Culture club
Coastal cultural hubs look toward post-COVID world
By Barbara B. Covell
For the TODAY
It’s a new chapter for the arts on the Central Coast. With the advent of vaccine rollouts and more flexible guidelines for small gatherings, organizations are ramping up ways to engage creatively with the public and are even putting some in-person gatherings on the calendar.
The Oregon Coast Council for the Arts, one of the premier presenters of live events in Newport, has also appointed a new executive director, Jason Holland, who says that plans for the future are tempered with the realities of the present.
“If we have confirmed one thing during this difficult time, it is the resilience and dedication of the arts and artists who are imagining their world anew, he said. “There are countless stories of artists taking to the streets, initiating drive-in performances and performing from the balconies of their apartments.”
Holland comes to OCCA after spending 18 years in various leadership roles at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. He has extensive experience in grant writing, marketing and stewardship; creating programming focused on diversity and inclusion initiatives. This included making the arts accessible for people with cognitive and physical disabilities. Holland has received several awards for his work in the arts and art education from multiple philanthropic organizations, including Alzheimer’s Orange County, United Cerebral Palsy of Orange County and OC Parenting Magazine.
Holland said that the current priorities for the OCCA include expanding the operating hours at the Newport Visual Arts Center, currently open Wednesdays and Saturdays from noon to 4 pm; resuming artistic space rentals; and getting the Newport Performing Arts Center reopened after more than a year of closure.
“We can’t wait to welcome audiences back into the theaters again,” he said. “but we have a little way to go before that can happen.”
Two events on the books include the Paper and Book Arts Festival, which will be held this September in the VAC and the 17th annual Oregon Coast Jazz Party at the PAC sometime in the fall.
“While there will be restrictions on audience capacity initially, even a small audience will be exciting after so many months of a dark theater.”
The OCCC is also thinking about the community’s youth and how to create engagement for them this summer.
“They have endured such a challenging year,” Holland said. “Participating in the creative process is an important way for them to connect with friends, ignite their imaginations and have fun at the same time.”
Further north, the Lincoln City Cultural Center is home to diverse artistic disciplines and genres across the visual and performing arts. Executive Director Niki Price reflects on the challenges and triumphs of the past year.
“In 2020 we had to close the gift shop and information center, but we replaced it with a lovely new Fiber Arts Studio Gallery. We adapted several rooms to monthly artist studio rentals. We learned how to live stream our concerts from our auditorium. We turned our classroom arts outreach into a system of free art kits, dubbed the Creative Quarantine Project. To date, we have made and distributed more than 6,000 packets. It's been a creative year. As weather improves, we are able to do more outside. We will probably transition from virtual gallery tours to in-person gallery receptions sometime this summer. But we do have some gallery visitors now and classes like yoga and Zumba.”
Price added that the facility’s ample square footage has helped make special exhibits manageable.
This summer will mark the return of familiar events like the farmers market on Sundays and Tuesdays. In July, the center will install a 50-by-80-foot tent in the east parking area to host jazz, Cuban and Celtic musicians. Also in July, the center will host an outdoor art display called “For the Seventh Generations” with a quarter mile of paintings about the Pacific coast. In September, the Siletz Bay Music Festival returns.
When asked about the process of advancing from virtual and limited exposure artistic experiences, Holland said, “If there is a silver lining from this pandemic, it’s that technology has helped us reach isolated audiences with live streaming and recorded performances online. I don’t think digital, virtual programs are going away. They are here to stay in some way, shape or form. We don’t want them replacing in-person, live experiences in the arts, but technology has allowed artists to expand their reach to those audiences living in remote areas or students in the learning process. The challenge may be for arts organizations like OCCA to explore ‘hybrid’ programs or services — a combination of in-person and virtual offerings to benefit a larger community.”
Price agrees.
“We foresee that people will be socially distancing in some form until the end of 2021, so we will continue to be creative and sensitive to everyone’s comfort level. While the pandemic has changed the lives of many, the arts remain, contributing to peace of mind and enhancing quality of life here on Oregon’s Central Coast.”
For more information about the OCCA, go to coastarts.org and about the LCCC, go to lincolncity-culturalcenter.org.