ARTS GROUP DECIDES ON YEAR’S PLAN OF ATTACK

Waving a dollar bill above his head, Dennis Mangers characterized the California Confederation of the Arts’ 11th annual convention as a “war council.”

“This convention is a powwow,” said the confederation’s public policy committee co-chairman. “And in the powwow . . . it’s our job to come up with fresh new ideas” to reach the confederation’s “No. 1 objective”: to double the state’s spending on the arts and raise it to $1 per capita by 1990.

To that end, about 300 artists, arts groups leaders, arts funders and educators, public policy planners and others gathered Thursday at the Pasadena Hilton for three days of deliberations by the confederation, the state’s arts advocacy organization.

Convention participants discussed a myriad of immediate concerns, guided by the 1990 dollar-per-capita goal. (The state now spends about half of that, or 47 cents per capita on the arts. Its total arts budget is about $13.5 million, including $910,600 from the National Endowment for the Arts.)

By noon Saturday, after such conference festivities as a dulcimer serenade and a dinner ceremony honoring all past confederation presidents, a plan of action for the coming year had emerged.

Among issues in the plan were requests that the confederation work to develop:

--An arts-education master plan. William Cleveland, arts-education caucus leader and arts manager for the state department of corrections, said such a plan would “define arts as a lifelong activity taking place not only in the schools, but in other institutional and non-institutional settings in our communities.”

--Ways to make the statewide emphasis on tourism work for the arts, so that the arts are seen as an economically redeeming lure for tourists.

--Liability insurance plans for nonprofit arts organizations.

Various concerns, such as worries about limits on grant amounts, were also aimed at the California Arts Council, which administers the state’s arts budget mostly through grants to arts groups, and is closely monitored by the confederation.

In addition, concerns raised by the multicultural, or ethnic minority caucus, and the major institutions caucus (representing such groups as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Opera), put each on a collision course for one another.

Saturday, multicultural caucus leader Millie Bautista, multicultural coordinator of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, said one of her group’s concerns is that “major art organizations’ boards of directors don’t include enough members from the multicultural community.” The major groups should improve this, she said, “with the goal of minimum one-third multicultural representation in three years.”

Earlier, Leni Isaacs Boorstin, head of the major institutions caucus and public affairs manager of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn., said her caucus saw this issue as a “long-term” one. Addressing it now, she said, could disrupt major arts groups’ present stability.

However, Susan Hoffman, confederation executive director, said after the conference that she saw the clash as a sign of a healthy, “interdependent” arts community, one more capable of working to double the state’s art budget by 1990.

“The fact that the multicultural and the prominent (major) institutions came up with diametrically opposed points of view, and will now talk--they’ve both set up task forces--will benefit both groups,” she said.

“People now better understand how their own special interests interrelate,” Hoffman said, and the importance of broadening their scope, of working jointly with the state departments of tourism or education for instance, or reaching out to their own communities to expand audiences and seek private sector support.

Robert Reid, California Arts Council director, said Thursday in an interview: “I’m in support of the dollar-per-capita goal, but we’re taking it one step at a time. My role isn’t to raise expectations way beyond an ability to meet them.”

Since 1980, neither the Brown nor Deukmejian administrations has raised the arts budget by more than about $1 million during any given year. The confederation’s goal would require about an annual $5 million hike over the next three years.

“The obstacles are immense,” Hoffman admitted. “But if we have the power of the grass roots making a broader coalition with people in their communities and with the state, we get everyone thinking more about how arts serve everyone’s lives.”