ART/Cathy Curtis : In Irvine: A Plan For the City That Loves To Plan

Once upon a time, not too long ago, the city of Irvine was about to celebrate its 16th birthday. Most people agreed that very few artists actually lived in the planned community because the living was too expensive--and possibly also because everything was a bit too bland and tidy and planned for people who spend their days making messes and daydreaming and prowling around the nooks and crannies of life.

But the city did have an arts center and a university art gallery and a symphony--not to mention on-campus theaters, a city theater on the drawing board and several support groups for the arts.

Still, something was missing. People genuinely interested in the arts knew it. People in businesses who understood the bottom-line value of “amenities” knew it. Some people in city government knew it, including Mayor Larry Agran. There had to be a way to integrate the arts into the life of the city in a more organized and fully developed way.

So the city established “Arts Irvine 1990,” a four-year project involving members of the community along with arts, business, civic and education leaders in annual daylong meetings with speeches and workshops. A blue-ribbon Special Committee on the Arts in Irvine was appointed to hash over everyone’s suggestions and plan for the next year’s meeting.

It was the perfect agenda for the city that loves to plan.

At this year’s public meeting, held last Friday, the big question was: What sort of arts agency would best be suited to Irvine?

Should it be public? Private? A partnership between the city and private interests? Should it offer services (administrative, marketing, real estate) to arts organizations or to individual artists? Should it fund the arts? Serve as an arts advocate with legislators? Educate the public about the arts? Attempt to change zoning and city ordinances to further arts interests?

To suggest ways of dealing with this rather bewildering array of choices, panelists representing agencies in Pasadena, Walnut Creek and Winston-Salem, N.C., discussed the routes their organizations chose and the achievements they realized.

The bigger picture was sketched out by jovial keynote speaker Robert Lynch, executive director of the Washington-based National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies.

Lynch reminded his listeners, “All art is local. It all starts somewhere.” There are 3,000 local arts agencies (as opposed to the state and federal variety) in the United States, Lynch said. One-third of these groups are public; the remainder are administered privately.

Even though only 750 of the groups are professionally staffed, as a body they have surprising financial clout. Local group budgets now total about $500 million compared to $225 million for the state groups and $165 million for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Operating under the assumption that the arts are for the entire community, not just the wealthy or well-educated, the local agencies offer at least some of the following resources to local artists and arts groups: services, funding, programming (exhibitions, arts festivals) and “communitywide cultural planning.”

But the profile of each organization depends on the needs, resources and leadership of its community. Seattle’s agency is well-known for its exemplary public art program. The agency in Flagstaff, Ariz., built an arts center. In Portland, Ore., the agency required that city construction projects adhere to a “livability” standard.

Lynch also enumerated broad national trends likely to affect arts agencies, including an upswing in private donations, an increasingly multicultural outlook, and what some project as the creation of 13 million new jobs in the 1990s (possibly resulting in new “workplace arts programs” and ways of funding the arts through payroll deductions).

By the end of the meeting--which also included the presentation of awards to individuals and development companies judged to have made “significant contributions to the arts of Irvine”--certain thoughts had begun to percolate.

The speakers’ frequent mention of revitalizing “the urban center” or “the core city” certainly struck an odd note. Irvine has no “downtown” and is too new to have abandoned structures that can be turned into art spaces.

The lack of a “core city” is one of the major issues Irvine’s arts agency will have to wrestle with. Should it try to create a central place for the arts--a centralized environment for working artists in various media and/or for public viewing of the artistic product? Or should it figure out a new way to serve a scattered population unwilling to venture beyond the gates of separate small communities?

And what does “multicultural” mean when applied to Irvine? Does it mean importing ethnic arts to give the city a more flavorful outlook on the world? Or are there, in fact, local cultural groups normally overlooked who might add another dimension to a community perceived as virtually homogenous?

What about Irvine’s connection to Orange County as a whole? Will there be countywide efforts to determine what kind of planning is going on in other cities, and where a degree of cooperation might be in order for the greater good of the greater number?

Will it be remembered in this county so fiercely dedicated to private initiative that--to quote luncheon speaker Romalyn Tilghman, Pacific Rim regional representative for the National Endowment for the Arts, --”private money has strings (attached) too”?

Tune in next year for the next installment of the plan to create the plan.