Cover Story : Art of Sharing : The city asks diverse cultural groups to join and manage spaces together.

Stricken by budget cuts that could shut down three community arts centers in the San Fernando Valley and three more near downtown, Los Angeles officials recently sent up a distress signal. They were hoping that a few private arts groups would come to their rescue and help run the centers.

Now, heartened by a strong response, officials are going a step further.

The city’s Cultural Affairs Department is hoping to place not one, but several groups in each facility. They are asking such varied entities as jazz ensembles, theater troupes and visual artists to combine and manage the spaces together.

“We can’t make marriages,” said Earl Sherburn, the city’s community arts director. “But we are trying to lead them to the altar.”

It is a romantic notion. Instead of merely surviving, a given center might flourish with dance one night and drama the next, with paintings exhibited on its walls seven days a week. But the courtship could prove awkward. Arts administrators say considerable obstacles can arise when 46 organizations of different sizes and disciplines seek to match up.

“A lot of these consortia haven’t worked in the past,” said Robert Caine, managing director of Actors Alley, one of the groups that has answered the city’s call. “It’s a matter of being able to schedule and not step on each other.”

For years, only one entity--the Cultural Affairs Department--has operated the community arts centers. The McGroarty Arts Center in Tujunga focuses on visual arts, with exhibits ranging in topic from AIDS to immigrant labor. The Lankershim Arts Center in North Hollywood was opened in 1990 with performance in mind. Halfway across the Valley, the small Encino Photography Center offers a low-cost haven to photographers.

Similarly, the William Grant Still Arts Center, the William Reagh Los Angeles Photography Center and Art-in-the-Park provide a variety of cultural activities to neighborhoods near downtown.

But as the city’s budget has shrunk in recent years, the Cultural Affairs Department has suffered cutbacks. Its larger operations at Barnsdall Park, the Watts Towers and the Los Angeles Theater Center remain intact. But funds to staff and to present art at smaller facilities have run dangerously low.

So, last December, the city offered its six community arts centers, rent-free, to private groups willing to fill them with exhibits, performances and classes.

“We weren’t aware of any other cities aggressively pursuing this kind of partnership,” said Al Nodal, the department’s general manager. “But we needed to bring in partners to energize things.”

Fifty-four nonprofit organizations applied. During the first stage of the process, they were not asked to name which center they wanted, only to demonstrate that they possessed the experience and funding necessary to handle the task. Forty-six were deemed qualified. At that point, city officials broadened their goal.

“We had all these groups doing theater only or dance only,” Sherburn said. “Our concern became, why can’t they all come together?”

Such cooperation would not be unprecedented, according to California Arts Council officials. It exists to a lesser degree at such places as the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco and Los Angeles’ Music Center, where resident companies--including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Music Center Opera and the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum--share the same cultural tract if not the same building.

But a situation in which several art groups must hammer out the day-to-day operation of a single space is unusual and fraught with difficulty, said Henry Hopkins, the new director of the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center in Westwood. Hopkins explained that artists tend to communicate in ways that aren’t always suited to meetings and scheduling.

“And we don’t all understand each other’s fields completely,” Hopkins said. “At a very basic level, there is a difference in the needs of a (theater) arts group as opposed to a dance group.”

Actors Alley, for instance, could easily fill a center with performances, rehearsals and classes nearly every day. The troupe was forced to apply for a city center after its home, the refurbished El Portal theater in North Hollywood, suffered $1.5 million in damage from the Jan. 17 earthquake.

“Our plate was full,” Caine said. “Then someone broke our plate.”

At the other end of the spectrum, the tiny Los Angeles Printmaking Society couldn’t manage to run a center for more than one day a week. The society operates out of members’ houses. Founded to promote lithography, etching and silk screening, it mounts occasional exhibits at college galleries.

“This sounded like a great opportunity for a group like ours that doesn’t have the money or the staff,” said Dona Geib, the society’s president. “If we were part of a consortium we could share space, and staff the center at various times.”

That’s where Sherburn comes in. He has cajoled, suggesting to applicants that consortia will get a warmer response than single entities. He has played matchmaker, inviting group leaders to a series of get-acquainted meetings.

Actors Alley got the message, joining with the Los Angeles Jazz Society, the San Fernando Valley Arts Council and Everywoman’s Village, a Van Nuys learning center that offers a variety of arts classes.

“If you go in there and try to get the whole thing for yourself,” Caine said, echoing the party line, “it’s not in keeping with what the city wants.”

Other groups have similarly combined.

Now, however, these new consortia must sit down to the nuts-and-bolts work of programming and scheduling.

At some centers, programming is particularly relevant. Residents in the downtown neighborhoods surrounding the William Grant Stills Center have urged that the facility continue to focus on African-American art. Similarly, photographers who rely on the Encino Photography Center hope it won’t be converted to another use.

“We won’t know until we find out who gets this place and see if they’ll let us use it sometimes,” one of the regulars said.

Again Sherburn has exerted his influence, suggesting to applicants that they implement some of the center’s previous programming.

Applicants must identify which center they want and submit a detailed programming proposal by May 16. Panels composed of city administrators, government officials and residents are scheduled to render decisions by July 1. Selected groups would have until Oct. 1 to occupy their centers.

Competition is likely to be fiercest for the Lankershim facility, Sherburn said. That space boasts Art Deco architecture with Streamline Moderne features. It was built in 1939 for the Department of Water and Power, then abandoned in the mid-1970s. Arts officials came along in 1990 to renovate and reopen the ground floor. Work is under way on upstairs classrooms.

“It’s far and away the most popular location,” Sherburn said.

At McGroarty, the center’s longstanding support group has formed its own consortium and is hoping to keep the facility in familiar hands. Photographers at Encino mounted a similar effort but were one of the groups deemed unqualified during the first stage of the application process.

If the effort to combine private groups in each of the centers does not appear to be succeeding, the city has left itself the option of rejecting all applicants and starting again from scratch. But for all the difficulties the ambitious attempt has created, the potential rewards are great. Sherburn clings to his vision of diverse programming. Even the applicants can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

“A big challenge has been handed to us,” said Laura Selwyn, executive director of Everywoman’s Village, which has joined three different consortiums vying for three different centers. “But there is definite excitement.”

And a tight economy may spur the process. Arts groups have watched their funding and exhibit space disappear at a distressing rate.

“One of the survival techniques is through group action,” Hopkins said. “That is part of what being an artist is going to entail in the next decade.”

Geib, of the printmaking society, is willing to try.

“Who can be elitist in this day and age?” she asked. “We all need the space.”