That’s why today’s Seattle Times guest editorial by Edward D. Lazowska on STEM –  science + technology + engineering + mathematics – caught my attention. Mr. Lasowska is chair of UW’s computer science and engineering program. He argues the importance of computer sciences for our state economy.

I agree, but I believe just as important is innovative thinking and creativity within the sciences. Without it, science is merely an exercise. How do we infuse creativity with science? Arts education. It is time for STEM to evolve into STEAM: science + technology + arts + engineering + mathematics.

Sarah Pease edited a compelling edition of ARCADE magazine recently, in which she observed that we are trained at a young age to separate art from the core subjects of our studies, rendering it unimportant in the shadows of science and math. She and other contributors argue that the areas of art and science are more closely related than not, that their overlap is more relevant now than ever.

ARCADE contributor John Maeda wrote that when he was young his teachers praised him for being good at math and art. But, his father would tell people “John is good at math.” Maeda felt he had to choose between the two. He chose the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

After many years there, he saw technology succeeding in making everything cheaper, faster and smaller—but failing to make things emotionally rich. He became convinced something else was needed to inspire true innovation – design and art. It was that realization that propelled him from MIT to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he is now president.

Check out his related TED Talk from June of last year.

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Some community members felt the meeting turned out to be about how tee-ball and youth soccer were to be scheduled for the field, not about whether they should be scheduled at all, which was their expectation. One resident told me “The meeting last night was not productive. There was an agenda, but nothing was actionable.”

This experience left me feeling the need for DPR to improve its outreach practices, which I encouraged then-DPR Superintendent Ken Bounds to pursue.

The following year, he and DPR published the department’s first public involvement policy.

This month presents Seattle residents an opportunity to test it.

DPR is soliciting help from the public in planning the future of Seattle’s parks, programs and community centers as well as other facilities. Their goal is to gather public input for incorporation into their Parks Legacy Plan. The City Council will be presented DPR’s plan for approval in December. Councilmember Sally Bagshaw Chairs the Council’s Parks and Neighborhood Committee.

• Tuesday, May 7 from 7 to 8:30 p.m.: General Meeting
  Seattle Parks and Recreation Administration Building
  100 Dexter Ave. N
• Wednesday, May 8 from 7 to 8:30 p.m.: Sports, Recreation, and Aquatics
  Green Lake Community Center
  7201 E Green Lake Dr. N
• Monday, May 13 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Seniors, Teens Including LGBT, Community Centers And Associated Recreation Council (Arc)
  Northgate Community Center
  10510 5th Ave. NE
• Thursday, May 16 from 7 to 8:30 p.m.: Environmental Programs, Open Space And Maintenance
  Jefferson Community Center
  3801 Beacon Ave. S
• Tuesday, May 21 from 7 to 8:30 p.m.: General Meeting
  Dakota Place Park Building
  4304 SW Dakota St.
• Wednesday, May 22 from 7 to 8:30 p.m.: Immigrant and Refugee Communities
  South Shore K-8 School
  4800 S Henderson St.
  

  A 1950 ariel photo of Seattle’s 1st public park, Denny Park, dontated in 1864 by David Denny & Louisa Denny while still a cemetery. Graves were moved at the city’s expense after the Denny’s created an 1883 deed making most of the area a public park. (courtesy Seattle PI Archives)

Some of the questions current DPR Superintendent Christopher Williams and his staff want to ask include “Are we spending resources as effectively as possible? What does the public think of our park system? What are the basic services we provide? Should the community center programs seek to bring in more revenue? What do you think is important to provide through teen programs? How would you prioritize funding dollars for cleaning comfort stations, maintaining sportsfields, and lawn maintenance?”

DPR is also inviting residents to comment on any DPR topic.

Do you know that DPR is a long time supporter of the arts?  It runs arts programs at Magnuson Park and the Alki Arts Studio while partnering with 9 other arts groups, such as Pratt Fine Arts Center, Seattle Public Theater, Spectrum Dance Theater and the Seattle Art Museum.

After being harangued by me over the years to prioritize reconstruction of Building 30 in Magnuson Park, they are doing so as I write. The seismically upgraded building is expected to re-open this fall with at least 20 artist work studios and its large hanger space welcoming back community groups and activities that had been turned away due to safety concerns.

Artspace, a provider of affordable artist live/work space throughout the country, estimated over a thousand working artists are on waiting lists for affordable work studio and live/work studio space in Seattle. 24 artists once worked in Building 11’s studios at Magnuson Park.

Will DPR again seek artists to rent work space in Building 11? How does it plan on working with Magnuson Park’s 20-year old arts advocacy group SPACE – the Sand Point Arts & Cultural Exchange? Will DPR update its system wide 12 year old planning documents for the arts?

To learn more, refer to DPR’s Parks Legacy Plan.

Those who cannot attend a meeting and wish to comment on DPR’s draft plan can email parkslegacy@seattle.gov.

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The Awards recognize the accomplishments of artists, arts and cultural organizations as well as community members committed to enriching their communities through the arts.

This year, the Arts Awards encompasses five categories: Future Focus, for arts education and working with youth; Artistic City, for creativity; Venture Culturalist, for funders, businesses, donors or professional development/service organizations; Arts as the How, for social issues; and Raising the Bar, for artistic excellence.

2010 Mayor’s Arts Awards kick-off Bumbershoot Arts & Music Festival at Seattle Center

Do you know an artist deserving of recognition? How about an arts organization that you feel is doing excellent work? Or, perhaps you work for a company that makes a difference by giving big to the arts? I encourage you to submit your nominations for the 2013 Mayor’s Arts Awards via the Office of Arts website, here. The deadline for nominations to be received is 5 p.m., Wednesday, May 15.

The Seattle Arts Commission will review public nominations and recommend recipients to the Mayor for final selection.

This year, I am nominating The Gage Academy under the Future Focus category. Since 1989 the Academy, lead by co-founders Gary Faigin and Pamela Belyea, has provided community-based artistic development for artists of all ages and abilities through year-round instructional programs, public art events, lectures, youth programming, and exhibitions.

Nick Licata chats with Norm Langill of One Reel during the 2003 Mayor’s Arts Awards

Past Award recipients include public artist Buster Simpson, Three Dollar Bill Cinema (2012), Pratt Fine Arts Center (2011), Reel Grrls (2010), Artist Trust (2009), Coyote Central and Marybeth Saterlee (2008), Longhouse Media’s Native Lens Program (2007), maestro Gerard Schwarz (2006), painter Alden Mason, The Tsutakawa Family (2005), and the Seattle Foundation (2004).

2013 Award recipients will be honored at a free public ceremony that kicks off the Bumbershoot arts festival at Seattle Center on Friday, August 30, starting at 4pm. Look for details closer to the date on the Office of Arts website.

While the Awards don’t provide any money, winners do receive a snazzy plaque or trophy. More importantly, winners receive recognition among their peers and throughout the greater Seattle area that may help them expand their successes.

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Since 1998, I’ve hired local poets to read for the Council’s Words’ Worth poetry program at the beginning of my committee meetings. Over 195 poets have presented 218 readings since then. And in 1999, I proposed electing a Poet Populist for the City of Seattle as a response to the more conventional practice of appointing a Poet Laureate (after clicking on Poet Laureate, scroll down to find ‘poet populist’ on that page).

Among the many events celebrating Poetry Month is one I find rather interesting called National Poem in Your Pocket Day. It’s sponsored by the Academy of American Poets’ Poetry.org and happens this Thursday, April 18th.

The way it works is that you select one of your favorite poems sometime in April, during National Poetry Month, and carry it around with you to share with co-workers, family, friends…even strangers. Is your office water cooler conversation lagging? Whip out a poem to spice it up or to at least surprise your co-workers.

You can also share your poem on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

If you’re feeling particularly creative you can design your own Poem in Your Pocket Day event. Check out some ideas, below. Or email Poets.org your projects and suggestions at npm@poets.org.

Find a Poem for Your Pocket

Along with your local library, bookstore, or bookshelf at home, you can find the poems for your pocket by browsing Poets.org, where you can download pocket-sized Poem PDFs to print and share with others.

Put Poems In Others’ Pockets

Check out the ideas below for how you can get involved:

  Start a “poems for pockets” give-a-way in your school or workplace

  Urge local businesses to offer discounts for those carrying poems

  Post pocket-sized verses in public places

  Handwrite some lines on the back of your business cards

  Start a street team to pass out poems in your community

  Distribute bookmarks with your favorite immortal lines

  Add a poem to your email footer

  Post a poem on your blog or social networking page

  Project a poem on a wall, inside or out

  Text a poem to friends

Poem in Your Pocket History

In 2002, New York’s Mayor, in partnership with the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education, initiated Poem in Your Pocket Day as part of the city’s National Poetry Month celebration.

In 2008, the Academy of American Poets took the initiative national, encouraging individuals around the country to join in and channel their inner bard. Each year on Poem in Your Pocket Day, schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, and other venues ring loud with open readings of poems from pockets.

Highlights from Past Poem in Your Pocket Day Events

Throughout history, poems have been stashed in pockets in a myriad of ways, from the commonplace books of the Renaissance to the pocket-sized publications for Army soldiers in World War II.

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While you may know about our city’s arts office and the important contributions it provides to Seattle’s ranking as a top U.S. arts destination, you may not be aware that Seattle’s DPR contributes, as well.

Their summer arts program is designed to provide summer learning opportunities, build self esteem, promote cross-cultural experiences, build ongoing participation in Parks, including welcoming drop-ins, and support the City’s Youth and Families Initiative. Up to $8,400 will be awarded for each of four parks: Othello Playground, Lakeridge Playground, Judkins Park, and Maplewood Playfield.

Summer Art in the Park is intended to offer fun, innovative, curriculum-based visual and performing arts activities in our parks for children, families, early childhood education facilities, and community centers.

The winning proposers are expected to offer activities complimentary to existing uses of each park while providing programming that appeals to young children ages 5 to 9 and teens ages 10 to 14 starting June 24th, ending August 16th, 2013.

Susan Tidwell’s temporary 2011 art installation in Occidental Park.

Proposers must also participate in the Free Summer Food Service Program, provided by the Seattle Human Services Department and coordinated through Seattle Parks and Recreation, as well as participate in the End of the Summer Celebration – a performance showcase, food and visual art display held August 15th.

Electronic submissions are not being accepted. Proposers must snail mail their applications to:

2013 Summer Art in the Park Program RFP
City of Seattle, Dept. of Parks & Recreation
Out of School Time Office
Attn: Daisy Catague
4209 W Marginal Way SW
Seattle Washington 98106

For more information, call DPR at 206-615-0303 or email daisy.catague@seattle.gov. Click here for DPR’s “Request for Proposals” website and scroll down to find the RFP.

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The 10th Annual Langston Hughes African American Film Festival kicks off April 13th at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute. It will run through April 20th.  The festival brings to Seattle thought-provoking, illuminating films that showcase stories of people of African descent, from around the world, by independent filmmakers. Check their website for more information.

ART IN THE PARK

A couple of years ago, in response to dwindling revenues, the City’s Parks Department sought to save money by having three of its most popular arts programs paid for by the City’s Arts Office so they could continue. During 2011 and 2012, funding for the Parks Department’s Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center, its Downtown Parks Arts program, and its Outdoor Neighborhood Parks Activation program was drawn from the City’s arts account, which receives revenue from City admissions taxes to fund the Arts Office. The Parks Department continued to manage those programs.

Blue Trees, by Konstantin Dimopoulos. Photo by Graham Syed.

This funding agreement ended last year and some worried that the Parks Department might not continue its commitment to bringing art into City parks. I then sponsored a budget paper expressing the Council’s intent to see continued arts programming in our parks. The Parks Department agreed. That’s good news for the many children and adults who participated in past Parks Department arts programs.

ARTSparks, a partnership between the Parks Department and the Arts Office, is now seeking proposals for arts projects to be temporarily installed in Occidental Square between June and September 2013. Individuals and organizations are asked to submit one to three distinct proposals. ARTSparks is part of the City of Seattle’s Center City Initiative, which contributes to making downtown parks more attractive, safe, and welcoming to the public.

The Summer Art in the Park Program seeks individuals, groups, or organizations to provide culturally relevant, safe, and reliable arts programming for Othello Playground, Lakeridge Playground, Judkins Park, and Maple Wood Playfield. The program’s focus is to provide fun, innovative, curriculum based visual and performing arts that will have a positive impact on the children, families, early childhood education facilities, and community centers of Seattle.

For the Summer Art in the Park program, the Parks Department will host a free workshop on Thursday, April 4th, from 6 to 7 p.m. at Miller Community Center, 330 19th Avenue East in Seattle on completing the Request for Proposal.

The deadline for applying to either program is May 10th.

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In making the announcement, he acknowledged SPS has not been providing equitable arts access to their students. In fact, it’s rare for any public school in Washington State to offer an arts curriculum on an equal footing as other curricula.

That’s why between 2007 and 2009 I proposed to the State legislature a state-wide arts education program to be funded by both an expiring baseball stadium admissions tax and a food and beverage tax. However, the legislature decided to re-directed those expiring taxes for other purposes.

SPS was encouraged to prioritize arts education by both the City’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs (OACA) and the Wallace Foundation, which provided the school district a $1 million grant in 2011. The grant allowed the school district to complete a comprehensive plan to institute a city-wide arts education program with the goal of bringing high-quality arts education to every student, every year, in every school.

Check out my earlier blogs on arts education: one on the Wallace planning grant and this one on why arts education matters.

Strengthening SPS’s application to the 2011 Wallace planning grant was the 2008 OACA/ SPS partnership initiative focused on bringing quality dance, music, theater and visual arts education to every student, with special emphasis on lower income communities and communities of color. OACA will continue to work with SPS to advance high quality arts education in our public schools.

The school district begins its district-wide art education program with a pilot in the Central area for K-12 students. They will evaluate and adjust the pilot project, if needed, before scaling it for implementation in every Seattle school.

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Building 11

Unfortunately, disagreements over the lease developed between the City and the LLC that lead to litigation resulting in a settlement that the City Council recently approved. The agreement  ends the LLC’s lease and returns the building to the City while compensating the LLC for its capital improvement costs, professional services, and other related expenses in the amount of $7,250,000. The LLC will continue construction this year to meet code compliance and subsequent operation of the building by the Parks and Recreation Department.

During the original lease being negotiated in 2009, I learned that the approximately 24 artists who had leased studios in Building 11 for the previous 9 years were about to have their leases terminated. In order to retain at least some of those artists, I proposed to the LLC they allow the Parks and Recreation Department to lease a smaller area of artist studios in the building from the LLC and, in turn, the Parks and Recreation Department would lease those units to any artists wishing to return once rehabilitation was complete. Although the LLC and the Parks and Recreation Department agreed to my proposal, disagreements over the master lease prevented that agreement from being exercised.

Magnuson Park, circa 1999. Bldg. 11 is at extreme top right of the peninsula.

Now that operation of the building will return to the Parks and Recreation Department, I would like to see working artists return.

With years-long waiting lists at Seattle’s few affordable artist studios – TK Lofts, Hiawatha Lofts, the Good Shepherd Center artist lofts, etc. – I’m sure it won’t take long to lease Building 11’s artist studios to working artists.

By recruiting artists into both Building 30 and into Building 11, the City comes closer to achieving its long-held vision of Magnuson Park being a home to creativity as well as to recreation and environmental stewardship.

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Last week, OACA kicked off that effort by convening the first of up to six Action Committee meetings to be held between now and this summer. The goal is to develop initial recommendations to be presented to the City Council and Mayor this September. Final recommendations will come the following year.

The Action Committee has 15 members, including City staff, community representatives, and representatives of the broader arts community. My legislative aide, Frank Video, serves as a member.

Co-Chairing the Action Committee are Dr. Dorothy Mann, a former Seattle Arts Commissioner, and Terri Hiroshima, with Crosscut.com.

OACA director Randy Engstrom began the inaugural meeting by explaining the roles and responsibilities of the Action Committee:

1. Review previous studies and recommendations that were conducted on Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute (LHPAI);
2. Familiarize itself with the history of LHPAI;
3. Use information gleaned from previous recommendations to assess LHPAI’s current situation when considering new recommendations for utilizing City resources to address the Institute’s long term sustainability.

One of the thornier questions that arose during this meeting touched upon the mission of the institution and whether there is an expectation it needs to be revised. Some interpreted previous studies as implying the mission should be expanded in order to attract larger audiences. Others worried that changing the mission might harm the Institution’s integrity. In the end, it was agreed that changing the mission was not expectated of the Action Committee. The budget document I authored requesting this planning process does not question LHPAI’s mission. The closest reference to LHPAI’s mission in that budget document is the statement that whatever plan is eventually recommended by the Committee should “focus on maintaining LHPAC’s existing programming for the African American community, while enhancing other types of programming and events.”

Stay tuned for more updates as these meetings progress.

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Over 200 attendees crammed into Velocity Dance Center to celebrate this unique development combining affordable housing, arts, and public safety.

What was once a fenced-off 29,000 square foot parking lot will soon be transformed into 88 apartments for people earning 60% or less of the area’s median income; two performance theaters managed by New Century Theatre Company, Strawberry Theatre Workshop, and Washington Ensemble Theatre; meeting space for community events; below-grade parking for the nearby Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct; and street-level space for local restaurants and retailers.

Interestingly, the last Seattle development to combine apartments with a significant performance space was the Paramount Theatre in 1928. It’s taken us 85 years to reinvent the past.

12th Ave Arts is an example of what CODAC advocated for in 2009. Then, with the number of lost arts spaces increasing, I initiated the Cultural Overlay District Advisory Committee with the help of Councilmember Sally Clark. The committee delivered recommendations to the Council and Mayor addressing the loss of arts and cultural space and associated economic activity. Acting on their recommendations was stalled until last year, when I sponsored budget legislation addressing one of their top two priority recommendations: to hire a cultural development manager.

The manager’s duties include identifying culturally significant land uses; preserving the cultural amenities that make neighborhoods desirable; educating citizens, property owners, and developers on the importance of the arts and cultural community to property values and neighborhood character; and promoting tools and incentives for retaining arts and cultural spaces as well as developing new ones.

CODAC’s other top priority was to designate an arts district. A few weeks ago, I blogged about Capitol Hill’s Pike-Pine corridor’s selection by ArtPlace as one of 2013’s top twelve places in the country for art. I consider ArtPlace’s designation more evidence of Capitol Hill being a “cultural generator” neighborhood – a neighborhood that consistently contributes significant arts and culture-related economic and nightlife activity.

That’s why I intend to work this year with the City Council and Randy Engstrom, director of the City’s arts office, to act on CODAC’s recommendation of establishing arts districts, the first being Capitol Hill. In addition to protecting and promoting space for art, culture, and nightlife activities, one of the defining characteristics I want to see included is affordable artist work-force housing. Such a district model would need to include incentives and funding for the kind of affordable artist live-work housing found in Pioneer Square’s TK Lofts and in Rainier Valley’s Hiawatha Lofts.

I’ll be blogging more on this effort as it progresses, so please stay tuned.

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