City of Eugene sponsors "cultural census"

The City of Eugene calls itself a capital of the arts, but now the city is trying to do more to make sure they are living up to that slogan.

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Story Published: Nov 17, 2006 at 5:38 PM PDT

By Andy Peterson

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Eugene calls itself "The World's Greatest City for the Arts and Outdoors," but some local artists feel the community needs to do more to walk that talk.

"I think a lot of people think it's overstepping, you know, and its kind of a joke among people," says Robert Canaga, the curator at the Opus6IX Gallery in Downtown Eugene. "And I think that's that's partly legitimate. But, I think now that we've named it that, we have to take responsibility for that, and start using it."

Canaga believes the community doesn't do enough to educate tourists about all the opportunities available here.

"We have museums, we have the Hult Center, we have historic districts, we have modern districts, we have arts centers," Canaga says. "We have all these things, and if you're driving down the highway, you do not have a clue."

That's exactly the kind of feedback the City of Eugene is looking for.

The city is currently in the midst of a Cultural Policy Review, one of the main portions of which is the "Eugene Cultural Census," a survey available in print for and online, through which the city hopes to garner a wide variety of opinions.

"Lots of different groups, lots of different individual artists doing all kinds of fantastic work," explains Mark Loigman, the Project Manager for the Cultural Policy Review.

Loigman and his team want to use the results of the survey and other conversations to determine things like funding, and partnerships between different groups.

"This is not going to be all things to all people," Loigman says, "but we're going to try to develop a broad-based support so that we're able to get what the people are looking for."

The survey has been out for about a week, and already more than a thousand people have filled it out. It will remain available online through December 1st.

For more information, or to fill out the survey, just click on "News Links."

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