Mayor's Omnibus Resolution: Arts Commission Special Meeting

Cast your mind back to the week before July 4, and you may recall the early fireworks in Austin's live music and creative communities in the form of the "Music and Creative Ecosystem Stabilization Recommendations" – city staff's response to the Mayor's Omnibus Resolution. Tonight, the Arts Commission wants your thoughts on those rockets' red glare.

The commission is holding a special called meeting starting at 6pm to gather the creative community's reactions to the city document that proposes "to identify strategies to support our local artists and musicians" through 10 individual policy and program recommendations. What local artists, musicians, technicians, administrators, businesspeople, and arts patrons have to say about the plan will weigh heavily in the commission's own response and recommendations to Council as it considers what constitutes priorities in the Omnibus Resolution action plan and how to implement them. Think of it like one of those pledge-drive specials, where the contribution you make is doubled because someone with deeper pockets is matching it with their donation: You make a public statement by speaking to the commission, then the commission carries your comments to Council.

If you've been following the news regarding the Omnibus Resolution, you know how much of a crisis the creative and live music scenes are facing, and whoever scheduled tonight's Arts Commission meeting does, too, as the location is fraught with symbolism: It's at the Off Center, the home to the Rude Mechanicals theatre collective for more than 16 years and site of hundreds of theatre, dance, and performance productions, but which the Rudes are being forced out of next May. You couldn't choose a better venue for catching that "canary in the coal mine" sense of our precarious future.

Three-minute speaking slots will be available at the start of the meeting for the community to share their thoughts with the commission. If you can't make it to the meeting, commissioners would still love to hear what you have to say in advance. Also, the city's Cultural Arts Division is streaming the meeting live on Facebook.

And if you haven't yet waded into the Stabilization Recommendations, by all means do so here. Or at least check out the Chronicle's shorthand analyses from the week of the report's release.

The Austin Arts Commission's special called meeting on the Music and Creative Ecosystem Omnibus Resolution will take place Tue., Aug. 2, 6pm at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo.