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Preserving Our
Institutional Memory
Maybe it’s planning, maybe it’s luck, but just about everybody in Cyrano’s circle of acquaintance is a lover of one or more of the arts. Theatre, music, painting, the whole panoply of creative endeavor, act as the magnets that draw us together, drive the conversations – and sometimes the heated discussions – around our dinner tables. We know the arts and culture are important to our lives, to our sense of community, and to our 21st century economy.
This comes to mind because of our work work on a number of reports for the Oregon Arts Commission. These include the 2008 Creative Vitality Index, which aims to show how large an impact the creative economy – both nonprofit and for-profit – makes throughout our state. Included among the statistics are stories that seek to put a human face on the numbers. This year, we conducted a dozen interviews, in Portland, Hood River, Bend, and Eugene, on the road to writing six profiles of Oregon artists, designers, and art-based businesses. See an excerpt of one profile below. The full report is available for download from the Arts Commission website.
2008 Creative Vitality Index
Carving Out a Past for Future Generations
Sculptor Tony Johnson is not represented in the statistics section of this report. That’s no reflection on his seriousness as an artist, but merely shows how complicated it is to measure the true impact of an industry as diverse as the arts.
The Oregon Employment Department figures used for the CVI count those employed as full-time fine artists – 218, up from 214 in 2007, indicating that only a small percentage draw a regular salary for practicing their art. Thousands more supplement their art incomes with a day job.
By day, Johnson is the Cultural Education Coordinator for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, helping preserve the lifeways and language of Oregon’s indigenous peoples. In his “other life,” he practices the art and craft of woodcarving. Both activities feed his drive for cultural preservation as a member of the Lower Columbia Chinookans.
“I do it because I feel it was put on me to be a steward,” he says. “That drove a lot of what I did in college and in my own personal study with elders.” To Johnson, being a steward means looking back in order to move forward: learning the skills and designs that master Chinookan carvers developed over generations; honoring the stories they told; using those skills to speak with his own voice. “The biggest thing I want to do in my life is to see those sensibilities move forward, have a relevancy for kids in the future. I want to see them acknowledged by people to have value.”
We Are One: How the Arts Bring Oregonians Together
In 2006, Cyrano was commissioned by the Oregon Arts Commission to help create a new monograph-type publication that would elevate the quality and impact of agency documents. Our responsibilities included naming the publication (“Connections”) and researching and writing the content. To date, we've produced five issues for the Arts Commission, three on the Arts Build Communities program and one each on Arts Education and Cultural Tourism. (Left: Report on the 2007 Arts Build Communities program.)The readership includes policy makers, arts leaders, and the general public. Downloadable copies of many of these publications are available at the Oregon Arts Commission website.
Exploring the Authentic Oregon:
The Importance of Cultural Tourism
“It’s not much of a trick to get visitors to Portland when the air is warm, and the skies are blue, and the Mountain is out. But the wet heart of February is a different kettle of steelhead altogether. In 2004, a group of smart tourism, arts, and business people decided that the Rose City needed a way to fill hotel rooms and generate tourist income during the lowest occupancy month of the year. And what could be a more appealing break from the cold, rainy, bluesy Portland winter than some hot music?” This report was featured on the national cultural heritage tourism website.
Arts Learning in Oregon:
Rethinking the Fundamentals of Education
“Artistic expression is encoded in our DNA; how else to explain the way it has accompanied us at every stage of development, as a people and as individuals? We knew this instinctively as children, when we were busy learning something new every day. It was our job, and we were good at it. We colored, we drew, we sang, banged piano keys, danced our own choreography. We made up stories and acted them out. We tested limits. We created. We grew. If we were lucky, those natural inclinations were encouraged.”
CYRANO Communications