City and County of San FranciscoSan Francisco Arts Commission

Community Arts, Education and Grants Committee - June 10, 2014 - Meeting Minutes

Community Arts, Education and Grants Committee - June 10, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO ARTS COMMISSION

COMMUNITY ARTS, EDUCATION, AND GRANTS COMMITTEE

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

2:00 p.m.

25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 70


 

MINUTES

 

The meeting was called to order at 2:08pm.

 

  1. Roll Call

Commissioners Present: Abby Sadin Schnair, Marcus Shelby, Janine Shiota

Commissioners Absent: Charles Collins, Sherene Melania

Staff Present: Tom DeCaigny, Judy Nemzoff, Robynn Takayama, Beatrice Thomas, Tyese Wortham, Cristal Fiel

 

This item was moved from agenda item 7 to item 2.

  1. Public Comment

I was hoping that at the last Street Artist meeting with a new chair, a person with a lot of experience, things might begin to change in the Street Artist program, particularly since I’ve been in and out of it for long periods of time, things change. It was a strange experience, but nonetheless, I went in one day and bought a permit. The next day, that same market manager at Justin Herman Plaza threatened me, and there was no reason for it. He approached me. I taped it. And I left several messages saying I didn’t want to be involved in this program. I actually waited in your hallway on two separate days, no one was picking up the phone, the door to the office was locked. The only email I got was one that said the police were told the permit was invalid. When I had sent an email to the Board of Supervisors saying I don’t even want it. So, that was a huge disconnect. I had to put a trace on my order and I requested many times about what was going on with that money order. Is it being returned to me? What’s going on? I never got a response. Then, last week, I just walked up into your office. Nobody was picking up the phone. There was an envelope there for me, and there was nobody there. I waited for about twenty minutes, and then I opened the envelope. There was no letter, and there were four permits with two different permit numbers. And all of them maybe active. I don’t want these permits. I just want my money refunded. As you know, I’ve gotten a grant on the east coast. I am more than willing to leave this all behind, because I couldn’t make sense out of it if I wanted to. I was hearing from two factions, some from angry street artists who are filling me in on events from the past and my own experience with a very small Street Artist program, which doesn’t seem to function really well. I would really appreciate it if you’d just return the money orders to me. And we could be done with this, in my view, a very dysfunctional relationship.

 

  1. Community Arts, Education, and Grants Committee Chair Report

No Report.

 

  1. Presentation of Sustain Arts Initiative

Director of Cultural Affairs Tom DeCaigny introduced Marc Vogl, Sustain Arts’ field director for the Bay Area, to the Commissioners. He stated that Mr. Vogl was a longtime leader in the arts community as the founder of Killing My Lobster and former program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Mr. DeCaigny expressed that he thought a presentation on the Sustain Arts Initiative would be valuable for the Commissioners and public to learn about and gain an understanding of how the project could benefit San Francisco’s arts ecology.

Mr. Vogl expressed his appreciation for the opportunity to speak on the initiative. He encouraged the Commissioners and staff to make comments, ask questions, and provide any feedback on the presentation. Mr. Vogl explained that the initiative was a nationwide effort that empowered the community to improve decision-making using a new piece of technology that was built to support arts and culture in America. He stated that the purpose of the project was to find ways into conversations using a common language and framework for decision-making. The Sustain Arts Initiative sets itself apart from similar cultural data projects by taking the data and integrating it into a user-friendly platform. He added that the platform aggregated data from sources such as the Cultural Data Project, Kickstarter, and the U.S. Census. The platform connected knowledge and networks in the interest for galvanizing action.

Mr. Vogl further explained that the initiative addressed the challenges the art sector faced by making better use of the data. He said that it was really about what you do with the data versus the data itself. Mr. Vogl said that through the building and synthesizing of existing research, the project answered critical questions for users: Where were arts and cultural organizations located? Who participated in them? From where did funding come? How did they maintain relevancy over time?

Mr. Vogl explained that Jim Bildner of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Hauser Institute for Civil Society led the initiative. He noted that Mr. Bildner had extensive experience in philanthropy, having brought much needed attention to arts philanthropy. Additional partners included the Foundation Center and Fractured Atlas.

He presented components of the online platform to Commissioners, and stated that the there were six national sites: Detroit was the initial site, and the Bay Area would launch next. The project was supported by funders, including the City of San Jose, Fleishhacker Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. 

Mr. Vogl answered questions and comments from Commissioners and staff. He clarified that the platform would be built so that data gurus could plug in additional data sets, but the idea was to balance that with “ease of use.” He also stated that the online platform was free, and that it was important for users to inform funders that they were using it. He commented that the initiative hoped to improve data literacy among the varied users. Ms. Thomas suggested that the initiative partner with Salesforce regarding data literacy.

Mr. DeCaigny commented that this platform would provide real time data usage for peers to access. He said that City agency grant data was not currently reported with the Foundation Center.

Commissioner Schnair called for public comment. There was none.

 

  1. Cultural Equity Grants Program Report

Cultural Equity Grants (“CEG”) Program Manager Beatrice Thomas announced that staff was preparing for the fiscal year (“FY”) 2014–2015 grant cycle. She reported that the first of several announcements of the grant deadlines, guidelines, and applications would be released by the end of the week. Ms. Thomas said that staff was working on finalizing the grant workshop schedule, which was upcoming. Once released, Ms. Thomas said that Commissioners could then disseminate the information among their networks.

Mr. DeCaigny acknowledged CEG staff for their efforts in calendaring, reviewing the guidelines, and gathering the suite of information to send out this week. He noted that the Commission had conversations around grant strategy, including breadth versus depth, grant size, and general operating support. In preparing for the deadlines, Mr. DeCaigny said that the current grantmaking programs would remain unchanged this year during staff transitions; the guidelines would be identical to last year; and the funding levels would also be the same with a modest increase of one and one-half percent per the Mayor’s budget allocation for the cost-of-doing-business increase.

Mr. DeCaigny commented that the fellow would be arriving in July. With the fellow, the Arts Commission would begin to look at data, including historical trends, and allow the community to have a voice and give input on the Arts Commission’s grant strategy. He said that the fellow would work with past, current, and potential grantees to conduct focus groups and one-on-one interviews to understand the impact of a shift in grant strategy. This information would also help the Arts Commission figure out how to roll out the change in a way that is most effective in terms of total impact. Mr. DeCaigny reiterated that all of grant strategy information is on hold while the staff transitions are taking place.

Commissioner Schnair called for public comment. There was none.

 

  1. Community Arts and Education Program Director’s Report
  1. Community Arts and Education (“CAE”) Program Director Judy Nemzoff said that the motion before the committee was a part of a series of arts activities launched in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood through funding from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (“SFPUC”). She reminded the committee that the goal with the SFPUC funding was to take already existing programs and expand them in the Bayview to provide a richer fabric of arts opportunities. This action was the second round of a project called Sights and Sounds of Bayview.

CAE Program Manager Robynn Takayama said that she was happy that local public radio station KALW 91.7FM applied for this grant opportunity because they were good partners on the project last year. KALW was proposing “Boom and Bloom” which will commission six sound-rich multimedia portraits of people who live and work in the Bayview and are working to enact positive change in San Francisco. In addition to working with the Arts Commission on Sights and Sounds of Bayview, KALW continues to report on the rapidly evolving city and recent coverage includes a documentary on the four corners of Jerrold and 3rd Street. They are committing staff to the stories and the live event including Todd Whitney who will head up their community engagement outreach. Todd will build upon the relationships KALW already established in Bayview through their partnership with SFAC and will use his journalism and community-based experience to identify artists, partners, and hidden themes and narrative for the project.

Ms. Nemzoff announced that there were no new resources available to continue funding the project beyond the grant. There will be remaining projects with SFPUC funding, such as WritersCorps posters in the Third Street Light Rail, but the depth of funding was only for two years.

Mr. DeCaigny said that the two-year investment in community arts programming from SFPUC was a pilot project to look at how to invest the two percent for arts. There were discussions about appropriate allocation and what those could be from bond-generated dollars. Unfortunately, because of the restrictions with using bond dollars, the SFPUC had to use their own cash dollars to fund community arts programs. They would not continue this on an annualized basis.

Commissioner Schnair gave the following motion:

Motion for the Director of Cultural Affairs to enter into a grant agreement with Independent Arts and Media, fiscal sponsor for KALW-FM Radio for $30,000 for the Sights and Sounds of Bayview grant.

Moved: Shelby/Shiota

Public Comment: KALW staff and Program Director for Boom and Bloom, Ninna Gaensler-Debs, said that she worked on assistant producing Sights and Sounds of Bayview with KALW and was excited to do this again. KALW was really thrilled to be a part of producing that project. The have added an element of community outreach, and they are excited to be able to work with more photographers and visual artists. They have talked with various organizations about collaborating including BAYCAT, Bayview YMCA and Bayview Opera House.

The motion was passed unanimously.

  1. Ms. Nemzoff gave an overview of the year’s Where Art Lives programming. The Arts Commission hired a lead teaching artist, Todd Berman, who managed the program and rewrote the curriculum with a focus on asking young people to reflect on the impact of graffiti vandalism in their community and to take more stewardship in what a healthy community looks like. He took the curriculum from last year and brought in Common Core and state standards. With Mr. Berman’s help, the number of students enrolled in the program increased significantly. Ms. Nemzoff said that locations in District 10 had additional support from the SFPUC, and they were able to do youth murals at the District 10 locations.

For the evaluation, Mr. Berman surveyed teachers and site coordinators instead of the students. Some results included that 100 percent of the teachers and site coordinators said they would have Where Art Lives at their site again next year and that 71 percent of those surveyed believed that the program would make students less likely to commit graffiti vandalism in the future.

Mr. Berman recruited Sunset Youth Services, a digital arts program for high risk youth, to create a short documentary for the Where Art Lives program. Ms. Nemzoff said that she was pleased with the partnership with Sunset Youth Services and Mr. Berman’s idea to recruit young people to do documentation. The committee viewed an almost complete version of the documentary.

Commissioner Schnair expressed that once the final version was complete, it would be a great resource to promote the work of the program.

Mr. DeCaigny added that he thought it would be a good video to share with the rest of staff to help articulate the difference between graffiti as vandalism and graffiti as art.

Commissioner Schnair called for public comment. There was none.

Explanatory Document: PDF iconWAL FY13-14 Year End Review.pdf

 

  1. Cultural Center Report

Ms. Nemzoff said that the motion was to provide advances of the annual grant agreement to the Cultural Centers so that there was no delay in the consistency of funding. It is a process that the Arts Commission has been doing for years. The Management and Programming Plan and Budget (“MPP”) would include contract compliance reporting requirements and would go before the committee for approval in the coming months.

Ms. Takayama said that there were other changes to the MPP, including revising the narrative questions to look at the bigger picture and give the Cultural Centers an opportunity to reflect on how their programming aligns with the Arts Commission’s mission, vision and values in the strategic plan. She hoped that the changes would make it easier for the commissioners to review the MPP and look at how the Cultural Centers fit into the broader arts ecosystem. She added that the advances were based on 25 percent of their expected grant amount. If the Mayor’s budget includes a cost of doing business increase, the grant amounts will be revised at that time.

Ms. Nemzoff said that they have taken the feedback from the Cultural Center directors to focus on better indicators of what success looked like to the organizations. The revised MPP will show a heavy reliance on compliance with a focus on governance and fiscal management.

Mr. DeCaigny said that the Arts Commission staff hoped to use the City’s compliance monitoring structure to look at parity across the city. The compliance monitoring would also require site visits and he hoped the directors who lead the site visits would share their position in terms of fiscal health.

Ms. Takayama added that she was the lead for the compliance monitoring with African American Art and Cultural Complex (“AAACC”) and Bayview Opera House, Inc. (“BVOH, Inc.”). The two Centers had opportunities to receive technical assistance from Compasspoint as part of this compliance monitoring program.

Commissioner Schnair said that the revised MPP and compliance monitoring sounded like a good transition following the strategic plan. She commended staff for moving forward.

Commissioner Shiota asked about the grant to BVOH, Inc. while there was building construction. Ms. Nemzoff said that the Arts Commission was committed to supporting Bayview Opera House with the same grant amount. The organization had moved across the street from the building. In the interim period, they were doing gardening in an empty lot and bringing the teaching artists to the schools rather than bringing the schools to the building. She said that the hope was that the organization would move back into the building within the next fiscal year. She also said that the goal was for the building to open in the spring.

Commissioner Shelby asked why the organization did not choose another location for the summer camp. Ms. Nemzoff said that the organizations looked at different locations, but they were not appropriate. She said that there was summer programming still happening, but that it was difficult to provide a comprehensive summer camp in a temporary location.

Mr. DeCaigny suggested relaying information about local partners doing summer programming to the parents of students that were in Bayview Opera House’s summer school. He suggested starting with the recipients of the Community Arts in Bayview grant, for instance. He said it could hopefully lead to ongoing partnerships. He commented that the actual inventory for programming space was so small, so perhaps there would be other programs the Opera House could partner with. Ms. Nemzoff said that she did not feel well versed enough in the Opera House’s programming to talk about it at length.

Ms. Takayama mentioned that BVOH, Inc. was the recipient of the 3rd on Third grant, so they were continuing programming with that. Ms. Nemzoff added that there was some cross pollination of programming with the Community Arts in Bayview grantees.

Commissioner Schnair gave the following motion:

Motion to authorize advances to the following Cultural Centers for FY2014-2015 based on the prior year’s total grant allocation and pending approval of the City budget, in the following amounts:

African American Art and Culture Complex (“AAACC”) $153,589 (including $128,501 to AAACC and $25,058 to Queer Cultural Center as sub-grantee of AAACC)

Bayview Opera House, $80,784

Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, $135,546

SOMArts Cultural Center, $176,528 (including $151,470 to SOMArts Cultural Center and $25,058 to Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center as sub-grantee of SOMArts Cultural Center)

 

Moved: Shelby/Shiota

Public Comment: None.

The motion was passed unanimously.

 

  1. New Business and Announcements

Mr. DeCaigny said that Commissioner Shelby had made a suggestion about engaging the arts community broadly to discuss community needs, pressures and how to respond to them. He wanted the committee’s thoughts on how best to respond and calendar a conversation.

Commissioner Shelby said he would be happy to see something specific calendared so that there was ample time for people to speak and give public comment. He suggested holding a town hall. He wanted to understand the reasons why artists were leaving and believed that the Arts Commission was a body for artists as well as institutions.

Mr. DeCaigny agreed that a town hall would be a more appropriate forum for people to speak and suggested scheduling one. He referenced the strategic plan and a goal for the Arts Commission to play more of a role as a convener. He wanted the opportunity to invite partners at the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (“MOH”) to speak at this town hall. MOH was holding a meeting in August that the Arts Commission did not hold a leadership role in organizing, but wanted to make sure that artists were represented. He thought it might be interesting to convene adjacent to the MOH meeting.

Commissioner Shelby said that staff should target specific stakeholders and artists who have been living in San Francisco, and to invite artists across the spectrum.

Ms. Nemzoff said that this town hall should be tied into something, such as meeting with the recipient of the artist displacement fund grant. The recipient could use it as an opportunity to hear from the community and educate themselves.

Commissioner Shelby said that artists were trying to wrap their heads around how supporting an institution would in turn support them. He thought the town hall would be a very important and informative forum for dialogue.

Mr. DeCaigny asked the committee if they thought housing was a primary issue.

Commissioner Shelby responded that most artists living in San Francisco were renters and housing was a big issue. He said that arts organizations were also struggling to stay in the city. Commissioner Schnair said that San Francisco was losing its artistic community.

Mr. DeCaigny said that the challenge was that the Arts Commission alone would not be able to address housing issues. He suggested creating a panel of different City stakeholders of their intended solutions, and then open it up to hear from the community about the issue. He believed that if this meeting was held before the MOH meeting, it would allow artists to feel more empowered to attend the MOH meeting because they would have an artist-specific dialogue.

Ms. Takayama showed the committee the posters in the Market Street Kiosks Youth Poster Series, which were photographs of the South of Market, Tenderloin, and Central Market neighborhoods taken by youth photographers with First Exposures. She announced that there would be an art walk and artist talk with the youth in conjunction with Central Market NOW, which is a monthly arts activation in Central Market.

Commissioner Schnair suggested the possibility of creating a rental program, for example utilizing Market Street posters as a way to generate revenue. Mr. DeCaigny said looking for opportunities to generate revenue is always a good idea and staff would look into it.

There was no other new business or announcements.

Commissioner Schnair called for public comment. There was none.

 

  1. Adjournment

There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 4:29 p.m.

 

CF 7/14/14 minutes adopted


Language Accessibility

 

Translated written materials and interpretation services are available to you at no cost. For assistance, please notify Program Associate Cristal Fiel, 415-252-3145, cristal.fiel@sfgov.org.

我們將為閣下提供免費的書面翻譯資料和口譯服務。如需協助,Program Associate Cristal Fiel, 415-252-3145, cristal.fiel@sfgov.org.

Materiales traducidos y servicios de interpretación están disponibles para usted de manera gratuita. Para asistencia, notifique a Program Associate Cristal Fiel, 415-252-3145, cristal.fiel@sfgov.org.

Ang mga materyales na nakasalin sa ibang wika at ang mga serbisyong tagapagsalin sa wika ay walang bayad. Para sa tulong, maaring i-contact si Program Associate Cristal Fiel, 415-252-3145, cristal.fiel@sfgov.org.