The arts article by Trudy D’Armond about King and Pierce county arts groups getting together seems to indicate to me that she is unaware of the South King County Cultural Consortia (SoCoCulture), www.sococulture.org.

Granted it is working for and has many members of groups that perform also in Pierce County, it is not necessarily a Pierce County organization.

I believe the Gateway Concert Band has been asked to join in with such another possible umbrella group. We are members of SoCoCulture and have barely had the opportunity to do much with the group and we have also joined the state’s arts group (I believe it is the Artist’s Trust group).

There is also another prosperity group that is doing assessments of cultural organizations with/for understanding sustainability within the wider region of western Washington, www.prosperitypartnership.org and include foundation initiatives, www.prosperitypartnership.org/foundation/cultural/index.htm. This latter group is trying to look into a tax-based income to support cultural groups, but in fact the principles in this group are those who run the ARTSFUND who say to be eligible for grants through them an organization must have a paid administrator and a minimum revenue of $150,000 to even be eligible to apply, www.prosperitypartnership.org/foundation/cultural/CulturalAccessFund.pdf

There is a need for the smaller organizations to be heard in any of these deliberations so that we don’t get counted out, but the fact that none, or few, of the sococulture organizations show up on the ARTSFUND list of organizations here: www.takepartinart.org/index.aspx?s=o speaks volumes to us, that we are not important enough to be considered, although I’ve been in touch with them as has sococulture.

I would hesitate to have organizations such as Gateway Band, Arts Alive!, Plateau Area Writers Association, et. al., become even more involved with umbrella organizations just to get (if it happens) money from the tax pool. It would be spreading thin what people we have to run the organizations themselves; but there may not be any alternative in order to participate in the windfall should the Prosperity group prevail in a tax program.

What I find extremely disturbing is that SoCoCulture, after more than a year, is not on the listing with the ARTSFUND. And although SoCoCulture is on the 4Culture groups site, www.4culture.org/arts/partnerships/index.htm, none of the members are listed as are other such organizations in the near Seattle area, Auburn and Tacoma. We are in “Forgottonia,” somewhat like western Illinois is known as (left out of all statewide discussions.)

Paul T. Jackson

Enumclaw