6:00 Mingle with members of the Artism Ensemble and enjoy light hors d'œuvres and a cash bar

6:00-7:30 Participate in a conversation with Michael Bakan and the Artism Ensemble

Admission:

COCA Members .......................................$10.00

General Public ......................................... $15.00

To become a COCA member, visit http://cocanet.org/about/join.html

Deadlines:

Registration Deadline ........................... 4/22- the sooner the better, because those who hesitate may miss their chance.

Registration forms available online at: http://cocanet.org/assistance/cultureclub.html

Late Registration (including at the door) is based on space availability.

Questions:

Contact the Council on Culture & Arts .........(850) 224-2500 or amanda@cocanet.org

Important Invitation

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Right now, our City, State and country have a tough line to toe. They need to rank their priorities and decide what is appropriate for public funding.

As governments at all levels are weighing those priorities, they are discussing where the arts fit into that list. We see the Federal government considering the elimination of the NEA, State legislators considering to barely fund cultural grants at all, even at a level that is already 95% less than it was five years ago.

This year, the City of Tallahassee is implementing a new strategy of obtaining community input on budget matters early in the process by holding Budget Public Meetings this week in three different locations in the community. Citizens will have the opportunity to “interact with staff in an open house format, review service areas and provide feedback about how they would like to see the budget divided”. Their goal for these meetings is to get a better sense of community priorities before staff begins crafting the budget to present to the City Commissioners for their consideration and approval.

Those who think public safety is a high priority will be there.

Those who think social services should be a high priority will be there.

Those who think government funding should not go to anything but those two things will be there.

Some will be there who may think government has no reason to support the arts and culture at all.

As someone who appreciates what the arts and culture bring to this community you must come forward and let them know that arts and cultural City funding is important or your voice will be telling them with its silence that it should not be considered a priority.

As always, I hope that all of you will use positive comments about the impact you have felt and seen as a result of the City’s current support for arts and culture and/or constructive criticism that includes suggestions for improvement. If you have anything to say about COCA’s role in the community or the impact it has had on you we encourage you to add that to your statement as well. This is not the time to stay home and hope someone else speaks for you. COCA is urging you to choose at least one of the meetings to attend and bring your message of support for the City to fund the arts and culture.

Choose from one of the below meetings or attend more than one:

6:00 PM Monday, April 4-Gilchrist Elementary School, 1301 Timberlane Road
6:00 PM Tuesday, April 5-Walker-Ford Community Center, 2301 Pasco St.
6:00 PM Wednesday, April 6-Tallahassee Senior Center, 1400 North Monroe St.

I have included some Facts to Consider on the following page and of course, please feel free to call us at COCA if you would like to discuss anything prior to the meetings. As always, we are grateful to have such an engaged community and when an invitation is extended from your local government to share your opinion, we hope you will seize the opportunity. Let us know if you plan to attend so we can have an idea of how many voices will be heard.

Thanks for all your work, your support and your participation in making arts and culture strong in Tallahassee,

Peggy Brady, Executive Director

FACTS TO CONSIDER: ECONOMIC IMPACT
No matter how tight a budget, during the Great Depression the arts and culture received more not less government support because of its transformative and affective impact, not just its economic ones. Today, we must also speak to its economic impact. Here in Tallahassee that impact has been surveyed and documented and it was done in a down time-during this current recession. That data shows that with the City and County’s support combined with the earnings of local arts organizations, which include private, corporate and admission/ticket sales there is a healthy ROI for the local community. Translated into dollars, for every dollar that comes from local government into the local arts organizations, even now in this recession, $7.66 is spent back in the local economy.

If growing the economy, creating jobs and working in public/private partnerships is their goal, the City can count on arts and culture as valuable partners and a good use of public funding during these times as is documented by objective data.

WHERE IS THE CULTURAL FUNDING IN THE CITY’S BUDGET NOW
In the City's budget the cultural funding is found in FUNDING FOR OUTSIDE AGENCIES. Local non-profit arts and cultural organizations submit competitive grant applications through COCA each year providing detailed information on the projects and outcomes they will achieve with the use of these public funds. These applications are then reviewed by a citizen’s panel to recommend the distribution of $529,298 to the highest scoring of over 25 local non-profit organizations. The cultural organizations who receive the funding also provide interim and final reports on the use of the funds. Eight local non-profit organizations that have successfully competed in past years were left with no funding this year due to the decreased grant fund.

COCA, the Council on Culture and Arts is designated local arts agency, a non-profit public service organization that works with the city through performance service contracts. As a public agency, created by statute and inter-local agreements, COCA was also given a restriction from raising private dollars for its own operating in order to assist those local organizations seeking those same dollars. COCA's services include providing promotional outlets about cultural offerings and opportunities to the public, providing exhibition opportunities and business tools for local artists and creative businesses, managing the competitive grants programs for both the City and the County, working with the school district and teachers to support arts education, providing a central resource to citizens for locating and learning about local arts and culture and serving as a public/private partner with the City and County in absence of a department of Cultural Affairs. COCA's City contract funding totals $192,036.

www.cocanet.org
cultural@cocanet.org
850.224.2500