Baltimore mayor creates new office to unite city arts
BALTIMORE — Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott has created a new office to consolidate all the city's arts offerings from the festivals to film.
The Mayor's Office of Arts, Culture, and Entertainment follows the example of cities such as Atlanta, Chicago and Austin, which groups together different genres under one big tent, Scott said Wednesday in a news release, 'improving coordination, growing cultural infrastructure, and driving strategic outcomes.'
In addition to hosting such public events as AFRAM and Artscape, the new office will also operate the programs that provide grants to individual artists and cultural groups.
These events used to be run by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, the city's previous events-planning and grant-making organization. The city's contract with the financially flagging quasi-governmental agency was terminated last year by Scott. But since then, interim BOPA CEO Robyn Murphy appeared with Scott at news conferences announcing plans for such popular festivals as Artscape.
Murphy couldn't be reached immediately for comment.
The new office will be directed by Linzy Jackson III, the city's director of external partnerships and the producer of Baltimore's AFRAM and Charm City Live. He will be supported in his new role by Tonya Miller Hall, the mayor's senior adviser for arts and culture.
Scott said that Baltimore was visited last year by more than 28 million tourists.
'Baltimore has serious momentum right now,' he said. 'And more and more people are seeing it for themselves.'
The news release predicted that creating a centralized agency to manage the city's arts, events, nightlife and film will grow revenues, increase operational efficiency and provide critical assistance for grassroots artists and neighborhood-based cultural organizations.
The new agency 'isn't just a new office,' Jackson said in the news release. 'It's a new way of connecting Baltimore and showing who we are. It's where murals meet music, festivals meet film, and community voices take center stage.'
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