Arts Reporting: Robert Faires Outlines Development of the Austin Creative Alliance

Published at the Austin Chronicle, August 11:

Little Big Plan

The Austin Creative Alliance proves it can think big by thinking small

By Robert Faires, Fri., Aug. 12, 2011

How do you go about building something bigger than anything that's ever been built here before?

This question has been at the forefront of David Sandal's mind for about a year and a half now. That's how long this professional program manager and entrepreneur has been serving on the board of directors of the Austin Creative Alliance, an agency that aspires to nothing less than serving every creative individual, business, and organization in the city – whether they're involved in music, film, visual arts, performing arts, digital media, design, or any other creative field you can name, whether they're amateur or professional, nonprofit or for-profit.

Now, putting together an entity that all-embracing is an undertaking of such monumental proportions, you might find it easier to construct a limestone Pyramid of Giza on Auditorium Shores. But back in 2007, when a few dozen of our culturally minded citizens were meeting and dreaming up the CreateAustin Cultural Master Plan, the notion of just such an organization kept surfacing in conversation after conversation, forum after forum. Independently, two task forces proposed a creative alliance in their reports to CreateAustin's leadership council, and forming an alliance ended up being one of the top three recommendations in the final plan. In the CreateAustin vision of a city that realizes all of its creative potential, an organization that would break through the traditional barriers of discipline and art form to connect and unite, to offer resources to, and advocate for the entire creative community seemed vital and necessary.

Read more at the Austin Chronicle on-line. . . .

Urgent Appeal from Austin Creative Alliance

The Austin Creative Alliance is appealing urgently for public reaction to legislator Simpson's budget amendment, just filed and aimed at defunding the Texas Commission for the Arts.

The demands of the time are such that new interim executive director Marcy Hoen is still using a template with the signature of departed longtime director Latifa Taormina -- but the creatives have found time to cap the appeal with the group's new logo.

The old logo, a clunky inward-bowed rectangle, is still on the website.

Save the TCA!

Immediate Action Required!

UPDATE 4/1/2011:
Rep. Simpson (R, Longview) has just filed a TCA-killing amendment

UPDATE 2/18/11: The House budget version (HB1) comes to the floor today. Please call your representatives immediately and ask them to vote NAY on any amendment -- similar to Rep. Simpson's -- that would further reduce the appropration for the Texas Commission on the Arts.

The TCA has already sustained a 52% reduction - any further would amount to killing the agency.

PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW AND CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES!

WHY SUPPORT THE ARTS, ESPECIALLY NOW? . . . . Aside from the fact that they generate 4.9 BILLION dollars for Texas of which a teency tincy percent goes back to the arts, and aside from the fact that they are the largest growth area for new jobs in the state.....

WHAT WE NEED TO SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS IS CREATIVITY - the ability to generate something fresh - which also entails the ability to face a problem and create something new from what is broken. THAT IS WHAT THE ARTS DO. THAT IS WHAT THE ARTS TEACH US.

To quote Arlene Goldbard's recent talk in Austin* (click for link to text and video)

"In a world morphing at light-speed into something none of us can foretell, fear and loss can be paralyzing. Creativity is the antidote: it is both our greatest challenge and our greatest need.

You can see these same capacities in action when we make music, dance, or theater: we collaborate, expressing a shared passion for beauty and meaning, stretching to accommodate each other, negotiating differences, holding space for everyone, and thus expanding possibility.

Artists rehearse for life's challenges through imagination and improvisation, exploring the limits of their powers and the synergies that can be created when they are aligned.

Making art, we learn how to move past the easy and obvious into essence, how to discard what no longer serves and explore the unknown.

Reflect on the business world: in IBM's most recent biennial CEO study, Capitalizing on Complexity,** interviews with over 1,500 CEOs and managers from both the private and public sector in 60 countries and 33 industries revealed that the "single most important leadership
competency" needed to navigate an environment of escalating complexity was creativity."

* Arlene Goldbard, author and arts activist, gave the keynote at the annual conference for the Association of Perferforming Arts Service Organziations here in Austin, March 8, 2011. The Creative Alliance hosted the conference.

**Capitalizing on Complexity: Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer Study, IBM Corporation, May 2010

Arts Reporting: Austin Creative Alliance Names Marcy Hoen as Interime Executive Director

Found at the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog:

Austin Creative Alliance names interim executive director

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin | Wednesday, March 9

Austin Creative Alliance has appointed Marcy Hoen as its new interim executive director of the organization.

Longtime director Latifah Taormina, announced in November that she would be retiring this from leading the arts service organization, formerly Austin Circle of Theatres.

Hoen is a hair stylist and has served on the board of FuseBox, the performing arts festival, and volunteered with the Rude Mechanicals theater troupe, the Bootstrap Network and Art Alliance Austin. She founded the artists representation venture Austin Art Start in 2006.

Alliance board chair David Sandal, said in a new release that Taormina and Hoen will work together during a transition period before Taormina leaves. “Latifah has been a leading figure in Austin’s art community for many years and continues to be an invaluable resource as we move forward,” Sandal said.