New City Arts Director Brings Enthusiasm To Job
Carolyn Frances Lair is accustomed to people labeling her a Pollyanna. When they do, “I remind them that in the story, Pollyanna’s optimism did change the town and give others more confidence in what they could accomplish.”
Lair, who plans to spread some Pollyannish magic in her new role as Spokane’s arts director, takes over an Arts Department whose budget was trimmed from $112,000 last year to $105,000 for 1996.
She was among 85 applicants for the $41,091 post vacated by Sue Ellen Heflin last November. Heflin left to become executive director of the Spokane Art School, explaining as she departed, “Ten years of budget wrangling and always being on the firing line took a toll.”
Lair talked with Heflin before applying for the job, and says “struggles over money and council infighting are the nature of our business.”
Besides unbridled enthusiasm, Lair, 43, brings strong credentials to City Hall. During the past 15 years, she’s held assorted senior arts management positions for cities, arts commissions and non-profit organizations in Canada, Great Britain and the United States.
Most recently, she worked with the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies as California coordinator of “Talleres de la Fronteria,” which toured southwestern states and Mexico this spring.
Though she’s never spent more than six years at a job, Lair says she hopes to find a sense of stability in Spokane that eluded her in Southern California.
“This is the first time I’ve ever looked into the quality of life, the water, the downtown and neighborhoods before accepting a job,” she says, “and that’s because I don’t want to be here just two years.”
One of her first tasks as head of Spokane’s Arts Department will be implementing the five-year cultural action plan Heflin developed before leaving.
“I was excited when I read through the plan a month ago,” Lair says. “Usually I’m the one who comes into a community and says, ‘Hey, let’s do a cultural plan.’ “The one thing (about the plan) that worries me is the time line. You don’t want to set yourself up to fail, yet there’s an awful lot of things in the plan that are supposed to occur before the year 2000. I want to sit down with the Arts Commission and reconsider that.
“Everything can’t be urgent. We have to decide what the first priorities are,” says Lair. Her short list includes getting a granting program for artists and arts organizations in place, identifying alternative funding sources, maintaining existing public art, and working with other public and private agencies to solve community problems.
A public reception for Lair is scheduled for June 24 from 4 to 6 p.m. in City Hall’s Chase Gallery, 808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
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