The 21st century has not been kind to Austin’s live music and creative communities. They never really recovered from the double whammy of the dot-com bust and Great Recession the way much of the city did, and even as a good deal of Austin prospered using them as its attractive face – Live Music Capital of the World! Capital of the Creative Class! – the rapid growth and skyrocketing cost of living in recent years has moved the needle for those sectors from painful hardship to crisis. moreless
Central city properties became hot commodities, and as many creative businesses were slammed with 40% rental increases overnight, live music venues, theatres, and art galleries were forced out of their spaces. Meanwhile, artists and musicians, whose incomes had never been all that large, found themselves priced out of the city where they’d made work for decades and so left it for Wimberley, Elgin, Lockhart, and other surrounding communities.
In February of 2016, Mayor Steve Adler introduced his Music and Creative Ecosystem Omnibus Resolution as a means of addressing this situation. The document proposed a broad swath of changes in city policy that would protect venues, businesses, and individuals making creative work and ease the burden of doing so. Affordable space; zoning, permitting, and licensing regulations; economic incentives and small business loans; professional development; and tourism promotion were all identified as areas in which the city could be pro-active in improving conditions for the live music and creative industries.
Historically, the live music scene has preferred to operate apart from the film, design, digital and gaming, nonprofit arts, and other creative industries, and city has followed its lead, establishing a Music Commission and independent Music Office among other music-specific initiatives. But in joining the live music and other creative industries in the Omnibus Resolution, the mayor has recognized that many of the same issues that put the live music scene at risk are at issue in the other creative sectors. Representatives from both the Arts Commission and Music Commission stood with Mayor Adler when he unveiled the resolution in February, and the two commissions met together for the first time ever in April while gathering public input on the resolution. A city council vote on the resolution instructed the city manager’s office to return an action plan in 90 days. That plan was released June 27.
The Chronicle has been reporting on the problems facing the live music and creative sectors for years, as well as covering the developments regarding the Music and Creative Ecosystem Omnibus Resolution. You can learn more about them in the articles listed here. – Robert Faires
This article appears in June 24 • 2016.