Cathy Hernandez is President of ARTSNET and Adjunct Professor of Arts Administration at TCU
In these trying economic times, our North Texas arts community is struggling to maintain the same services we have offered collectively just a year or two ago. As an arts administration educator and the President of ARTSNET, a local Arts Council, I work to teach the arts managers of today and tomorrow the importance of advocacy.
Take a look at the video clip below, which is a lecture recently given to my TCU class by Fort Worth City Councilman Sal Espino. He talks about why local arts support is vital to the arts in our area. This local support is the support that is being cut right now in cities across North Texas. Indeed, Dallas, Fort Worth, and all areas in the North Texas area are taking huge hits in their funding. Fort Worth, for example has gone from $1.2 million in giving to the arts to $900,000 this year. How do the arts cope with this?
Here at ARTSNET (an arts council covering 16 cities in the mid-cities area), I am creating funding strategies for our arts community in the mid-cities to make our artists and organizations more innovative. It will be exciting to engage artists, students, arts patrons and volunteers in this dialogue about entrepreneurialship in the arts. Still, there is no question that strong arts funding will remain vital to the quality of our arts community in the coming years. Only this will ensure that both world-class travelers and our local patrons continue to have exemplary arts experiences throughout North Texas.
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