Creative Arts Collective Plans
General Roadmap of Creative Arts Collective
We would like to start by consolidating all those people who wish to try establishing a centralized arts organization, and picking the so called "point person" of the various musical scenes i.e. the one who does the most at getting their group together, presenters, etc. The remaining individuals interested in working on this organization will be called upon to commit a few evenings per month to work for the organization (as door people, or flyer distributors, etc.).
The key point I would like to stress here is that the Creative Arts Collective is interested in keeping the scene alive in all dimensions. Everyone would like to be a performer, but there are necessary roles that must be filled so that a collective can function. We need people to book shows at venues, we need people to pester the media to write about the unsung heroes in the Bay Area, we need people to document what's going on musically in the scene, etc. etc. One of the problems with this has been in the past that one or two people ends up being responsible for the whole show. This thankless job (which we allow them to do, since we'd rather be playing music anyway) leads to burnout and disillusionment fairly rapidly, and eventually they give up the attempt, after seeing one too many nights with little or no audience.
Rotation of Responsibility
One possible answer to this would be to rotate the responsibilities
so everyone has a chance to assume the roles of artist, presenter, door
person, etc. etc. I believe for example, that if a person were responsible
for two months of booking shows, (rather than three years without much
of a break) they would get to know about the job of booking, but not have
to do it again for another, say, 10 months. It is important that
everyone be exposed to all levels of jobs, so that a thorough understanding
of the process of venue booking, fundraising, etc. can be established within
the organization. By rotating the responsibility around, everyone
gets a chance to both make and support music.
How can this rotating responsibility model work? Well, one of
the first steps is to establish a central point of reference that prospective
performers refer to. This can be accomplished by establishing a central
post office mailbox where all materials come in (press kits, tapes, etc.),
and a centralized email address (this has already been done - creatarts@netscape.net).
This gives the impression of one organized force at work (and impressions
are everything in the 90's). It also enables many different people
to assume the role of venue booker without email (and mail) addresses having
to change in the process.
A Venue (or Venues) for presentation
Next, we need to find a place, relatively close to public transport, in which we could book one night/week. Currently, we have such a place in San Francisco at the Luggage Store, but there are issues at work there which make presenting there more difficult. It is difficult to find anybody interested in renting a venue for this music that approaches it with the right spirit in mind. The answer is to eventually get our own place, but this has to be accomplished gradually in steps, I believe. We need one night a week to start, and possibly more later on. Responsibility for booking, running the door, concessions etc. should rotate. We should also consider other places for special events or festivals (like ODC).
Non profit Status
In addition to this, we should apply for non-profit status (501-3C, I believe), in order to qualify for tax deductible donations and grants to expand the organization. We can continue to operate as we have before while waiting for the approval of this status, building up a record of past shows, to use as ammunition for grants (see, look what we've been doing, etc.).
More Media Coverage
At the same time, we should be hammering the media to cover this scene more thoroughly. There have been lots of discussions on ba-newmus about this, and some progress has been made, but we need more action. It doesn't take many people to convince the media that there is a scene worth writing about here, a scene playing music differently than anyone else in the Bay Area does...
Expanding Audience
This is a real challenge. How do you get an increasingly information
saturated public, content to stay at home with their cable TV, and the
Internet, out of their house to see live and complex music, which challenges
their very notions of what music is? Answer: make it an event
with lots of media coverage, and get the big names to come out and play,
while at the same time exposing lesser known artists at the same event.
Rovaté was not an example of this, however. Though it was
an excellent concert, the formula was the same that we have seen before:
Really Big Name Artist (Sam Rivers) plays with Really Big Name Bay Area
Band (ROVA), featuring Big Bay Area Names (Goldberg, Schott, Masaoka) as
composers of pieces for said band. None of the people on this concert
were in the least bit unknown, at least in the Bay Area, and though the
general scene was mentioned in the article, very little was actually accomplished
to promote the scene itself. Some of this might have been accomplished
if they hadn't chose to play it safe. Of course, this means less
audience showing up for the unknowns, or not coming in at all until the
big names play (I myself have been guilty of this on several occasions),
which affects the box office totals, and thus your profit margin.
So what can be accomplished?
For starters, combining mailing lists would give musicians a larger
prospective audience to "market" to. A number of us have as few as
a dozen or as many as five hundred names available. All of these
together mailed from one organization would be much more effective than
each artist maintaining their separate "fiefdom".
Secondly, how about expanding the focus of the Creative Arts Collective
to include more of the other arts? There are artists out there who
work in other mediums, or in more than one medium, and want to express
themselves within a context that their work can be seen and experienced.
Some of these artists have a following of their own which can be tapped
as a source for more audiences as well. It's certainly worth taking
a look at...
Thirdly, how about reaching out to the community and informing them
what we do through workshops and clinics. Many of us work in advanced
media fields (computers, digital video, digital audio, etc.) These
things are pretty interesting as discussion material, both before concerts
and at schools. Also improvisers talking about how they improvise
is very enlightening too.
Any other ideas? Please give me some feedback...