Who is pulling Chattanooga’s arts wagon?
I was talking to a friend the other day about the state of the arts in our city, when he made an interesting comment about where he sees things. He is a fairly recent transfer to Chattanooga from Detroit, where he was fairly active in both the music and fine-arts scenes.
It is his opinion that Chattanooga has a surprisingly interesting and vibrant collection of artists and arts activities, but that there doesn’t seem to be anyone or any one group “pulling the wagon.”
It also doesn’t appear to him that there is enough attention being paid to the arts in town by media, civic boosters or the city in general. I don’t agree with that so much as I think the wagon comment is true and colors the second opinion. More on that in a bit.
I believe, in fact, that there is way more activity directed at the various arts activities in town than ever before; it’s just much more spread out. And I think it is that way for several reasons, and none are particularly sinister.
I think we are seeing a combination of things that include a sizable increase in the numbers of artists and arts groups that now call this city home, a loss of many of our individual and corporate arts benefactors and a recession that caused just about every organization to rethink where it will get its funding.
All of those things combined to necessitate a complete overhaul of how things had been traditionally handled. ArtsBuild served as “the wagon,” if you will, for many years. At one point, it was the fundraising and promotional vehicle for 16 of the major arts organizations in town. ArtsBuild operates quite a bit differently now than it did a decade ago.
So the effect has been that we have more groups making art and searching for funding. To use a crude analogy that I can’t prove, it seems that the pie is a little bigger, or maybe a lot bigger, but there are now more people adding their own ingredients, in smaller increments, and the pie is being cut into more slices in order to feed more people.
To my friend’s second point, we also have more places talking and writing about the arts. We have more city-related magazines, TV shows, internet sites, blogs, podcasts, etc., than ever before. In some ways, it seems to clutter the issue rather than clarify it. Hence, the “not one wagon” idea. There are lots of wagons being pulled by lots of people.