By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

The papers are shuffled, the bodies adjourned and the presentation complete. Now, we just have to sift through it.

One of Mayor Sam Jones’ first tasks as new man at the municipal helm was to initiate a collection of citizen input committees. The groups were charged with identifying problems to specific areas of Mobile life and then looking for possible solutions. The compilation of these “Task Force” sessions and their conclusions was recently released to the public amidst much hoopla from the mayor’s office.

A perusal through the dossier inevitably finds cultural concerns alongside the worries over emergency management, transportation and public safety. The Arts, Recreation and Culture committee was headed by a short list of familiar names from the cultural milieu but the body was comprised of 55 listed volunteers who graciously stepped forward in a progressive display of civic pride and responsibility.

Their conclusions are sound but hardly unheard.

The most imperative recommendation to come from the sub-committee was to find a way to facilitate communication and interaction between cultural entities in order to develop a more comprehensive event calendar. This same idea and focus was mentioned in the Wolf, Keene report commissioned just a few years ago by the Mobile Arts Council. The most tantalizing idea from the sub-committee was the establishment of a central ticket office where one could grab tickets for a multitude of events in one spot.

Their other recommendations carried roughly about the same amount of weight by their estimate. They would like to see an upgrade of facilities although it seems as if some high profile facilities seem to be in fairly good shape. The Saenger, Space 301 and the Mobile Museum of Art seem to be faring well; I’m unaware of the facilities to which the sub-committee specifically refers.

They would like to see fundraising opportunities for smaller groups coalesced. Not bad on the surface although the catch is that the city hire a professional grant writer/researcher for the payroll.

Their idea of hiring a marketing entity to tout the arts to locals seems initially robust, but one hesitates at some of the specifics involved. It would require acquiring funds from non-profit groups that often are very tight on resources. And if your group couldn’t afford to chip in much, do you get proportional representation? Do you get the decision-making power of a group who contributes ten times what you can afford? If not, do you only reap one-tenth the benefit or attention even though your meager offering is infinitely precious to a smaller budget? These particulars and others would need to be addressed.

They did recommend that that the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau place a new and greater emphasis on our arts scene, something that seems fairly cost efficient as it is basically little more than a change in focus.

The recommendation to elevate the public’s awareness of the importance of cultural events to the whole community is the best long-term solution to many concerns, but it’s something that entails the cooperation of an infinitely more complex slate of players.

The suggestion for the city to form an arts liaison with the schools is sterling and proactive. It would go great lengths toward addressing the previous concern.

The volunteer groups also listed short synopses of general strengths and weaknesses, some of which are familiar and others curious.

Among the strengths of the area, the quality of museum exhibitions, the strong educational efforts by arts groups, the presence and partnership of the University of South Alabama, and the presence of new “risk takers in the area” willing to buck the trend and tackle cultural projects seem to stand out as most pertinent.

Interestingly, when listing strengths and weaknesses under specific categories, the committee came up with seven strengths for education, five for marketing and only one for funding. It seems Mobile’s long tradition of being very capital-poor seeps down through every layer of life.

One curiosity that naturally caught the Artifice eye was that media coverage was listed as both strength and weakness.

And of course mention was made of the opportunity to fill the void left by recent hurricanes between Tallahassee and Houston. Aside from the fact that Mobile has dodged the meteorological bullet too many times in past years for us to relax in the face what looks to be yet another active season, this also underlines what seems to be the most recurrent theme of Mobile arts in the last decade.

It’s up to the average folks to build this inertia. Without a citizenry that is thoroughly dedicated to the arts, to culture and to community, we can’t fulfill the vision sketched out by the dreamers among us. We will never make up the ground we seek, the void that will become acceptably commonplace if the opportunity passes for too long.

These citizens on the committees who chipped in their time and energy have shown what is needed via their own examples, not mere rhetoric.

The rest of us hold sway over the ultimate verdict.

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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