The Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) and it's sponsor the Department of Economic Community Development Have systemically turned the Arts in Connecticut into a zero sum game. They all need to resign and the entire cluster-muck (I'm being polite) of State arts administration needs to be reimagined with artists and the welfare of CT arts in mind.
As I described in an earlier post, what's left of the entire community of artists in Connecticut's Second District have been successfully demoralized and largely erased from any funding opportunities.
The Shapiro sorority house of arts administration has successfully broken the back of the former Northeastern Cultural District fell prey to what appears to be a COA fictional requirement that the district cough up at least $30K that would be matched in kind by COA with another $30K. You might be fooled into thinking this had something to do with art or community.
No such thing. Shapiro was requiring the money be used to hire yet another arts administrator who would cow-tow to the COA's desire to extend their administrative chokehold. Intelligent, frugal, all volunteer local organizations threatened the weed garden of schmoozers who today control all the spending in this State (and not in a good way).
By insisting that Cultural District's pay to play (under Shapiro's thumb), the message was clear - you don't exist. The Southeastern CT Cultural District fared only slightly better after stumbling for years. The entire Second Congressional District eventually got swept up into one aesthetic dustbin that is offered a scrap or two of attention just to be sure there's at least one idiot left who thinks anyone gives a sh!t.
The Arts community needs to get out of the aesthetic ICU and rise, Easter is coming.
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