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  The ACE Forum

Committees to the left of me,
committees to the right...

by Adrienne Martini

How do you get something accomplished in Knoxville? You form a committee, of course. And it's even better if you can get a big-name expert consultant to come in to write up a splashy report to justify all of the time and money that has gone into your committee-consciousness raising.

But some of these gatherings of Knoxville's power-brokers, peace-keepers, and peons might actually produce quantifiable results, like the two-year-old Arts, Cultural, and Entertainment (ACE) Forum. Right now, it's too early to tell what will spring forth from this committee that has just released its initiative for making the arts and culture scene a more productive (in all senses of the word) one for Knoxville.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when this initiative started and even more difficult to determine where it will be going. Right now, in the most technical sense, the ACE Forum and its associated Steering Committee no longer exist. What is left of this series of talks is a task force devoted to revamping the Arts Council. Originally intended to be an advocacy body that made the arts more visible in Knoxville, the Arts Council had become more devoted to saving arts programs that other governmental bodies, like the school system, decided to scrap. The Council itself had started making preliminary stabs at redefining its purpose by forming its own committee to investigate solutions that, ultimately, ended up getting swallowed up in the ACE Forum. The Arts Council Task Force, which is made up of funders, city representatives, artists, and programmers, will report back to a reconvened ACE Committee within six months with recommendations for the best way to redevelop an advocacy body for the arts community.

But the beginnings of the ACE Forum lie in conversations among leaders of Knoxville's Arts Council, larger arts organizations, and cultural planners that had been buzzing for the past few years. The Forum was finally brought into being by a series of formalized meetings—meetings that involved Jerry Askew, president of the East Tennessee Foundation, which provides funding for some of Knoxville's arts and culture institutions; Richard Ferrin from the Knoxville Museum of Art; Laurens Tullock from the Cornerstone Foundation; Doug Berry from the city's Department of Development; and Don Parnell, then with the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership.

"So we got around the table and the first thing I said was, 'This looks suspiciously like five of the 12 old white guys," Askew says, with a laugh. "The very first thing we agreed on was that we weren't going to have any more meetings like that."

By all accounts, once Askew and the Foundation were involved in the ACE initiative, the doors opened wide to all members of the arts, cultural, and entertainment communities. The names of the people in the Forum reads like a Who's Who of local arts, culture, and entertainment programs, from Nkechi Ajanaku from the African American Appalachian Arts to artist Betsy Worden.

The Forum formed a Steering Committee made up of "a combination of funders, people with influence, and people representing the arts community," Askew explains. "The Steering Committee actually 'owns' the process. They were technically the ones who voted on accepting it and they were the ones who technically hired the consultant." The consultant in question is Wolf, Keens & Company, an organization that was also involved in developing a new arts center in Charlotte.

Following a series of open meetings, Wolf, Keens & Company produced the first phase of an ACE plan for about $150,000. And in this plan they advocate 11 goals that will help Knoxville's arts and culture community thrive, which range from goal 1: "To provide a wider range of opportunities for children to encounter arts and cultural endeavors both in and outside of school." to 11: "To develop a comprehensive plan for developing cultural facilities throughout the County."

"The study disappointed some people, I think, because it was so fundamental," Askew says. "I think a lot of people hoped it would come in with a bunch of program ideas, with the recommendation that we build a cultural arts center. Marc Goldring, the lead consultant for Wolf, Keens, said I can do all those things but you told me you didn't want me to take another plan from another city and put a Knoxville cover on it. If you really want to know what I think we need to do, this is what we need to do. So it was an intellectually honest report."

But, for now, 10 of the 11 goals have been put on hold while the newly-convened Task Force follows up on recommendation number 8: "To completely restructure and rename the Arts Council of Knoxville so that it can become a powerful support agency for ACE organizations." But now that the Task Force has been formed, Askew and the Foundation are bowing out of their current leadership role in order to see if this initiative can stand on its own.

"I went into this and our board went into this understanding that at some appropriate point the community would have to decide whether this was an initiative worth supporting. We were willing to take the lead for awhile, but if I had accepted the chairmanship of either of those entities [the Task Force or Task Force's board], this would still be an East Tennessee Foundation project," Askew explains.

Askew hopes the end result of all of these meetings and committees will be a renewed interest in the arts and cultural programs—like a show at a local gallery, an opera at the Coliseum, or a trip to Blount Mansion—as well as new, productive linkages and conversations between producing bodies, funders, and patrons.

Brent Cantrell, executive director of Jubilee Community Arts, is cautiously optimistic about the results of the ACE initiative and its effects on the community and governmental support. "I support it," he says. "There are some things that are very important [in the report], like getting some sort of voice into city government and working the arts into city planning. The ACE consultants' recommendations about the Arts Council may work as well. I'm always nervous when you start developing a bureaucratic tool and when you have a political body distributing funds. But we definitely need a voice of some kind right now and it seems they're the only candidate.
 

May 11, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 19
© 2000 Metro Pulse