Reposting TPAC Action Alert: possible 60% cuts

Please read, spread the word and link up! Some of your favorite things about Tucson including the The Loft Cinema, All Souls Procession, Tucson Meet Yourself, Tucson Children’s Museum, opera and theatre are under fire. If you can, contact your City Council officials at the phone numbers/email addresses below and come out to represent at the City Council meeting tomorrow, January 12.

The City Council recommended a 60% budget cut to outside agencies at last Tuesday’s City Council meeting. The recommendation will have a profound negative impact upon TPAC and puts into question TPAC’s ability to honor General Operating Support awards in full because of the loss of revenues. Please contact our elected officials and share your concern about the severity of the recommendation and its impact upon our cultural industry.

The following talking points may be of use to you:
The City of Tucson created TPAC as its designated local arts agency to advance our cultural industry’s contribution to the region’s economy and our civic well being. (TPAC’s distinction as a “designated” agency that serves our region’s arts groups has been lost in the discussion about “outside” agencies.)

Reducing funding for TPAC compromises its ability to support the local cultural industry – TPAC works with 53 arts groups and advances a regional cultural industry that has an annual economic impact of $57 million. This includes festivals like Tucson Meet Yourself, the All Souls Procession, the International Mariachi Conference, and the Folk Festival. Pillar organizations like the Arizona Theatre Company, Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona Opera, the Tucson Children’s Museum, and the Loft Cinema. Dance theaters like New Articulations, Funhouse Movement Theater and Tucson Regional Ballet. Community theaters like Beowulf Alley Theater, Borderlands Theater, Live Theater Workshop, and Invisible Theater. Youth programming like Voices Community Voices Past and Present and Sharmoore Children’s Productions. Literary houses like Chax Press, KORE Press, POG, the Sonora Review and Casa Libre en Solana. Performance stalwarts like Odaiko Sonora, Chamber Music Plus, Tucson Pops Orchestra, and Batucaxe. Visual arts innovators like DinnerwareArtspace and the Drawing Studio.

TPAC could also see a reduction in all the services it provides. TPAC also provides professional development and capacity building opportunities for artists and arts organizations and advocates for and promotes arts and culture as a major economic engine in our region.TPAC oversees the public art programs for the city, county and other entities, including 14 projects completed and 7 awarded during the past year. Other TPAC priorities include the community arts (education) program, which serve neighborhoods and rural areas by funding residencies for professional artists and underserved youth. TPAC also presents the annual fall Open Studio Tour and the spring Lumie awards.

Take a look below at the kind of arts programming the Tucson Pima Arts Council supports! This is the kind of amazing programming you could be missing! Consider the impact the loss of these wonderful resources could have on the quality of life for all our families here in Southern Arizona.*
*To see a list of all TPAC Grantees go to www.TucsonPimaArtsCouncil.org

Arizona Theatre Company
As the professional resident theatre of Arizona, ATC has been performing full seasons in both Phoenix and Tucson to a combined audience of more than 150,000 since 1983. ATC has been cited as a national model for professional performing arts institutions for the way in which it manages and produces full performance seasons in two cities and the way in which it has built audience support and established fiscal stability in both communities.

The All Souls Procession
The All Souls Procession is a Tucson-based collective of artists, teachers, and community activists who come together to create, inspire, manifest, and perpetuate modern festal culture. “Festal Culture” is the expression and fulfillment of core human needs through public celebration, ceremony, and ritual. The All Souls Procession is an event that was created to serve the public need to mourn, reflect, and celebrate the universal experience of Death, through one’s ancestors, loved ones, and the living. Over 10,000 people participated in this year’s event.

Arizona Opera
Since its inaugural year, Arizona Opera has produced over 170 fully-stage operas and concerts. The company’s artistic history is rich with a blend of opera’s traditional repertoire, featuring baroque, bel canto, and verismo works, turn-of-the-century masterpieces, operettas, and American operas. Arizona Opera has also presented Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle twice, a feat that has only been accomplished in North America by four other companies.

Tucson Children’s Museum
The Tucson Children’s Museum is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to provide fun, play -based, interactive, hands-on learning experiences for children and their families. With foresight and determination, a handful of prominent Tucsonans opened the Museum in 1986 in a one room building at Ft. Lowell Park. In 1991, the Tucson Children’s Museum moved into the historic Carnegie Library building in downtown Tucson. In 2008, over 95,000 children and families visited the Tucson Children’s Museum.

Tucson Meet Yourself
This FREE, downtown Tucson festival is a celebration of authentic cultural foods and the living traditional arts of Southern Arizona’s folk and ethnic communities. Over 100,000 people attend the event yearly.

Odaiko Sonora
Odaiko Sonora is Tucson’s premiere taiko, or Japanese, ensemble drumming group. Serving southern AZ since May 2002, Odaiko Sonora is dedicated to increasing familiarity with and understanding of taiko in our community. The company does this for over 30,000 people each year through classes and master workshops, performances, school residencies, teambuilding workshops and by producing concerts by internationally acclaimed taiko artists.

The Loft Cinema
The Loft Cinema is Tucson’s premiere venue for art films–independent, foreign, alternative and classic narrative films and documentaries. Since The Loft theatre was purchased in 2002 and transitioned into a nonprofit arts organization, the cinema has hosted more than 100 filmmakers and scholars and screened films from more than 50 countries. The Loft hosts two free film series: the Tucson International Children’s Film Festival in July, and Essential Cinema, a series of classic art films on the big screen in new 35mm prints. The Loft also offers 3 programs to support local filmmakers.

NEW ARTiculations Dance Theatre
A NEW ARTiculations is a professional dance company founded in 1997. Currently under the artistic direction of Katie Rutterer, NEW ART is an experimental company by nature. It performs traditional, modern, post modern, theatrical and interdisciplinary works. NEW ART has gained notable popularity for its work incorporating theatre, literature, new music and more into full evening multi-media performances.

The Mayor and Council will vote on the proposal to reduce “outside agency” funding on Tuesday, January 12! Please take just a few minutes to call or email them TODAY!

Mayor: Robert.Walkup@tucsonaz.gov
(520) 791-4201

Ward 1: Regina.Romero@tucsonaz.gov
(520) 791-4040

Ward 2: Rodney.Glassman@tucsonaz.gov
(520) 791-4687

Ward 3: Karin.Uhlich@tucsonaz.gov
(520) 791-4711

Ward 4: Shirley.Scott@tucsonaz.gov
(520) 791-3199

Ward 5: Richard.Fimbres@tucsonaz.gov
(520) 791-4231

Ward 6: Steve.Kozachik@tucsonaz.gov
(520) 791-4601

Or you can try emailing them all at once at the following address:
Robert.Walkup@tucsonaz.gov,Regina.Romero@tucsonaz.gov,Rodney.Glassman@tucsonaz.gov,Karin.Uhlich@tucsonaz.gov,Shirley.Scott@tucsonaz.gov,richard.fimbres@tucsonaz.gov,Steve.Kozachik@tucsonaz.gov

You can also support this effort by writing a letter to the editor of the Arizona Daily Star. http://www.azstarnet.com/opinion/64475

Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) 100 North Stone Avenue, #303 Tucson Arizona 85701
phone; (520) 624-0595 fax; (520) 624-3001 info@TucsonPimaArtsCouncil.org www.TucsonPimaArtsCouncil.org