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Greetings,
After nearly a full year of 50 arts organizations working together to create an arts component to the 2013 America's Cup, it is absolutely disappointing what the City of San Francisco, The Event Authority, the Office of Economic Workforce and Development, and The America's Cup view as an arts component to this world event - thereby making San Francisco for a moment a world stage.
We have met with Mark Buell, Chairman of the Event Organizing Committee, Marc Bollingham, the previous Director of the Event Authority, the Presidents of all the major arts organizations that include (Ballet, Opera, Symphony, YBCA, SFJAZZ), The Port of San Francisco, Grants for the Arts, The Arts Commission, Mike Martin (the city's project manager for the America's Cup), Office of Economic Workforce Development several board supervisors, have attended countless meetings and on this last Budget Committee meeting on Tuesday they presented a pitiful, shallow plan for the arts and for neighborhood outreach for the City of San Francisco, that now only excludes us from all language in the plan.
Why should you care??? The Arts and the plan we have implemented would bring vitality and the estimated 2.2 - 3.6 million people visiting San Francisco to the neighborhoods, the small businesses that desperately could benefit from this revenue and the arts and the programming we foresee would be the channel to bring the visitors to the 11 Districts.
Imagine presenting projects for example... Marcus Shely Jazz Orchestra on the 1909 Port Workers Strike on the Embarcadero with the Bay Bridge as the back drop ... Presenting The San Francisco Afro Cuban Latin Jazz All Stars featuring guest musicians from Cuba... for a FREE concert in Dolores Park, what about floating barges up and down the waterfront displaying fire arts at night presented by Burning Man, presenting aerial acrobats across Market Street by the Carpetbag Brigade, access for muralists, site specific theater throughout all districts in SF. The bottom line when the hour of racing is done what does 2.2~ 3.6 million people do...they go to amazing events throughout the city, patron the local businesses and we ALL benefit.
Further, we have identified funding channels that would not come from the City of San Francisco's General Fund or even from the America's Cup organization, and yet they still do not include us. Below is a letter from San Francisco International Arts Festival Director Andrew Wood. He summarizes the last year of planning - and has provided actions that you can take to help us make this happen.
WHO ARE THE ARTS ORGANIZATIONS?
Beth Pickens (Queer Cultural Center),
Paul Dresher (Paul Dresher Ensemble),
Idris Ackamoor and Rhodessa Jones
(Cultural Odyssey),
Ava Roy (We Players),
Amy Seiwert and Joseph Copley (im'ij-re),
Larry Ochs (ROVA Saxophone Quartet),
Roberto Varea (Performance Collective
Secos & Mojados),
Kyoko Yoshida (US/Japan Cultural Trade
Network),
Serge Bakalian (GoldenThread
Productions) ,
Christian Burns (The Foundry and Burns
Work),
Tony Kelly (Thick Description),
Larry Reed and Sachiko Willis
(Shadowlight Productions),
Allan Manalo (Bindlestiff Studios),
Yuriko Doi and David Himmelreich,
(Theatre of Yugen),
Brian Goggin (Metaphorm),
Liss Fain and Jennifer Beamer-Fernandez
(Liss Fain Dance),
Keith Hennessy (Circo Zero Performance),
Deborah Slater (Deborah Slater Dance
Theatre),
Andrew Wood (San Francisco International
Arts Festival),
Joe Landini (The Garage),
Mary Alice Fry (Footloose/Women on the
Way Festival), Stephanie Dalton (Urban Music Presents),
Jay Ruby (Carpetbag Brigade),
Raissa Simpson (Push Dance Company),
Hope Mirlis (ABD Productions),
Vinay Patel (Asian Improv Arts),
Rachel Little (im'ij-re),
Ernesto Sopprani (The Off Center),
Ben Yonas (Yonas Media), and
Steven Raspa (Burning Man)
Open Letter from Director of San Francisco International Arts Festival
Dear Stephanie,
Thanks very much for your help thus far with getting a comprehensive arts program (a Festival) to be an integral part of the America's Cup events in San Francisco next year. Whether you have attended one of the SFIAF community meetings, spoken at a public hearing, written to your elected representatives, avidly followed our adventures via e-mail or endured one or more of the interminable and meaningless "of-course-we-take-the-arts-seriously" hen pecks conducted by Jane Sullivan of the Office of Economic & Workforce Development (OEWD); collectively, we have forced the arts onto the America's Cup agenda at City Hall.
We have made a lot of progress, but of course this is still San Francisco, where the bizarre can be very much the norm. As a case in point OEWD unveiled its Arts Plan for the America's Cup to the Board of Supervisors Budget Committee two days ago on Wednesday February 22.
It is one of the most cataclysmically incompetent, farcical and flawed municipal government documents ever circulated-even by San Francisco's standards. Their primary recommendation is for an undergraduate class atSan Francisco State University to develop an arts marketing plan that will lure unsuspecting America's Cup tourists into San Francisco neighborhoods.
It is quite obvious that OEWD has paid no attention whatsoever to the legitimate organizing and programming ideas being created for over a year by San Francisco artists and arts organizations and has instead regurgitated some nonsensical drivel that they plagiarized at the last minute from the London Olympics website.
Just for laughs we have put a copy of the plan on the internet for your entertainment and reading pleasure. It can be seen at this link:
http://sfiaf.org/current/documents/Top_Secret_SF_World_Beating_Americas_Cup_Arts_Plan.pdf
Of course, there is also a very serious side to all this. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is going to vote on this sorry excuse on Tuesday February 28 (that's five days from now, folks) as part of the City's signing off on the America's Cup plan.
What is worse, the way the actual America's Cup legislation is written at the moment, the City is going to let the America's Cup Event Authority (that's Larry Ellison and Oracle) escape without having to commit to any type of arts program whatsoever; even when it is abundantly clear that the America's Cup has no real incentive to include a legitimate arts program as part of its event.
We wrote to the Mayor and Board of Supervisors about the dangers of letting Larry & Co. off the hook with this vote, urgently asking them to take action. You can read a copy of that letter on the SFIAF blog here:http://sfiaf.wordpress.com/
The Mayor's reaction has been to appear completely oblivious to the deal that is about to be signed by his own administration and he has thus far ignored requests to meet with representatives of the arts community.
If you have an opinion on this subject and you would like to share it with the Mayor, please send him an e-mail tomayoredwinlee@sfgov.org
If you are more old fashioned you can also call him at 415-554-6141 or send him a letter (before Tuesday) addressed to: The Honorable Edwin Lee, Mayor, City & County of San Francisco, City Hall, Room 200, Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, San Francisco, CA 94102.
You may also want to consider sending a message to the Board of Supervisors asking them to reject the OEWD plan and to make sure that the legislation on the America's Cup either holds Larry Ellison accountable for creating an arts program as part of a coordinated effort with the City's arts community or that he provides funds for a comprehensive arts program during the America's Cup. The Supervisors e-mail addresses (along with the addresses of their staff persons working on America's Cup) are as follows:
Supes
david.chiu@sfgov.org; john.avalos@sfgov.org; david.campos@sfgov.org; eric.mar@sfgov.org;carmen.chu@sfgov.org; sean.elsbernd@sfgov.org; christine.olague@sfgov.org; mark.farrell@sfgov.org;scott.weiner@sfgov.org; jane.kim@sfgov.org; malia.cohen@sfgov.org;
Aides
Catherine.Rauschuber@sfgov.org; Raquel.Redondiez@sfgov.org; Hillary.Ronen@sfgov.org;Nickolas.Pagoulatos@sfgov.org; Matthias.Mormino@sfgov.org; Margaux.Kelly@sfgov.org; Katy.Tang@sfgov.org;Jen.Low@sfgov.org; Olivia.Scanlon@sfgov.org; Adam.Taylor@sfgov.org; Andrea.Bruss@sfgov.org;
Hearing
If you would like to speak to the Supervisors in person, then the hearing is going to be at 3:00pm on Tuesday February 28 at City Hall. You can view the meeting agenda here
http://www.sfbos.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/bosagendas/agendas/2012/BAG022812.pdf
If you have friends that you think might find the above state of affairs to be either funny, outrageous, ridiculous, typical of City Hall, criminally incompetent and/or ONLY IN SAN FRANCISCO, please feel free to forward it to them.
Thanks very much
Andrew
"Depending on whom you ask, the Bay Area art world is either a major world center for creative innovation or a self-referential backwater prone to tunnel vision. If it's possible for it to be both simultaneously, the multidisciplinarySan Francisco International Arts Festival is well poised to address the dichotomy." SF Weekly
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