Spokane Arts Office officially launches, Elisabet Edwards tapped as head

More than a year after Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown declared she would revive the city’s arts department, the fledgling office now has its first employee.

Elisabet “Lisa” Edwards was named Monday as Spokane’s community arts manager, tasked with guiding the Arts Commission in charge of the city’s arts funding, coordinating requests from local arts organizations and leading the effort to draft a city arts plan.

Edwards previously worked as the mayor’s constituent services coordinator, a position that was eliminated in last year’s departmental reorganization, which also created the city’s transportation division as well as Edwards’ new arts manager position. Edwards has significant ties to the local theater community as a playwright, director, actor, former board president of Stage Left Theater and current board member of My Turn Theater, and has served the past two years as Brown’s Arts Liaison.

Some of Edwards’ salary will be paid for with savings from her previous position being cut, though a “significant portion” is being paid for with the city’s arts funding, according to city spokeswoman Erin Hut. City staff did not specify Edwards’ salary before deadline Monday.

The city’s arts funding comes from a portion of the 5% tax the city charges for admissions to concerts and other entertainment venues in Spokane. A third of that revenue has always been the Arts Commission’s to oversee, but it has been effectively Spokane Arts’ money. Half of it typically has gone to a grants program for artists administered by Spokane Arts, and the rest has funded Spokane Arts’ payroll and projects managed by the nonprofit, such as the city’s poet laureate and the City Hall art gallery.

The city recently ended an exemption from the tax for Gonzaga University in part to fund the new arts office, bringing in another estimated $100,000 per year.

Edwards will head the new office, which will be housed in the newly reorganized Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Department.

“I am honored to take on this role at such an exciting moment for our city. From public art installations to the new creative district, Spokane is celebrating how the arts connect community,” Edwards said. “I look forward to working with artists and organizations across Spokane to build something meaningful together.”

Edwards’ guidance for the Arts Commission will be an important part of the mayor’s mission to re-energize that volunteer organization, including by interviewing and onboarding new commission members, Brown said in a Monday interview.

The city’s arts department was dismantled more than a decade ago by former Mayor David Condon amid budgetary concerns. Nonprofit Spokane Arts was created in 2012 out of the ashes of the former department, relying on a smaller portion of the city’s arts funding.

In late 2024, Brown announced that she planned to rebuild the department in part by reabsorbing parts of Spokane Arts, which initially was publicly presented as a mutually agreed-upon path forward. Brown supported another six months of full funding for Spokane Arts, enough time for the two entities to hash out “what positions currently in Spokane Arts should remain there, and which ones should be folded back into the city.”

But the tentative partnership was troubled from the start. After a dozen years of success administering city funds to local artists, the nonprofit balked and privately expressed concerns about staffing cuts, the possible loss of independence, and the mayor’s plans for what would remain of it.

Before the six months were up, Spokane Arts turned to the city Arts Commission – the body that oversees the slice of admissions tax revenue set aside for the arts, but that over time had become seen as much as an arm of Spokane Arts as it was of the city – and asked for five years of continued funding.

Instead, the Spokane City Council in December agreed to a two-year contract extension, giving the nonprofit some breathing room for its own transition as a regional entity; after that, for the first time since its inception, it will have to compete for Spokane’s arts funding like any other organization.

Spokane Councilman Michael Cathcart, who raised concerns about creating Edwards’ position during last fall’s debates over the city budget, remains skeptical that an arts office is a good use for the city’s limited funds at this time.

“When we’re told by our finance staff that we’re not sure how to pay our (animal control) bill, things like this are exactly what I was talking about last fall,” Cathcart said. “When we have a challenging cash flow, I don’t know that this rises to the top.”