Arts Forum SF

« Survey Response: Sophie Maxwell: Incumbent, D10 | Main | San Francisco Candidates Responses to Survey »

October 25, 2006

Survey Response: Chris Daly: Incumbent, D6

1. Have you ever served on the board of an Arts agency or organization?
No

2. Describe your current arts activities as a patron, an audience member or worker, etc. What arts events have you participated in recently?
I have attended events at Bindlestiff, Dance Mission, artist exhibitions at Developing Environments, Luggage Store, Counterpulse. I try to help all arts organizations that come to me for assistance..

3. Please list three arts organizations or working artists in your district. Do you know them personally?
Debra Walker, Bindlestiff, Luggage Store Gallery. Yes, I have worked with each, and many others frequently over the years.

4. If elected, will you commit to displaying art created by local artists in your office at City Hall and attend arts events in your district?
Yes

5. The City's General Plan spells out a vision for the arts in San Francisco: "San Francisco is nationally and internationally acclaimed as a cultural center where the arts are central to the essence and character of the City. It hosts a flourishing cultural environment in which a profusion of art is created, performed and exhibited in adventuresome, creative and often ground breaking ways. The breadth of artistic achievement in San Francisco encompasses many disciplines, cultures, individuals and organizations of all sizes."
What does that vision specifically mean to you, and your district?
District 6 is the home to some of the most cutting edge artists and arts organizations in this country, and the world. I will continue to offer support, will continue to fight for funding, will work with these organizations to provide access to governmental support for programming, and will work to expand local, state and national funding for the arts. I will support cultural centers in every neighborhood and prioritize space for non-profits.

6. What is your evaluation of and commitment to current city funding for the arts, existing agencies and priorities (such as Grants for the Arts and the Arts Commission's Cultural Equity and Individual Artist Commission Programs, etc.)?
As chair of the Budget and Finance Committee last year, I restored $250,000.00 of funding to the arts in the 2005 supplemental, which went directly to organizations in the community. I also added 1.5 million to the 2006 budget to retool the neighborhood arts program through the Arts Commission. I believe the arts infrastructure needs to be integrated…with itself and with the rest of San Francisco’s body politic. The funding should be coordinated with the policy, the arts policy should be integrated with other department’s policies. I support funding for operational support for arts (Grants for the Arts) because in addition to the cultural benefits, the arts, as an industry, contributes over a billion and a half dollars into our economy. I think the arts, and our city would be better served if all of our arts “departments” were coordinated together.

7. What are your priorities for future or increased arts funding?
I am prioritizing the arts in the coming budget, as I did in last year’s budget priorities. We will be looking at the progress made with the increases in this current year and the results will hopefully support further increases. We will work with the arts agencies and the other agencies that do community programming, to continue to maximize the presence of the arts where it is so desperately needed.

8. Are you familiar with the recent report by the Arts Task Force?
Yes. I appointed Debra Walker as the representative for District 6. She chaired the task force, has briefed me and has also presented to the Board of Supervisors.

9. Do you support the Arts Task Force's recommendations to fully restore the statutory Hotel Tax Fund contributions to arts and tourism?
I support restoration of funds for community art. We need to prioritize the community arts programs that provide benefit directly out in the community. I think we need to look at the Hotel Tax and evaluate the line items, and assess the funding levels, and make firm commitments to cultural experience. Funding our arts organizations, large and small makes sense.

10. If so, what would you do in next year's budget cycle to fulfill that promise?
I will support the hearing of the hotel tax issue requested by Ammiano. His office had requested an evaluative look at the hotel tax, and we will look at how the arts community, how the city is being served.

11. In past decades, a Neighborhood Arts Program was one of the largest recipients of funds from the City's Grants for the Arts; however, that program has been decimated in recent years, and many neighborhoods have limited access to arts and culture close to home. Do you support the Arts Task Force's recommendations to create a new and substantial Neighborhood Arts Program across the entire City?
YES YES YES. We need this to happen yesterday.

12. If so, what would you do, as supervisor, to fulfill that promise?
I fought to find funding for many organizations in District 6. One example is Bindlestiff, an arts organization serving the Pilipino community for decades. They have been struggling within the redevelopment process, and I helped them reach their goal to create a permanent space. I worked with Ammiano, Mirkarimi and the rest of our budget committee to start restoring funding to Neighborhood Arts. The mayor ‘s budget included no funding increase for the neighborhood arts restoration. We all know that arts and cultural programming empowers people, yet a review of the mapping of grants for the granting awarded by the cities Grants for the Arts” shows a disturbing lack of opportunity in the entire southeast section of our city. This must stop. We must provide this experience across the city. And the way to do that is with a strengthened Neighborhood Arts Program, guided by the Arts Commission staff.

13. Do you support the rest of the Arts Task Force recommendations?
YES

14. Do you find any of the other Arts Task Force recommendations to be particularly valuable to you and your district?
Services for supporting individual artists and supporting and stabilizing organizations are critical. We have a mandate in our master plan to help support and stabilize community artists and organizations. We really need to strengthen and coordinate the arts infra-structure. The idea of a single department for the arts is a really good one that would make it much easier and more efficient to engage. I strongly support better coordination within our arts organization and the arts with the rest of our city family. Every department should be connected with the arts, and the programming should support each others, and together our cities mission.

15. As a supervisor, how will you work with artists and Arts organizations in your district to communicate the value of the work they do to other community-based constituencies, and to encourage and facilitate partnerships and alliances (e.g., merchants groups, neighborhood associations, trade unions, social service and healthcare non-profits)?
We need leadership. It is difficult to figure out, with the current structure, who exactly is the “Arts”. We need to strengthen the mission of the Arts Commission, activate commissioners and staff to attend other departmental meetings, we need strong leadership in the arts to advocate with our offices, with the mayors office and departments. The lack of leadership from the arts agencies, especially around the mandates in the city’s master plan, is a problem. As supervisors, I have prioritized community arts, the supervisors have supported that. At this point, it is the mayor who should be asking his staff to present a plan to implement the task force report recommendations, and to take leadership in moving the arts forward.

16. The City's General Plan lists artists and artisans as a population in special need of affordable housing policies and programs: "Artists have special housing needs for affordable accommodations that provide large wall space, high ceilings, lofts, lighting, and the ability to work at all hours of the day or night. There is high demand for such flexible space in the city, as many of San Francisco's artists live in apartment units not suitable for such activities. It was estimated that about 60% of San Francisco artists are lower income households, earning less than $25,500 a year in 1990." History has proven that the housing marketplace will not address these special needs on its own. How will you work to develop and maintain long-term affordable housing and studio space for individual artists and Arts organizations?
I have worked hard to implement the increase in the affordable housing requirement in all developments. I think we should look at the arts impact fee schema and see if we can expand the program, if it makes sense to find a way to support not only public art in the developments themselves, but also public arts space and public programming. It seems we can do a lot more around the development impact and arts.

17. The SFUSD recently created its first Arts Education Master Plan. As supervisor, how will you help the SFUSD find the resources to guarantee implementation of the plan?
I will support the efforts of Prop H, and support funding increases to community and neighborhood arts programming, continuing to ask other department programs to utilize the arts, especially as it relates to youth, job training, after school programs- and encouraging a continuous partnership between our art agencies and SFUSD in finding new funding sources through directed grants, etc.

18. How do you see the Board of Supervisors working in concert with the Board of Education, the Mayor's Office and the social service sector to provide expanded, coordinated Arts education opportunities for children and youth across the entire city, during school hours and after school?
We need to continue to coordinate together as I said above, all the efforts. Prop H is a great beginning, but we need to focus staff on coordinating these programming efforts out in the neighborhoods. The city and the school district should inventory their buildings/spaces and their programming. We need to ensure access to arts programming across the city, in every neighborhood. Currently, the areas most in need of these programs are horribly underserved.

19. Please give an example of an urgent issue in your district and how you would work with artists/Arts organizations to address that issue.
An urgent issue in District 6 is displacement because of the cost of housing. As we make our planning decisions, we need to be looking to our arts organizations to be part of development proposals, as contributing partners. This would offer programming opportunity in affordable housing developments for job training, after school programs, etc while offering artists places to work and live. Funding opportunities rising from partnerships like these would help meet financial challenges of these progressive type solutions.

Posted by at October 25, 2006 9:35 AM

Comments

Post a comment