More than professional sports will determine San Diego’s cultural future

Resonating strongly just beyond the circle of controversy surrounding the future of the stadium and San Diego’s professional sports teams is a broader question no one's really answered: What should the cultural signature of the community be in the 21st century?

    A lot of people honestly believe they know the answers. Yet when they attempt to verbalize them, those answers emerge as either, (a) dire predictions about what the culture in the community may not be if thus and so is done or not done or, (b) reflections of some sort of standard for what the rest of the country seems to think a city should be, i.e., what everybody else thinks.

    The first is pure negative thinking, just another form of telling us all the reasons something can’t be done instead of why it can. The second is an expression of the worst kind of inferiority complex: slavish adherence to what other people think of you. Either one is a poor way of approaching what the heart and soul of a great city should be like in the future.

    The cultural signature of any community is the sum of many parts. Sports, museums, libraries, performing arts, education and much more go into the molding of such a complex composite. I know today is much like the decades of the decline of the Roman Empire when it was dominated by corn and circuses. However, I thought of a few people in the arts who might have a clearer idea of where, ideally speaking, the city's culture should be a decade or two from now, at least in their own areas of expertise.

    "Our goal is to make San Diego one of the best performing arts cities in the country," says Alan Ziter, executive director of the San Diego Performing Arts League. "We’ve got the great sun, the surf and the sand, but we’ve also got the stage."

    Ziter notes that while the national media assigns San Diego increasingly high marks in the arts, one of the area's largest problems remains the lack of awareness by the region's businesses and individuals.

     "Next year, the Arts and Culture Coalition, an ad hoc group of all those cultural institutions receiving city funding, will be updating its annual survey to include shows that have started here, exhibitions that have started here and gone on to other parts of the country," Ziter says. "So, we have begun to talk effectively to our elected officials and our business leaders about the positive things that are happening in San Diego arts and culture and the investments those leaders can make to cause things happen."

    But, Ziter says, "As a leadership organization in the arts community, we need better ties to the corporate sector." He says developing such contacts is often difficult because San Diego’s business leadership is so geographically diverse. "These people aren’t Downtown anymore necessarily. They're in Sorrento Valley and Otay Mesa. Just to find the time to talk with them is almost impossible."

    Ziter makes a strong case for increased cooperation between such organizations as his own and the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, the Economic Development Corp. and the Convention & Visitors Bureau. He points with pride to the recent full employment contract given to Rick R. Prickett, ConVis's cultural tourism manager.

    Prickett's position was originally funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as a part-time one to provide improved liaison between ConVis and the arts. It’s now full time and will be funded by the city of San Diego when the grant money runs out.

    Ziter points to other promising trends for arts support in a future San Diego. He says the aerospace industry, with its close ties to the military, never provided a significantly large audience base for local arts. Of much greater promise is the community's changing manufacturing profile, which involves biotech and non-military electronics, combined with the large education industry.

    In support of his stand, Ziter cites the gem of a 352-seat concert hall the Neurosciences Institute incorporated into its new plant so employees could enjoy the finest of the performing arts right on their own campus. "I think we’re definitely headed in the right direction," he says.

    It was at about this point in our conversation I began to realize that not only might I not get the kind of answer I had hoped for, I might be asking an impossible question. No one could pin down what the arts or the cultural life of the city in general should be in, say, 2020. Organizations such as Ziter's and the city of San Diego’s Commission for Arts and Culture seem set in here-and-now roles, dedicated to expanding audiences and fiscal support as well as providing clearing houses for information. While the San Diego Association of Governments provides land use forecasts, no such organization serves the same purpose for the arts.

    It’s not that actions today are not affecting San Diego’s future cultural signature. Victoria Hamilton, executive director of the arts commission, says, "We’re well on our way to becoming a cultural destination. All three major California cities San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles now have positions like Prickett's as a part of their convention and visitors functions. All three are working to put cultural tourism packages together. This has never been done before. We will be leading the country in this."

    As an example, Hamilton cites a 15 day tour package emphasizing Latino heritage and including stays in all three cities, visits to relevant museums, exhibits, plays, even operas, as well as sightseeing places of historical importance. Hotel and airline partners for the project are being developed.

    This seems an appropriate road to the future to follow, Hamilton feels. "We are seeking assistance on this project from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Since NEA funding has been so severely cut, they are looking with great favor on projects that involve arts partnerships within communities."

    Increased corporate involvement, new tour packages involving the arts more consistently and lucratively, improved public awareness of the role of the arts in the community, expanded neighborhood involvement in the arts — these all seem to be 21st-century goals for the arts community.

    And yet, what kind of arts will survive, how widely they ultimately will be supported, how large a place they will occupy in the public consciousness, remains to be seen. Chances are, they will be dictated year by year by the availability of funds and the level of desire on the part of the citizenry's own definition of what constitutes a well-rounded, gratifying cultural milieu. Just like it’s always been.

    An author, lecturer and consultant, John Willett has critiqued music, dance and the arts for more than 16 years.