By JOSEPH GALLIVAN/Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Nine members of the Oregon Legislature – including two members from Lincoln County — have formed the state’s first Arts and Culture Caucus to provide research and information to other members of the Legislature.
Rep. Rob Nosse, D-Portland, who coordinated the Arts and Culture Caucus’ inaugural membership, said that large caucuses in Salem include the Black, Indigenous, People of Color and Coastal caucuses. Nosse said legislators had not had an arts caucus before, but lately they have been hearing a lot from people in the arts.
“The sector is doing a better job of engaging us and revealing the challenged,” he said.
Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City and Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, are members of the new caucus.
One of the caucus’ priorities is helping venues and organizations that survive by ticket sales.
The proposed House Bill 2459 will extend emergency funding for venues across the state, funding that began in the pandemic and is still needed. Nosse said that doesn’t cover mega acts like Bruce Springsteen at the Moda Center, but it will include the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, which is still at 50 percent of pre-pandemic ticket sales and is shedding staff to save money.
If Nosse’s House Bill 2459 passes by June 30, any money will be disbursed to venues and arts organizations by the end of 2023.
“The public that’s going to care most about this caucus is people who work in the arts,” Nosse said.
Harlen Springer of Florence, a retired corporate executive and vice chair of the Oregon Arts Commission, said the caucus would provide “advice and information about what’s happening in the sector.”
Springer said they had studied arts caucuses in other states, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Vermont.
“We have a trove of research and data from them that says it works,” he said. “We modeled our caucus after those successful ones.”
He explained the two-pronged approach to the arts in politics: soft and hard values.
“The soft values are that art adds beauty and it adds a sense of togetherness in communities,” Springer said. “There’s a sense of belonging, particularly after the pandemic, a sense of communication.
The hard values are the economic impact, he said.
“Arts and culture in Oregon represent about 3.3 percent of gross domestic product, and about 60,000 jobs,” Springer said. “It’s about an $8 billion industry.”
But, Oregon ranks in the bottom half of states across the country for per capita funding for the arts.
“There’s a gap here between the value and the impact that arts and culture bring, and the current public funding mechanism to support it,” Springer said. “Long term, we’re hopeful this can lead to a more sustainable and robust funding mechanism for the arts and culture.”
The Arts Commission and the Oregon Cultural Trust provide information to the Oregon Legislature, but leave the lobbying to the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.
Springer collaborated with members of the Arts Commission Advancement Committee, including chair Jenny Green, as well as Cultural Trust chair Niki Price of Lincoln City and Sue Hildick, senior advisor to the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon, to support formation of the Arts and Culture Caucus.
Springer added that “art” doesn’t just mean painting and drawing, but “sculpture, literary arts, poetry … it is the humanities, history, it is performance art. It’s so difficult for me to say one’s better than the other; they’re all very important.” He said, “If we could do one thing, it’s raising awareness. If we can make more Oregonians and legislators aware of the variety of the arts and vision of the institutions, that would be a huge step for us.”
Springer added that the Oregon Cultural Trust has funded 1,500 different arts groups around the state.
“They vary from the Portland Art Museum and the High Desert Museum all the way down to your rural art association, staffed completely by volunteers. And the impact that those groups have in rural areas is dramatic, because they tend to be the one big gathering place for the arts and culture.” He said of the pandemic’s hit on arts events, “You feel the pain and you see it at the Shakespeare Festival, but it’s also felt in all the real communities.”
Nosse and other members of the caucus were instrumental in designating more than $100 million in coronavirus relief funds and American Rescue Plan funds to sustain Oregon arts, heritage and humanities organizations during the Covid pandemic.
They are back for more in this Legislature, looking for support for arts orgs and venues that have not fully recovered.
A survey by Business Oregon, Travel Oregon and the Small Business Development Center Network said many large cultural organizations report ticket sales remain only about 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
Other caucus members are Rep. Janelle Bynum, D-Clackamas, Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Portland, Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, Rep. John Lively, D-Springfield, Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, and Sen. Deb Patterson, D-Salem.
The public is invited to meet caucus members at a launch event scheduled from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 27, at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art on the Willamette University campus in Salem.
- The Oregon Capital Bureau is a collaboration of EO Media and Pamplin Media Group and provides state government and political news to their newspapers and media around Oregon, including YachatsNews.com
Why is it that the state government feels the need to get deeply involved in every aspect of our lives when they can’t seem to take care of the problems that effect nearly every city in the state like our streets?