After receiving a continuation on
funding in December, Arts Carolina
looks toward growth in the future
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Program Brings Together Many Facets of Arts Community
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Students, faculty and community members expressed their personal
feelings with handprints, poetry and symbols on the Sept. 11 tribute wall,
which was erected in Polk Place in 2001, a few days after the attacks.
For a program that is already well-established and
almost universally praised, Arts Carolina is oper
ating in a state of continued limbo.
The program has just completed its three-year ini
tiative, and during that time it can lay claim to orga
nizing several festivals, publi- By Brook Cqrw|N
cizing hundreds of arts events , „,,,
~ u i.ru ■. J • Staff Writer
through its Web site and pen
odical, leading an artistic campus response to Sept. 11,
and being the target of a glowing evaluation.
But those credits don’t necessarily add up to perma
nent future funding.
And not knowing the financial state of the program
after this semester has made coordinating future events
a trying task for Arts Carolina Director Amy Brannock.
“It makes it impossible to plan because we’re always
a step behind in this budget situation,” Brannock said.
“It’s impossible to plan when we don’t know ahead of
time how much money we’ll have."
Budget uncertainty is anew concern for Arts
Carolina. The program originally was funded through
its three-year pilot, which provided about $120,000 a
year.
That pilot expired with the 2002 calendar year, forc
ing a scramble for permanent funding.
But thanks in large part to the recommendation of a
task force charged with evaluating the program last
semester, Arts Carolina won’t be scaling back for at
least one more semester.
The task force’s report, which surveyed members of
the campus community, heavily praised Arts Carolina
for reinforcing the arts at UNC.
“The Arts Carolina evaluation committee recom
mends in the strongest possible terms that Arts Carolina
not only be continued, but that it receive reliable, per
manent and, when possible, increased funding, primari
ly from central University sources,” the report states.
After reviewing the report, several areas of the
University agreed to fund Arts Carolina for the spring
2003 semester, said Darryl Gless, a senior associate
dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and the chair
man of the task force. They include the College of Arts
and Sciences, the Office of the Provost and the depart
ments of Art, English, Music and Dramatic Art.
That combined funding will allow Arts Carolina to
operate status quo.
That’s enough to allow Arts Carolina to continue
publicizing and marketing arts events at UNC through
its Web site, online calender and biannual publication.
Brannock said the funds also will be able to cover a
series of public arts seminars, a UNC presence at the
Apple Chill town festival and a possible “performance
Thursday, January 16, 2003 i
for humanity”
involving several
academic depart
ments in the event
that the United
States goes to war
with Iraq.
But after May,
there are no such
guarantees. Gless
said the possibility
of future funding
rests heavily on the
outlook of the state
budget in the
spring.
The state budget
deficit is projected
to be about $2 bil
lion, and a similarly
sized deficit last
year forced all
UNC departments
to cut their budgets.
“Based on the evaluation,’there’s no doubt of Arts
Carolina’s value,” Gless said. “A lot depends on the
state budget outlook. We’re kind of hanging by the fire
of that."
Gless said a student fee increase for the College of
Arts and Sciences is being explored as a possible source
of permanent funding for Arts Carolina, a possibility he
said is a viable option because Arts Carolina provides
students with free or reduced rate tickets for arts events
at UNC. Gless said the college is planning to make a
request for such an increase to the Student Fee Audit
Committee this spring.
Student Body Presidentjen Daum, who serves as co
chairwoman of the committee, said getting that request
approved relies heavily on the opinion of the commit
tee’s four student members.
“Student views are honored,” Daum said. “We’re a
voting committee that doesn’t vote but instead operates
on consensus.”
Even if a student fee increase is approved by the
committee, Daum said it then must be approved by the
UNC Board of Trustees and will not be implemented
until two years later.
In the meantime, Brannock said she has to wait before
moving forward on her long-term plans for Arts
Carolina. Those plans include coordinating a series of
summer arts camps offered by the University, organizing
a yearly campus arts festival and beginning to implement
Through the Arts Carolina link on
UNC’s home page, you can instan
taneously check the dates of that
Lab! Theatre show that intrigued you or
the time for Tilt Merritt’s performance at
the Student Union.
Three years ago, no such
comprehensive collator
By Diane Eikenberry
Staff Writer
existed at UNC to bind together the var
ious campus and community arts orga
nizations. To search for theatrical or
musical performances required minute
scouring of newspaper ads. To learn
about new exhibitions sometimes meant
physical visits to the galleries.
And now the entire Chapel Hill arts
palette rests a few keystrokes away.
“Arts Carolina has given a central
portal to increased attention to what’s
going on on campus,” said Andy Bemer,
director of communications at Ackland
Art Museum.
According to Arts Carolina Director
Amy Brannock, initial interest in a cen
tral arts publicity machine germinated
from late Chancellor Michael Hooker’s
report on the University’s intellectual
climate. Parts of the report stressed non
traditional avenues of learning such as
Page 5
l.
. '• . ■ • ■
attending exhibitions, concerts and per
formances.
Former Vice Provost Tom Meyer
then brought together campus “arts
folks” to discuss their needs and chal-
lenges.
As they explored the arts
as an integral part of UNC’s
community, they recalled renowned arts
alumni such as Thomas Wolfe, Charles
Kuralt and Doris Betts and determined
that the arts at Chapel Hill deserved a
visibility worthy of its predecessors.
Such a penetrating presence demand
ed increased collaboration among
departments and the inclusion of town
and state arts organizations. Once the
newborn Arts Carolina had secured
financial resources and office space, the
university hired Brannock to wield the
conductor’s wand.
The three-year pilot program official
ly opened in January 2000.
As it began, Arts Carolina continued
to operate largely through collaboration
and cooperation across departments.
Brannock said she does 50 percent of
her work in meetings with professors
and administrators.
the public art planning initiative approved last year.
Brannock said meeting most of these goals, as well as
coordinating another disaster response effort like the
Sept. 11 memorial wall and subsequent spiral of life,
will require an increase in funding for Arts Carolina.
Brannock said the program’s day-to-day publicity and
marketing work would be hindered severely by any
cuts to its previous funding.
“We are on a bare-bones budget," Brannock said. “I
don’t know what we could cut and still be viable."
And after three years of making the arts a more
notable presence on the UNC campus, Brannock said
eliminating the program would have a detrimental
effect on awareness and atten
dance of arts events at UNC.
“The arts would become
invisible again,” Brannock
said.
“A small handful of people
already connected to the arts
would seek out the arts and
find them, but it would be
much less accessible and
much harder for new students
and faculty to get plugged in."
The Arts & Entertainment
Editor can be reached at
artsdesk@unc.edu.
H Bilk
DTH FILE PHOTO
“(Arts Carolina) put us in contact with
other departments on campus and has
given us an opportunity to collaborate,”
said Carrie Anne SpineUi, community
relations coordinator at Morehead
Planetarium.
Outside of the conference room, Arts
Carolina fueled the campuswide collab
oration on the Sept. 11 tribute wall in
2001.
“It was not something we could have
anticipated in that we would fulfill that
need in that way,” Brannock said. “We
didn’t plan for it at all, but when it hap
pened it just felt like the natural thing to
do.”
Brannock and company coordinated
students from the Carolina Union
Activities Board, the Campus Y and dra
matic arts, among others, while assisting
them in the conception, publicity,
design, construction and execution of an
artistic response.
More regularly, Arts Carolina
encourages campus collaboration
through its continued support of the
Carolina Jazz Festival.
“I used the momentum of my office
and the desire among departments to
Calm Down, Fellas...
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from girl next door to
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does it with dass. Take
that, Aguilera!
Above: Arts Carolina's ongoing
support of programs, such as tne
UNC Jazz Festival, has allowed
programs to grow and expand.
Far Left: Arts Carolina brought
together the efforts of different
departments to react to Sept. 11.
Below: Amy Brannock, director
of Arts Carolina, stays busy in
her unique position.
collaborate to make the event even big
ger than it was originally planned,”
Brannock said. “I was the energy to
bring people to the table to discuss what
their role would be.”
Brannock’s energy cemented Arts
Carolina’s role as the central arts locator
when she won an arts link on UNC’s
home page.
“The arts programs at UNC were
very disjointed with no communication,”
she said. “The Web designers could
eventually see that it was valuable to
have Arts Carolina on the home page.”
Dozens of campus, community, state
and even national arts organizations are
linked to the Arts Carolina Web site,
http:/7www.artscarolina.org, from
course departments to the National
Endowment for the Arts.
Dozens more events appear not only
on the Web site but in Arts Carolina’s
biannual publication, the Arts Carolina
Preview, and on the UNC campus cal
endar. Arts Carolina also maintains an
arts infoline at 843-ARTS.
The Arts & Entertainment Editor can
be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ARTS CAROLINA