The ASC’s former president would be heartbroken at the state of arts funding in Charlotte | Opinion
Nine years ago I wrote an open letter to then-incoming Arts & Science Council president Robert Bush. On March 19, we celebrated Robert, who passed away unexpectedly in December, and his passion for our cultural community.
The challenges I laid out in my letter — including educating the public about the role of and need for the ASC and the decline in workplace giving that long-fueled ASC and United Way — turned out to be even greater than expected, even by the most pessimistic among us.
But Robert faced those challenges (and others) unabashedly, passionately and at times unpopularly. We should honor his legacy by following his footsteps.
In March 2014, our community had not yet seen the results of the work by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Cultural Life Task Force, created to examine the financial health of the cultural sector and its direction in light of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s changing demographics and issues surrounding social mobility.
But even before the report’s recommendations were released, ASC (led by Robert on an interim, then permanent basis) had begun to address issues faced by the cultural sector. ASC worked to reinvent its mission, to gather greater input from the community and its cultural partners, and most importantly to diversify the organizations and individual artists who benefited from ASC support.
The clear directive that resulted from this work was “Culture for All.” This tagline was founded upon the values of equity, community, collaboration, accessibility and accountability. This lofty goal was to be achieved through a combination of ASC becoming a resource hub, an advocate for the cultural sector, and a funder of diverse individuals, organizations and experiences. Much of this work is reflected in the Cultural Equity Report issued by ASC not long after Robert’s 2019 retirement.
Rather than spark cooperation, investment and short- and long-term support of the cultural sector through ASC, the Cultural Life Task Force Report appears to now have sparked (or at least foreshadowed) a chain of events that led to ASC being ineligible to receive an operating support grant by Charlotte City Council.
The exact events that brought us to this point will certainly be the topic of hushed conversation and wild speculation. Fingers will be pointed, and eyes rolled. And no one will blame the entirety of the nonprofit sector for fearing the worst.
Many of the more than 100 people who gathered this month to celebrate Robert’s life and passion will likely lament the presumed loss of ASC as the heart of the cultural sector. Without it, will decisions affecting which organizations and artists receive already limited funding be made by those who have historically wielded power and led us to the inequalities the Cultural Life Task Force aspired to address?
And will cultural offerings reflect the diversity in our community? Will there be culture for all or just those who can afford it?
Looking back, my advice to Robert seems so trite in its practicality. Anything I might have suggested was easily overwhelmed by his passion. If he were alive today, he would certainly be distressed by the actions taken by City Council and the shifting of influence away from ASC.
But, most importantly, he would be heartbroken by the possibility that a child in Charlotte-Mecklenburg would go without a cultural experience that could change her life, if even only for a brief moment in time. Here’s to hoping our community will do everything in our power to try to create that moment. Robert did.
Marc Gustafson is past chairperson of the Public Art Commission, a former ex-officio member of the Arts & Science Council board, and a former McColl Center board member.
