[NewMusic] 21 Grand follies - (continuing saga)

[Sarah - 21 Grand]

Today I received via email a survey about marketing the arts in Oakland.
Apparently the City is interested in raising the profile of the arts and
creative work in Oakland. I'm hoping they don't just throw money at stupid
crap like designing a logo to put on totebags and printing cheesy brochures.
The survey was kinda an "invite-only" thing, but if you have feedback or
opinions about the issue, I could put you in touch with the people who made
up the survey. They had a lot of questions. I'm sure they'd appreciate (in
one way or another) honest answers from people.

One of the questions the survey asked was:
What are some of the more innovative methods your organization uses to
leverage marketing resources to expand and extend the promotional impact?
Please describe.

My answer:
The most unique "methods" used by our organization to expand and extend
promotional impact have been those beyond our control, entirely unplanned,
and not recommended to anyone. These have included: eviction by an
unsympathetic slumlord; displacement by a large for-profit real estate
developer (with strong connections to City Hall and a major political donor
to public officials' political campaigns) in order to make way for luxury
condos marketed as a convenient way to be close to culture; and being
prevented from presenting live event programming at our venue, due to
misunderstanding of city codes and use classifications and a
wrong-place-wrong-time impromptu visit from Oakland's Alcoholic Beverage
Action Team.  

 

Unfortunately, these methods are not ours alone. Bad landlords,
gentrification/re-development, and code compliance battles have happened to
many arts and culture entities in the City of Oakland. While they have
proved highly effective as marketing resources, they have almost always
resulted in the closure or extreme reduction in activities of the
organizations and businesses that have had to use them. The "casualties"
number in the dozens, in the past 10 years alone.

 
21 Grand has weathered the first two: slumlord and re-development related
displacement, and we intend to survive our code compliance issues, as well.

sl