"CETA made me a working artist and meant that I got up each morning with an arts agenda . . . It gave me a sense of the artist's place in the community." Bill Irwin, on his experience with the CETA funded Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco.
The indefatigable Bob Holman, the brains and energy behind the Bowery Poetry Club announces the CETA Artists Project:
From 1977 to 1982, in New York City, over 350 artists were given real jobs doing their art in the community while being paid by the Federal Government -- the largest Federally-funded artists' project since the WPA. With funds from CETA, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act which began in 1973 and whose mission was to train those who were unemployed or low-income workers and issue them jobs in the public service, with the hope that they could then swim into the economy at large. The CETA Artists’ Project under the Cultural Council Foundation employed artists in the city of New York, introducing their efforts and talent into New York communities.
The idea was simple enough: administrators would locate jobs/residencies for the artists -- visual artists, painters, poets and writers, dancers, musicians. The artists would then meet with the community groups to work out a compatible job description -- the local organizations had no outlay, but the idea was to show that artists do have value within these organizations. Theater artists had their own company, similar to the WPA Federal Theatre Project, which employed Orson Welles, among others.
Here is where you come in: On Saturday, May 7, 2011, 6pm, at the Bowery Poetry Club, 310 Bowery NY NY 10012, former CETA artists, administrators and founders will gather to explore what happened back in the day and what applications there might be for a possible federal or city artist job corps in New York City today.
All CETA artists from any city or program are invited to join this Facebook Community, to share ideas, and to show up on May for art, films, poetry, dance and discussion headed towards finding purposeful visions for a new job corps utilizing NYC's greatest natural resource -- the artists who live and work here. In the Festival’s spirit of generational timelessness, it’s twenty bucks to get in, but if you bring a young artist with you, it’s free for both!
-- sdh
Comments