Long Beach Post: Podcast: City Manager Pat West Discusses LB Arts

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Podcast: City Manager Pat West Discusses LB Arts

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Patrick West, City Manager for the City of Long Beach, spoke with me about the current municipal arts funding model, some of the successes, opportunities, and challenges that face the Arts Council for Long Beach, and explains the cuts in the upcoming budget.� Click play below to listen to the podcast:

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5 Comments so far.

KaRi of ThePrimeSpot.com
Questions: Do operating expenses include rent & salaries? (ie. LBCTelevision learned PEG funds cannot be used for those costs). Define overhead costs. Does Craig Watson have the TECHNICAL knowledge (specifically internet) in addition to art & cable access fields? It is Robert Swayze's job to change the law re: live music in non-traditional venues? What's the next step? Comments: Sander, I'd love to see a roving LBC stage at Art Receptions AND on street corners. P. West says "Grow Art" . Interesting visual ;) SPIN Cycle Exhibit was cool! Good point Sander, the Arts Council can spend more time & energy attracting Grants and alternative funding. The City now DOES have a marketing network online, the latest being Twitter and Ning. This will feed the bloggers but QUALITY must be present for praise. TIP OF THE DAY NowGetSocial.com is a website BILconference used for PARTICIPANTS to decide on presentations. LB can use this interactive tool to decide public art pieces and placement, to assist with the Master Cultural Plan.

Scott Blumenthal
Hats off to both Sander Roscoe Wolff and Pat West for a good talk about the arts. Good questions, good answers and a positive look for the future. Not to say there's not a lot of work to do, but it looks do-able and promising.

Scott Blumenthal
Good writings KaRi....you are right there with it on the front lines. I'd like to see a better mural program for the city of Long Beach. This city can easily sustain 100 murals a year for twenty plus years. Perhaps, financial and tax incentives for business and individuals who put up murals on their property. What do you think?

shiborigirl
what a disappointment! not even once was a reference made to more integration of arts and education in the city. let's see... a huge public school district, LBCC-2 campuses, CSULB -just for starters. we are in serious trouble here if we think that the Redevelopment Agency placing art such as the infamous Orange Twist in a medium strip is going to let the people know we care about art in their lives. a cruel joke if you ask me- which you did not. don't forget to ask where that $ got spent (in CO). seems to me that CSULB has quite a fine sculpture department-or at least it used to. is it only me that sees it this way? sorry-enough here. going to crawl back under my rock now and stay out of it. i've said too much already.

Sander
KaRi, I completely agree that the Arts Council and the community could benefit from utilizing free and easily implementable on-line social networking tools as a way of facilitating dialog, sharing information, and generating support for projects. I've suggested this to the current ACLB Board President, but didn't hear back from him about it. Perhaps if he and Craig here this from more folks, they'll act. -- Scott, I think that community involvement in choosing media and content is critical for the long term success of public art. Murals are appropriate in some circumstances, but not all. -- Shibori, we need to keep the conversation going, and continue to shine light on both opportunities and challenges. By doing so, accountability is far more likely, and the community will be better served as a result.

Sander lives with his wife, step-daughter, dogs, and cats. He's an avid photographer, and enjoys creating close-up images of flowers and plants, and capturing urban landscapes. He's been involved in music production since the early 80's, and worked professionally as an audio engineer, live sound mixer, and producer.

Sander Roscoe Wolff is a musician, artist, and was co-founder and Executive Director of LongBeachCulture.org, the City's first comprehensive, and free, arts calendar and registry.

He has served on the boards of the 2nd City Council Art Gallery + Performance Space and the East Village Arts District, curated a 6 month gallery exhibition in the Long Beach World Trade Center, and produced Songs For Bethune, a CD of original and traditional holiday songs by local artists, to raise funds for the Arts Council's Passport to the Arts program.

His work has been featured in local gallery exhibitions, in SoundWalk, and L.A. Siggraph's Photon Ballet.

His current music project is Ain Soph Aur, a systems based improvisational performance duo and studio team.