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• Community Support Wins Funding for Art

The first steps have been taken to relieve the term “starving artist” from the talent residing within Urbana. With the support of the community, the Urbana City Council has agreed to fund local art to enhance the cultural and aesthetic value of the city by approving the budget for the Public Arts Commission at $134,670.

Steven Bentz, director of Operations at 40 North, summarized the planned distribution of the funds: “As I understand it, the council approved funds to provide much-needed staffing for their public arts program, underwrite extant obligations in the city’s gallery subsidy program, cover upcoming costs of purchasing art as a part of the Philo Road development plan and also added $20,000 to a public arts fund, through which they can buy supplies, purchase works from area artists and put on programs.”

Ward 2 Council member Danielle Chynoweth was satisfied with the approval as a start, even though it was $20,000 less than her original proposal. She accounts its success to the community members who came to the City Council meeting to support the arts.

“Before 65 to 70 people showed up. But they came to say, ‘you can’t tell us we have a public arts program and not fund it,’” Chynoweth says.

Chynoweth and Urbana Mayor Laurel Prussing disagreed on how money should be spent to support art. Prussing wants more staff and administration support, while Chynoweth wants more sympathy for area artists.

“Artists are not yet valued as cultural workers in the community,” Chynoweth says. She believes this leads to art being made as merely a hobby.

“This town has an extraordinary number of skilled artisans, local artist Christopher Evans says. “The money Urbana has set aside will give these under-appreciated people a chance to display their work for all of us to enjoy, and be paid what skilled labor is actually worth. Artists earning enough money to pay rent will help create more and better art.”

So how will money get to the artist? Chynoweth gave the ideal plan: the Commission will periodically create a temporary selection committee that will accept requests for proposals or qualifications to which anyone could respond or pitch. She hopes to establish mini-grant programs where Urbana-based artists can request proposals for art activities located in downtown for up to $500.

She compares the community’s struggle to accept art as worthwhile to the arbor division in Urbana, which received limited funding at its inception in the late 1970s. It now operates on a budget of $660,000, and an additional $600,000 funding for landscaping, making the natural beauty of Urbana a coveted feature, according to Chynoweth.

“If you ask people what are the top three things you like about Urbana, 90% will list the trees,” she says. “Now in 2008, I think we’re back where arbors was in 1977. I hope in the future people will say they love the trees and the art.”

40 North’s Bentz added, “I believe Urbana residents will look back on this period as a time when they made an important long-term investment in the city’s artists, its art organizations, its culture and economic development.”

Chynoweth says the Arts Commission is still being formed and encourages everyone — especially students — to apply. Interested applicants should contact the mayor’s office.