Community Chest and Chance Rolled Into One
by Robi Polgar, John Walch, and Mary Jane Garza
illustration by Robert FairesAs you turn the corner of the Monopoly board that is the City Arts Funding game, you might think that "Community Chest" and "Chance" coexist in a single space. That's because applicants to Cultural Contracts -- the city of Austin program that awards money to artists and arts organizations for services rendered -- may request funding at one level and receive funding at a completely different level. Since city money keeps most groups running over the course of the year, whether they equate it to that hotel on Boardwalk or a pair of houses on Illinois Avenue, how much Cultural Contractscash groups receive is often crucial to their fiscal solvency. That they might be allocated much less than they ask for can make this phase of the game dicey and likely to produce very few satisfied players. Many more will come away bewildered or angry about the amount of money they were allocated. See, this community chest is chancy.
In this second article of a four-part series on the Cultural Contracts Program, the Chronicle examines the applicant review sessions, in hopes of shedding some light on what has historically been the murkiest and most nerve-wracking part of the process. For this stage of the game, we will follow some of the players introduced in part one of the series (Vol. 18, No. 30) through their Advisory Panel reviews and look at one hour in the life of a review session. As this article goes to press, review sessions are still being completed, with allocation sessions -- in which Advisory Panels make recommendations about how much funding applicants should receive -- still to come.
Over the past two weeks, artists and arts organizations in six disciplines (Music, Visual Arts, Dance, Literature, Theatre, and Mixed Arts) have been biting their nails and waiting to appear in front of their respective Advisory Panels. The total number of applicants has increased by roughly 33% this year while the amount to be doled out of the community chest -- just over $3 million -- has not risen nearly as sharply.
Mario Garza, director of the Cultural Contracts Program, estimates that "286 potential applicants went to the orientation sessions and received packets." As of May 15, 220 are still playing. So more than 60 have already dropped by the wayside. A lot of those are first-time applicants who "really get overwhelmed," explains Cecilia Cortez, grants administrator for the Cultural Contracts Program. "It's a scary process: It's long, there's a lot of paperwork, and it's too much trouble for what [a group] might get." Daunted by the odds stacked against them, these new players are forced to the sidelines, catching their breath until, perhaps, next year. Meanwhile, the applicants who continue must now weather the review session, where an all-volunteer panel will assess their merits, then score, rank, and recommendfunds for those players deemed deserving.
The atmosphere at a review session is notoriously tense for applicants. Time is a critical factor. Applicants have exactly five minutes to give a verbal presentation that defends their worthiness as funding recipients. An artist's typical preparation for a presentation is a sheet of notebook paper with barely legible handwritten script to be read as fast as possible, in order to get it all said in the allotted time. Vicky Boone, artistic director of Frontera Productions, dove right into such a delivery a few years ago, only to have then-Theatre Panelist Celia Hughes stop her and say, "It's okay, Vicky, take your time." This usually brings a round of embarrassed titters from the room -- most everyone is already familiar with each other since panelists, artists, and even the city staff typically work together during the year outside the scope of Cultural Contracts. But no matter how cordial and supportive the panelists are -- many panelists have sat on the other side of the table, so they understand the pressure and stakes involved -- the brisk air of bureaucratic formality can quickly chill the proceedings.
Once the applicant finishes speaking, the panelists discuss the merits and weakness of the application for five minutes -- a discussion to which the applicant may only listen. After that, the panelists have five minutes to ask questions of the applicant about anything from budgetary numbers to outreach to what the city euphemistically calls "underserved constituencies."
Fifteen minutes after it began, the session is over. The panelists take a moment to score the applicant, then they're on to the next one, and after 15 minutes on to the next, and so on and so on until all applicants are heard. Presentations start at 9am, but even the most efficient panel can find itself listening to yet one more hopeful player well into the evening.
The panelists are volunteers, and the amount of paperwork they have to wade through before the presentations is daunting. Add to that the fact that each panelist is expected to attend at least one event by each applicant over the course of the year and the sheer monotony of sitting for eight to 10 hours listening to a parade of similar defenses for city funding, and you begin to see how unenviable a task being an advisory panelist can be.
And it doesn't end there. No matter how fair-minded a panelist may be, when it comes to doling out limited amounts of money to cash-starved artists anyone can look biased, negligent, or worse. And, of course, the panelists are caught between the artists they judge and the Arts Commission which judges their work. To the panelists, most of whom see their role as advocates for the artists, it must seem that their work is often underappreciated and misconstrued.
The Cultural Contracts Program and the Arts Commission provide the panelists with specific criteria to evaluate applicants within each discipline. But there remain (and always will remain) degrees of subjectivity in judging the applicants. The Cultural Contracts guidelines booklet states that "scoring is based on generally accepted standards of excellence appropriate to the applicant's art form and mission." The panelists are often artists themselves -- they used to be known as peer panelists, and who better to judge artists than their peers, right? But one panelist's definition of "excellence" can be another panelist's definition of "dreck." With such potential for disparity between panelists' judgments, is it any wonder that arts organizations feel frustrated when their scores (and monetary allocations) turn out lower than they had hoped?
The "Chance" cards in this year's process are stacked higher than ever. With the large increase in the number of applicants, the panelists have been particularly strained. There are only so many shows a panelist can see and so many artists they can talk to. The difficulty of attending even some of the many events across the disciplines becomes apparent when you consider the sheer number of events: 53 artists and organizations applied for funding in the Music discipline -- from big guns like Austin Lyric Opera to individuals such as Carl Settles -- many of them performing many times in the course of a year. And Music was not the discipline with the most applicants; Mixed Arts yielded 65 applicants for funding. Literature, at 19 applicants, is the smallest discipline, but it is no less productive in terms of events, publications, and presentations that require panelists' attendance. If panelists are unable to catch all the projects they should, they are left to make their determinations from the paper application and the brief review session. Since neither of these can satisfactorily describe or capture the art an applicant creates, that leaves more guesswork to scoring an applicant and the likelihood of a greater outcry by dissatisfied artists after the allocation sessions.
The allocation session is a special animal. A week after the review sessions, the panel reconvenes and begins doling out the money. Allocation sessions are open to the public (that is, the artists, who attend religiously) but only the panelists may speak. And speak they do, often at great lengths about the value (or lack thereof) that a particular applicant has to the city, all the while shifting the dollar amount destined for that particular group. Sometimes it seems as if no two panelists apply the same criteria for divvying up the limited funds available.
Although the Cultural Contracts Program maintains that "scores do not reflect comparison among applicants," the atmosphere at an allocation session is inevitably competitive. Some applicants are vocally antagonistic: "I can't believe they're taking money away from us!" Others are quietly jubilant: "I got an increase in funding!" At some point during the haggling, Peter is robbed to pay Paul. In the end, the results are posted: rank, score, amount funded. The panelists have done their job and found a way to feed as many deserving artists as possible from the city's coffers.
Of course, not all panelists are altruists acting for the common good. In the past, panelists with sympathies to a particular artist or organization have wielded enormous influence in the level of funding one group gets at the expense of another. This inevitably makes for a heated public hearing at the June Arts Commission meeting -- the third phase of the game -- where injured artists decry the process, the panels, and the amount they've been allocated. It is up to the Arts Commission to right wrongs and the Appeals Panel to address especially aggrieved artists. The juicy appeals sessions will be covered in Part Three of this series. For now, the gloves remain on and everyone speaks deferentially about the process, remaining hopeful that their chances are good to get all they want from the city community chest.
THE APPLICANTS
A handful of artists applying for funding are being monitored as they make their way around the city funding game board. Regarding this second phase, applicants were asked about how they prepared for the review sessions and what criteria they believe they are being judged on.
Lisa Fehrman
photograph by Bret Brookshire
Lisa Fehrman
Artistic Director, Stillpoint Dance
Discipline: Dance
Years funded: 4Fehrman has played the city funding game from both sides of the board: serving three years on the Mixed Arts panel and applying for money for her company Stillpoint Dance for four years. She takes a levelheaded approach to the process since she understands that although an artist inevitably takes the scoring and allocation personally, most panelists do not see the process as personal. Rather, panelists generally feel that they are advocates for the artists. As a panelist, when she did not support a project, "It was my job to help [applicants] get better [for next year's application]." Little wonder, then, that panelists feel hurt when their judgment, let alone their motives, are called into question.
The most frustrating obstacle an applicant must face, according to Fehrman, is the differing degrees of familiarity that panelists have with the groups they assess. "You only have so much time to convey who you are, and [the panelists] don't really know who you are, and they may be making decisions on you based on their best judgment, but their best judgment isn't really very good. For instance, on the dance panel there are [six] members," two of whom spoke with Fehrman, "and none of them saw our work this year."
Continued growth and outreach are no guarantee that panelists will see a reason to increase or even maintain Stillpoint's most recent level of funding, but Fehrman keeps her positive outlook: "We've proven ourselves," she concludes, "but it's not personal. It's the same process when you're not funded that you hate, and the same process when you get a lot of money that you love. You're still the same person."
Jason Neulander
Jason Neulander
photograph by Bret Brookshire
Artistic Director, Salvage Vanguard Theater
Discipline: Theatre
Years funded: 4In last year's funding cycle, Salvage Vanguard Theater received 100% of its request and a huge increase in city support: $4,500 to $20,000. In the eyes of the panelists, this adventurous company suddenly was fulfilling its mission and meeting the city's goals head-on.
Neulander attributes the increase to a greater clarification from the Arts Commission on how panelists are to judge applicants. Instead of being judged by their art or services rendered, Neulander says an arts organization is judged by its mission statement, how well it is fulfilling its mission, and how the mission matches with the city's goals. "A couple of years ago," Neulander says, "I was finding that the panelists weren't enjoying our work, even though our audiences were loving it. Then, the theatre panel was more conservative and felt that because Salvage Vanguard produced plays in a bar we couldn't possibly be legitimate theatre; hence, we couldn'tget legitimate funding. But when you're judging a mission, it doesn't matter. They can think whatever they want about what and where we're producing, but when it comes down to fulfilling the city's goals and fulfilling our mission, they have to be as objective as possible. And our work meets the city's goals."
Neulander may believe that it's the panelists' job to "assess who best fits the city's goals for the arts," but he unequivocally states that "it's up to the applicants to prove to the panel that they're meeting the city's goals. And they have to use every tool at their disposal." Neulander has certainly used every tool at his disposal in his bid to get $32,500 from Cultural Contracts this year.
To Neulander, the single most important tool is lobbying. Prior to the review session, he met with each theatre panelist one-on-one to give some personality to the impersonal application and "explain, in crystal-clear terms, where the money is going." He adds: "I believe strongly in the power of lobby. If you're trying to grow your funding, you have to go beyond the minimal requirements of the application process; you have to meet with the panelists. The presentation is the public part of the phase, but the important work is behind the scenes. It takes all the pressure off the presentation, like talking to a bunch of friends."
Chinwe Odeluga
Chinwe Odeluga
photograph by Bret Brookshire
Individual artist integrating video and poetry
Discipline: Mixed Arts
Years funded: 0 (first-year applicant)The last couple of weeks have been extremely long for Odeluga as she has had to sit on both sides of the process -- as a literature panelist and as an applicant applying to the Mixed Arts panel for her project -- Poetic Healings, a video that combines useful health information with poems written by lesbians of color.
"Because I'm new in town," begins Odeluga, "I felt I had to introduce myself to all the panelists." For the last month, she has been able to meet with eight of the 10 Mixed Arts panelists and has concentrated her efforts on keeping in touch with the panelist who was assigned to her (each applicant is assigned a "lead" panelist to ensure that some personal contact has been made before the review session). According to Odeluga, the lead panelist "can really fill in the gaps in the application when the panel is deliberating."
But Odeluga believes that "the burden of proof" is the applicant's job. "If the application is not clear, the big moment is the review session. The presentation helps give the panelists a clearer vision and helps them see how you plan to shape this project. It's in the presentation that the applicant needs to help the panelists envision the proposal."
As to whether she'll receive the funding she requested, Odeluga says: "I probably won't get the full $10,000 I applied for, but I think that because my proposal is very clear I'll get at least half that. I've taken advantage of the suggestions in the workshops the city offered and I even went to the Arts Commission meeting and lobbied the commission. I'm trying to give it as many chances as possible."
And will it be worth it if she gets only half her request? "The reason I've chosen to do this is because lesbians of colors are the most invisible and marginalized group. Our voices are not heard, so that's why I'm putting myself through all this." Of course, it'll be worth it.
THE PANELISTSThese individuals may play the most thankless of all roles in the game, but it is a role that wields tremendous influence. The panels make the initial allocation recommendations based on the applicant proposals. Invariably, an advisory panelist's work results in dissatisfaction from some contender and, almost as invariably, some recommendation made being ignored or contradicted by the arts commission. Perpetually caught between the artist applicants and the arts commissioners, an advisory panelist must be both thick-skinned and well-informed about the groups that he or she judges. That they volunteer their time to sit on these panels speaks to the commitment and sense of responsibility these individuals possess.
Lois Jebo
Dance Panelist, Panel Chair
Years on Panel: 5"I see my job as being as informed as possible about the applicants," says Lois Jebo in her office at the Nonprofit Center. As executive director of that organization, Jebo is an expert on nonprofit structures and can speak eloquently about public funding. Jebo also began her career as a dancer (appearing with several New York companies before moving to Austin), so she brings to the role of Dance Panel chair both sensitivity for the art form and a rigorous understanding of the rules of the game.
Jebo takes the job of judging very seriously: "It's hard to judge from words on a page, especially in dance, so I make the effort to see as much as possible before the review session. And when I do see it, I need to be as open-minded as possible and look at all forms of dance and/or movement and understand what the artist is trying to say and to put that in the context of the greater dance community and see where it fits in."
Jebo acknowledges that subjectivity will always play some role in the Cultural Contracts scoring process: "We can't disconnect one part of
our brain from the other, so we
bring our background with us.
But as a panelist you have to give it your best effort to open your mind."Jebo acknowledges that subjectivity will always play some role in the scoring process: "We can't disconnect one part of our brain from the other, so we bring our background with us. But as a panelist you have to give it your best effort to open your mind and look at the array of applicants and judge them against the stated mission. Beyond that, you need to score each individual artist in their own right, against their own mission. You're not going to score them against each other."
In scoring applicants, Jebo advises her panelists to read the city guidelines and devise a method that they feel comfortable with and understand clearly. She ardently refuses to devise a hard and fast formula for scoring "because if we have a formula, it's not going to be as rich an arts community. It will become a score-by-numbers system and will kill the thing we're trying to foster."
As for the review session, Jebo advises artists not to "come in and recap an application. I can read the application. I want them to tell me the most important thing they've achieved, what they think their greatest strength is, and what they bring to the community." Sound advice from one who knows.
Letty Chavarria
Music Panelist
Years on Panel: 1Letty Chavarria plays piano and guitar and sings. She received a BA in music studies from UT San Antonio and in 1996 moved to Austin, where she became heavily involved in the music industry. But working full time, Chavarria missed out on many music events and felt left out of the arts scene. When she was approached about being a panelist, she thought it would be an ideal way to get back into it what was happening locally.
Music groups send panelists "invitations and updates on what they are doing, and that really interested me," says Chavarria. "I felt that this would gave me an avenue to become involved in music and also give something back to the community. If there is something I can do where I'm utilizing my expertise and at the same time benefiting other people, then I want to do it.
"I also thought this would be a good way to utilize the music school skills I have," Chavarria adds. "Because part of what we do when we go to concerts is fill out a form and I'm able to apply some of that knowledge, especially to technical aspects of the performance, like interpretation, intonation, stylistic quality."
Chavarria has seen a lot of musical performances lately, and she's also been busy conducting site visits/interviews with each applicant, sitting down with applicants one-on-one to clarify any questions she may have. "A big part of [this job] is looking at the grant amount and trying to make that jive with what the applicant asked for. Is it realistic? Is it overinflated? Is it not enough? Are they first-timers or have they done this before? What past successes have they had? And looking closely at the people running the grant, at résumés and what qualifications they have -- just really looking at every aspect of what they've applied for, that's what it boils down to."
This is Chavarrias' first year as a panelist, but she has yet to be daunted by the amount of work involved. "There are a lot of applications here, and of course you want everybody to end with a slice of the pie. Our job is to sit there and to divvy it up fairly among the applicants. I know it's going to be a lot of work, but I'm excited about it."
G'Ann Boyd
Theatre Panelist, Panel ChairG'Ann Boyd has been in theatre all her life. She was born in California in the heyday of the Hollywood musicals and acted in theatre there. She taught theatre in college and eventually became the department head for theatre. When she retired, Boyd's son -- who lives in Austin and who at one time served on the Advisory Panel for theatre -- encouraged her to move to town and become involved in the local theatre scene. She did. Boyd has most recently directed The Steadfast Tin Soldier for Second Youth Repertory Theatre and will direct Teatro Humanidad's summer youth theatre group.
As chair of the Theatre Panel, Boyd has a vision of what she wants to accomplish: "I've done an awful lot of theatre and seen an awful lot of theatre, and I'm very excited about Austin theatre. It has such wonderful potential -- lots of different kinds of groups. I've seen Houston theatre focus on just a few groups, so I thought perhaps I could help in keeping the theatre here broad, making lots of different kinds of theatre available to Austin people."
The panelists see as much theatre in town as possible, especially theatre by those people who are applying for cultural contracts. Each panelist must interview four or five applicant groups, and Boyd and her panelists have certain criteria they use when reviewing the applicants. "We look for whether they do the best theatre that they set out to do," says Boyd. "If it's a community group, whether it's a quality performance for the community or if it's educational or bilingual. You look for what you think that group potentially could do [and] how close they are coming to it. The members of the panel all have different tastes and different backgrounds and criteria for what they think Austin would benefit from -- where it is wise to give Austin's money to this kind of group or that kind of group. Then we talk about it amongst us, and if there are six different opinions that come up, we kinda come to a middle conclusion."
Melissa Santos
Mixed Arts Panelist, Vice-ChairMelissa Santos is an artist who works to instill the arts in area children. She works for Believe in Me!, an organization which takes hundreds of mainly at-risk kids and gives them a chance to perform some community-inspiring dance on the stage at Bass Concert Hall. Santos is also a dancer with Stillpoint Dance and has followed in the footsteps of Stillpoint Artistic Director Lisa Fehrman by serving on the Mixed Arts Panel .
Santos, now vice-chair of her panel, describes the panelists with a professional air: "We're supposed to be experts in our field, representatives of the artists. We find out details of their program and how their application measures up to the city's needs: Are they providing artistic value for the city?"
Because she is stretched between her day job and Stillpoint, Santos has found it hard to see many of the groups whose work she will judge. Still, she believes that applicants must share some of the blame here. "I didn't hear from some applicants until after they dropped off their applications." Suddenly, artists know the game is for real, "and I have 70 people calling me to come see their shows in one weekend," she jokes. But she understands how important it is to visit an artist in action. "If you don't see their final product, they don't get a fair shake."
THE CITY STAFFThe Cultural Contracts staff is on overload this year. With the large increase in the number of applicants, the staff has had to file more forms, make more copies, answer more phone calls, and deal with more headaches than ever before. Someone send them some aspirin.
Cecilia Cortez
Grants AdministratorCecilia Cortez is enjoying this phase of the grants process; it's the calm before the storm. While the Contracts office was really busy earlier this year accepting applications and making sure they were meeting guidelines and in the right genre, this is one of their slow periods -- no locos in their office right now. "We're just getting the review sessions together, scheduling each artist for their 15 minutes, so we're really quiet right now," says Cortez. "We're kinda sitting back and everyone else is working hard. We're just figuring out little things, but it's not the craziness like when we get the proposals."
But once the review sessions are over, it's back to the grind. "We'll work really hard afterward," notes Cortez. "After the review sessions, we get really busy again. Everybody wants the scores and we have to tally them."
