Building a Culture of Creativity and Innovation

NWBCA Breakfast of Champions
“Building a Culture of Creativity & Innovation”
By Commissioner Adams

Thank you for that kind introduction. And thank you to NW/BCA for the opportunity to address you all today. NW/BCA is doing wonderful things for our arts community. We are lucky to have them.

When I titled my talk, “Building a Culture of Creativity and Innovation,” I thought I had at least a good 45 minutes to develop this theme.

Turns out, I only have seven. So I’ve gotten rid of some extraneous words—I hope you know how hard that is for a politician. The title to my speech is now simply “Building a, Of, And.”

I have had the honor to serve as Portland’s Arts & Culture Commissioner for over two and a half years. In that time, I’ve been fortunate to meet with art leaders in Prague, Melbourne, New York, Chicago and Vancouver.

And I can tell you this: There is much work we need to do together here in Portland, but we are blessed with some of the most creative minds out there.

My hope is that we can seize the opportunity to capture this creative energy to propel our region forward.

The quality and depth of Portland’s arts and culture has never been better – nor has the national and international recognition we get for it. But ironically, our creative community’s collective financial challenges have never been worse—challenges that we have been facing too quietly, too politely and for too long.

Many of our most generous philanthropists and patrons are getting older, and I am worried who will be there to fill their shoes.

I also worry that much of our new generation of prosperity does not carry with them this same tradition of patronage, nor have they been afforded the same arts experiences that were once integral to a well-rounded education.

In addition, our public support for our arts community has remained flat over the past ten years.

Portland’s arts organizations receive 32% less in community support—that’s corporate, foundation, government and individual support—than other similar sized cities across the nation. Cities like St. Louis, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Pittsburgh.

Looking at it another way, local public support for the Denver Art Museum totaled over 5.7 million dollars last year. Our Portland Art Museum, however, received just 141,000 dollars in public support. Similarly, the Colorado Ballet received 512,000 dollars last year while Oregon Ballet Theatre received just 66,000.

Making these comparisons isn’t about keeping up with the Joneses, this is about trying to cover the monthly mortgage.

Our quality of life and our fantastic arts community has served as an invitation to talented and creative people. And they are coming.

We remain top in the country at attracting and retaining creative, educated professionals. These newcomers breathe new life into our city and they remain our largest untapped human resource. And their creative energy will remain untapped if we fail to make smart, strategic investments in our creative capacity.

In the last two years, we have started a few of these investments in our creative capacity. I will highlight just three of them.

Arts Partners is a collaborative initiative involving RACC, NW/BCA, the local arts and culture community, local governments and five school districts including Beaverton, Gresham-Barlow, Hillsboro, North Clackamas and Portland.

Its purpose is simple, yet critical. Deliver arts learning in an equitable way to every student in our region. This collaboration is just beginning, and I hope you will consider getting involved.

For too long, I believe our creative community has let elected officials like me off the hook. We have given you platitudes and promises. And often, we haven’t delivered.

So it’s time that you all hold our feet to the fire. That’s why I joined Mayor Alice Norris, Arlene Schnitzer and former Mayor Vera Katz in the creation of Oregon Art PAC. I think that if local dentists have one, farmers have one and even funeral directors have one, that the time has long come for our state’s arts & culture community to have a political action committee.

How many of you have given to Work for Art?

Fantastic. Next year, I hope to see each hand rise. If not, then a whole lot of booing of those that don’t.

Last year, Portland City Council created the nation’s first-ever public match of contributions to a united arts fund like Work for Art. In maximizing this match, Work for Art has built a incredible foundation for individual giving to the arts, generating 446,000 dollars in new money for 85 of our region’s arts organizations.

Work for Art is exactly the kind of program we need to bring new arts supporters, audience members and attention to the tremendous value of our creative community.

We have begun a strategy to weave programs like Work for Art and Arts Partners with public research, community input and new ideas into an action plan to build the capacity of our creative community.

We have only just begun this work, but we have formed steering and strategy committees made up of leaders, artists, arts organizations and businesses throughout our region. We have held a townhall, and roundtable discussions and launched a new website, creativecapacity.org.

The end result of all this work is the Creative Capacity Strategy – a plan with prioritized strategies, clear costs and achievable ways to fund them. And hopefully, a much larger community to advocate their completion.

Art must be given the public space to create, to react and to change us. It must not be an afterthought but forethought. It must find its way into our collective ethos, just as walkable neighborhoods and clean rivers have.

This is not a question of choosing between funding roads, police, parks and supporting the arts. This is about making strategic investments in the creative community that strengthens our work in other regional goals. Smart investments that provide equitable and affordable access to the inspiration that has fueled many a future engineer, architect and teacher. Smart investments that build the intrinsic infrastructure that is increasingly important in a global economy that values ideas as much as it values roads.

I am inspired, honored and excited to join you in building this infrastructure, and building a culture of creativity and innovation.

Thank you.