COFFEE WITH ANDREW TAYLOR

The word from the 'Artful Manager' to Austin's cultural community?

Think like an eco-system

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Thursday, July 02, 2009

Andrew Taylor is snapping pictures with his iPhone as he walks along Guadalupe Street .

The arts management expert and director of the University of Wisconsin's Bolz Center for Arts Administration was in Austin last week to meet with arts leaders for two days of conversation on Austin's creative ecology and for a public talk on the subject.

Taylor wants to ask Austin, "What's within your definition of a creative ecology?" And so in between meetings, on the way to the NeWorlDeli to grab an iced coffee, Taylor documents a few local establishments as examples to be considered.

That independently run picture framing shop — is it within the boundaries of a creative economy or not? What about that indie movie rental store, its exterior walls covered in expressive graffiti murals? And that pizza parlor that sometimes has live music? In or out? Then there's that small theater that's been carved out of an old post office. Surely, that's in, right?

"There is no correct answer to what is in or out of a creative ecology, but it's useful to have a definition and to draw a boundary," says Taylor, who is both casual and yet also very focused. "The essence of every picture is really its frame."

During his two days in Austin last week, Taylor encouraged arts leaders to think about the bigger picture specifically as the picture is outlined in Create Austin, a comprehensive plan initiated in 2006 by the city's Cultural Arts Division of the Economic Growth and Redevelopment Services Office and released last year. The goal behind the plan — which drew on months of community discussions and task force meetings — is to chart a course for the next decade of Austin creative community development.

Taylor, who maintains a well-read arts management blog called "The Artful Manager" (www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager), calls the Create Austin plan "rich and deep." The definition of a good cultural plan, he says, "is a plan that can make something different."

"There's a still a lot of energy behind the Create Austin plan, and that makes it a better plan than most," he says.

But with the economy tanking, with arts groups struggling to make ends meet — or struggling just to stay open — is now the time to think about grand new schemes?

"There is no better time than now," Taylor insists. "Clearly whatever systems were in place before aren't working now. And obviously there aren't enough resources to go around and so resources must be pooled and shared."

Topping the list of recommendations set forth by the Create Austin plan is the formation of a creative alliance — a grass-roots membership and advocacy group which would be a clearinghouse of resources for creative professionals. It could include a universal fundraising and marketing effort; it could provide access to affordable business, legal and insurance services for creative professionals. And an alliance could include everyone from actors, dancers, visual artists and musicians to designers, craftspeople and filmmakers.

Taylor is in town to listen and ask questions, he says, more than he is to offer hard-and-fast opinions on what specifically Austin's cultural community should or should not do. And one of the first questions he suggests Austin ask itself is who should be included in a creative alliance.

"It's about re-framing and reflecting on a community's creative profile as if it were an actual ecological system," he says. "And ecological systems have very specific characteristics."

Ecologies move and grow in cycles, Taylor notes, oftentimes uncontrollable cycles that frequently appear as surprises. Also, elements of an ecology are wholly interconnected — forget about autonomy. "There's never one independent thing in an ecosystem," he says. "It's all part of the same system."

And sometimes that interconnectedness is hard for typically headstrong independent artists to grapple with. Autonomy is not always a sound strategy for survival, Taylor cautions.

"You have a really great creative energy to work with here," Taylor says. "It'll fight you, sure. And it needs a systematic intervention."

But if the common ground is considered before considering everybody's difference?

"Change can happen," Taylor says.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699