Search

Tracking the recent history and redevelopment of Austin's Cultural Arts Program

The city's consultants recommend a new, one-stop shop and more funding for Austin's arts programs.

The basic mechanism for funding artists will look the same, but the city of Austin's cultural contracts program will undergo some significant changes in structure

In the ATX music news: punk poetics by local septet Blood, January’s Free Week dates, and the Live Music Fund’s first feedback

OMFG: We're nearing the million-word mark

Getting arts funding from the City of Austin is a long, complicated game, and Austin Chronicle writers Robi Polgar, John Walch, and Mary Jane Garza have been following some of the players around the game board this year. In the final part of their four-part series, they critique the city arts funding process.

Council approves FY 19 arts funding, ponders its next move

Arts Commission's FY 19 funding adjustments head to Council

Unexpected Cultural Contracts cuts cause concern

The two finalists for the job of cultural arts program manager addressed the public Oct. 23.

The Austin Arts Commission has never been a model of bureaucratic efficiency, but this year it seems to have become a big cliché in action, a body so focused on procedure and minutiae and the concerns of the moment that it can't see the forest for the trees. It's compounding the problems in Austin's profoundly flawed public arts funding system and demonstrating just how poorly that process serves not only the city's artists but all its citizens.

For years, the city of Austin's arts funding process has been mired in perpetual gloom, but with the city reviewing its Cultural Contracts Program, artists and arts companies talking with each other about collaborations and a shared vision of what the arts mean to Austin, there are glimmers of light on the city's arts funding horizon.

Racial Divides in Austin's Public Arts Funding

Part One: The Artists' Application Process

The Austin Arts Commission has found itself stewing in a bubbling gumbo of controversies this year, and lately that gumbo has been getting hotter and hotter, with resignations from the Commission, an investigation by the Texas Commission on the Arts, and a call for reforms by a City Council member.

Austin's artists and arts groups are working hard to survive the economic downturn, and now more than ever it's essential for the city that they do.

The city takes feedback on its proposed improved cultural contracts system.

Making movies takes money. Lots of it. From grants to bakes sales, credit card max-outs to benevolent rich uncles, local filmmakers struggle to come up with the cash.

The Applicants

The Applicants

Council approves 2019 funding, ponders next move

New arts tsar Vincent Kitch rolls up his sleeves to give Austin arts funding a clean start

A different kind of summer for the city arts funding process

Public arts funding doesn't get much messier than the City of Austin's Cultural Contracts Program, but this year's process may go down in history as the messiest yet.

What will the arts in Austin look like in 10 years? CreateAustin has a good idea – in fact, it has 10.