Arts & Life

The silence of the past year has been deafening.

“If it wasn’t COVID, we’d be out almost every night listening to music,” says Amy Collins. Or perhaps she and her husband, Tim Clark, would be playing music themselves.

True, there are still a few venues where stages remain lit, heeding to state-mandated coronavirus pandemic guidelines with varying degrees of compliance.

“If Rochester is a 'City of the Arts,' why don't we fund the arts?” That’s the central question and the title of CITY Magazine’s January cover story. In a deep dive on the state of local arts funding, CITY editor David Andreatta and arts editor Rebecca Rafferty report that “Although dozens of organizations make up Rochester’s arts and cultural scene, Monroe County legislators did what they have done for decades and allocated most of the largesse to a handful of stalwart groups.” The formula and distribution process leave smaller groups with nothing or scrounging for leftover funding. Representatives for various arts organizations interviewed for the piece argue that for an arts city of such caliber, there should be more public support for artists and their work, and a distribution process that's less confusing and more equitable.

This hour, we examine how county funds for the arts are allocated and what arts advocates want to see changed. Our guests: 

• David Andreatta, editor of CITY Magazine 
• Rebecca Rafferty, life editor for CITY Magazine 
• Simeon Banister, vice president of community programs at Rochester Area Community Foundation
• Dawn Lipson, longtime patron of the arts who heads the Arts and Cultural Council of Greater Rochester 
• Bleu Cease, executive director of the Rochester Contemporary Art Center