Forums Focus on Stepping Up Arts Education in Orange County : Support: Panel lists priorities and will develop an organizational structure and a funding mechanism for the proposed arts council.

The desire to upgrade arts education emerged as the chief, most common concern during six public forums held across the county recently to help the Committee to Form an Orange County Arts Council learn what the community wants, according to committee director Martin Weil.

Arts education has been drastically curtailed in U.S. public schools. People in the county, however, say they want improvement not only in schools but in education for the general public, Weil said.

During the last of the forums, in Fullerton Wednesday night, Xan Martin, an independent stage manager from Tustin, said: “You have to combat cultural illiteracy. It’s as bad as the drug problem.”

Fran Obler, a board member of the Fullerton Friends of Music, a group that presents chamber concerts, said: “We need to generate more interest from young people, and that means education.” Weil’s ad hoc committee has been working to come up with a replacement for the Orange County Arts Alliance, which reportedly was plagued by weak leadership and a lack of funding before dissolving in December, 1988.

The ways in which the proposed new council could improve arts education have yet to be defined, but “we are going to place that very high, if not at the top of our list of priorities,” Weil said after Wednesday’s meeting at the Fullerton Museum Center.

In addition to listing its priorities, Weil said, the committee’s next move will be to develop an organizational structure and a funding mechanism for the proposed council. Committee members hope to submit recommendations to the County Board of Supervisors by Jan. 1.

The committee hopes the new agency will be designated as a “state-local partner,” a form of service organization that may legally receive state and federal government funding. The designation must come from county supervisors.

The need for the agency to strengthen the arts community as a whole--rather than to act primarily as a funding organ for individual organizations--also emerged during the public forums as a key concern, Weil said.

He said the agency could meet that concern by increasing communication within the community, building public awareness and financial and technical support of Orange County arts and being a “clearinghouse” for information and services, much like a cultural chamber of commerce.

For instance, the agency could refer local municipalities, working to form arts councils of their own, to arts professionals in and outside the county. Weil did not rule out the possibility of agency funding of local organizations.

“But you can’t be all things to all people,” he said. “The most important thing this agency can do is improve the climate for artists and arts organizations in this county.”

Paul Little, dean of fine arts at Cypress College, said Wednesday that efforts to subsidize county arts groups proved to be the downfall of the defunct alliance.

“By having an arts council provide us with funding to carry out our various artistic propinquities, we are asking it to be our artistic pimp,” Little said, to a round of applause.

Also voiced at the meeting, attended by about 50 people, was the need for greater representation of smaller organizations, for ethnic artists and institutions, and for North County arts.

“There’s a very popular opinion that there’s no cultural life north of the 22 (Garden Grove) Freeway,” said Donna Berry, director of special events for the Garden Grove Symphony.

A further critical question arose: How and why will the new agency succeed when its predecessor failed?

“Three things must be present” to avoid ruin, Weil said. They are leadership, involvement by the county’s major arts institutions and a stable money source.

As for leadership, the 27-person committee will disband when the new council is formed. But its members, including president Charles Desmarais, director of the Laguna Art Museum, and other key arts community leaders, are representative of the sort of leadership Weil said he expects will govern a new council.

Participation by major local institutions is similarly likely, he said.

And though a funding mechanism for a new council has not been determined, “we will secure a stable source,” Weil said.

A preliminary annual budget of $200,000, probably a mix of private and public money, has been suggested.