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artVote community convening: dec 16

this time a brown bag lunch:

Tuesday December 16, 2008
12-1:30pm
Oakland Conference Room
Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce
475 14th Street
Oakland
A preliminary agenda from Margo Dunlap at Pro Arts:

Agenda:
Welcome
Introductions
Presentation from the Chamber – Karen Engle, Director of Business Development
RE: Oakland Partnership
and TOT Tax (background information and process)
Follow-up/ Update from the City (Steve Huss)
Follow-up reports on Alt. funding
Follow-up reports on White Paper- Economic Impacts of Oakland Arts (progress)
Other Reports
Discussion:
Priority of Next Steps
Structure: Models?
Objectives for January.
Wrap-up

Pro Arts is building an Advocacy List, subscribe here.

My unfiltered notes from the last meeting held on November 18 are available here. Amy Kweskin is about to thread them through her facilitation filter. Probably a good idea.

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artVote community convening: nov 18 at pro arts

Thanks to all of you who took action in one form or another: by contacting your council member, signing the petition, showing up to the council meeting on October 21, and helping to spread the word!

We had a record turn out at City Hall – more than 2,776 people signed the petition in only three days, about 200 people signed up for speaker cards, and the people were heard! Your efforts resulted in saving cultural funding for this year…congratulations, thank you, and way to go!

There is still work ahead of us: we lost a staff position and funding for parades and festivals. The grants that were restored are for this year – not next year or the following year – so we will need to come together again early in 2009 to ensure that Oakland’s budget will include the cultural funding program, parades and festivals, and enough staff to administer the program.

If you are interested in being part of the planning team to develop our response, advocacy and lobbying efforts, please attend a November 18 meeting at Pro Arts. The meeting will go from 6:30-8:30pm. Please rsvp to lori@artvote.org if you will be attending.

If you aren’t able to be part of the planning efforts, but you do want to be kept informed of upcoming actions to take, including calling and emailing your council person or attending a council meeting, please opt-in to our announcement list.

In this blog we’ll continue to add links to articles, announcements and information about what’s going on with funding for the arts in Oakland. Let us know what you’re doing and we’ll get the word out.

Thank you for helping to save arts funding in Oakland!

Best,

Lori Zook
Acting Chair, City of Oakland Cultural Affairs Commission