Report on City Arts Funding

One more step has been taken on the thousand-mile journey to a revised arts-funding process for the city of Austin. Dabney & Associates, the consultants hired by the city to evaluate the current arts-funding process and recommend viable alternatives, presented a report to the City Council on Dec. 10. Not surprisingly, the report calls for major overhaul of the present system, moving the arts programs out of their longtime home in the Parks and Recreation Dept. and into the city’s Economic Growth and Redevelopment Services, a location more fitting to the new sense of the arts as a valuable component in the city’s economic health. The civic art and design staff is already there, and the report also proposes moving the film and music offices out of the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau into EGRS. Eventually, an independent nonprofit arts council will be created to oversee the granting of cultural contracts (or whatever the city chooses to call its funding awards to local artists and arts organizations). For more information, see Mike Clark-Madison‘s story on p.20.

Cheese Fond Adieu

You knew it as the Cheese Palace. Now it’s Funnies. Last week, after 10 years in two locations on Sixth Street, the comedy club known as the Velveeta Room officially passed into Austin comedy history. The 120-seat venue next door to Esther’s Follies has been subleased by Fort Worth entrepreneur Robert Burk who plans to give the club a higher profile with name comics headlining and Austin’s funniest as emcees. For more info, call 477-LAFF.

Merry Nash-mas

Rob Nash is on the verge of presenting his one-man look back at high school, Holy Cross Sucks, off-Broadway, but an early-January debut has been shifted to late January, so the talented solo theatre artist/stand-up comic/all-around jokester has a little extra time to spend in Austin for the holidays. And he plans to spend it making you laugh. You can see him with the gang at Esther’s Follies through the end of December, plus he’ll be performing staged readings of his 12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional Family works on successive Mondays at the Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd. See 12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional You on Dec. 23 and 12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional Christmas on Dec. 30. Both shows are at 8pm. Call 478-LAVA for more information.

This article appears in December 20 • 2002.

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