More important in many cultural circles than the dollars and cents in the arts funding pipeline during the just-ended Florida state legislative session was lawmaking that had the potential to wipe out a minimal requirement for arts education.

It took two decades of argument to convince lawmakers to create a piddling minimum of one credit in fine arts to graduate from high school. Three words might have ended it.

The current law requires “One credit in fine or performing arts, which may include speech and debate,” for graduation. An amendment during the session added the phrase “or a practical arts course,” i.e. shop, auto mechanics, etc. The proposal created an either/or choice in which schools could drop “fine arts” entirely and substitute grease monkeyshining to earn a diploma.

Efforts to stop the move failed. But the final bill as passed, and expected to be signed, is a compromise that restricts the “practical arts” offerings to courses that incorporate “artistic content and techniques of creativity, interpretation, and imagination. Eligible practical arts courses shall be identified through the Course Code Directory.”

By including the language not only that the courses include artistic content etc., but also that specific courses must be identified in the statewide course code, the original intent of the statute is preserved, to a degree.

Florida’s miniscule arts education requirement has been eroded somewhat. But in a year marked with even more frightening battles in a powerful state board over religion, creationism and science in the classroom, the fine/practical arts compromise seems somehow like a victory.

Details, as usual, can be found most easily at the Florida Cutural Alliance website. Click on "advocacy."

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The numbers in the 2008-09 state budget for the arts and culture remained steady as the legislative session reached its close last week. Arts support passed through the Dept. of State's Division of Cultural Affairs totals $6.3 million, with another $1.2 million in grants through the Division of Historical Resources.

These are sharp drops that likely will take years to rebuild to previous levels, perhaps longer than the recovery from slashes in the economic downturn after the 2001 World Trade Center attack. But times are tough and no one's whining over whether or not the share is fair. Most of the money that could be found will be redistributed to organizations throughout the state over the next year.

What's odd, however, is how much legislators were able to carve out for cultural building projects in various districts, many of them tied to magnet schools, colleges and universities: $77 million.

The big chunks go to central and north Florida schools, $20 million for a Univ. of South Florida visual and performing arts facility in Tampa, $10 million to Florida State University in Tallahassee, $7.5 million for a University of Central Florida arts complex.

Here in South Florida top grantees include FIU ($433,000), Florida Holocaust Museum ($300,000), New World School of the Arts ($1 million), and the Miami Circle preservation site ($2.2 million).

The legislature's arts record was tracked by the Florida Cultural Alliance. For complete details and links to bills, etc. visit the FLCA website and click on "advocacy."

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Sherron Long is one of my favorite persons of all time in any place. She's the president of the Florida Cultural Alliance and runs the Florida Professional Theatre Assn., and has the singular overview vision that virtually everyone she represents lacks. She's spent the past few months, weeks in particular, in a familiar Alamo-style defense of arts and cultural funding during Florida's legislative session.

The final-final tally is still to be reckoned but it appears budget allocations to the State Department's division of cultural affairs will be a little over $6 million. On a related front, the state's support for film industry incentives will be $5 million. And there are actually tens of millions tucked away in the appropriations budget for college and university arts facility construction and restoration. There have been significant hits, but neither culture nor commercial show business have been zeroed out for next year.

I always have mixed emotions about this. And they're amplified by the supposed conundrum that support for the arts, when rubber meets the road in governmental decision-making, tends to come from (gasp) the Republican side of the aisle. Though I've never been a member (actually a no-party-affiliate since 1968), I've felt that the arts and other benefits of advanced civilization deserve support - but I stop short of entitlement.

So, when Sherron sighs that $6 million in Florida arts appropriations is good this year, I agree. Where we both feel that government support is more important is in the philosophy. And last-minute moves will hopefully be successful in preserving a statewide requirement for arts education. That's Senate Bill 1914, with an amendment that would prevent another amendment from replacing auto mechanics and similar pursuits to music and theater as a grad requirement.

I"m a pretty good wrench myself, devotee of Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and have rebuilt a short block or two in the carport. But shop is shop and it doesn't equate with the school choir, which deserves its special place.

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"What good's permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away
Life is a cabaret, old chum
So come to the cabaret."

--Lyrics by Fred Ebb, music by John Kander, "Cabaret," Broadway, 1966

Welcome to the blogosphere that encourages discourse from everyone who recognize the obvious: There are few if any boundaries among interests in the arts or their connection to show "business" and pop culture.

Plays, musicals, opera, symphony, chorus, recitals, jazz, pop concerts, artspolitik, philanthropy, and much more are part of the Cultural Cabaret.

Here, you'll find breaking news and opinion of events - performing arts and show business - in the digital world, often as observation within minutes or hours of an event - previews to the fully vetted online and print news or reviews to follow.

Whether the discussion is conducted digitally or on paper, we all need to be a part of the community exchange. Ours is South Florida. These posts are the starting point for you to discuss our cultural community among one another.

Now that the cabaret is in full swing with a few scoops and catch-up items on the entertainment news front, it's time to pause for introductions and welcomes.

You lounge lizards know the drill - the set begins with a torch song opener, then a ballad, then the entertainer "chats" with you personal-like before diving into the show proper.

Here's my chat: I've spent nearly 40 years covering entertainment and the arts for every major newspaper in South Florida, from Miami through the Palm Beaches - over half of it here at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

For much of that time, I've also covered the statewide entertainment industry reporting for "the bible of show business," Variety based in New York City and Daily Variety in Los Angeles.

In the overview, that means nights in saloons and salons and sheds (a.k.a. amphitheaters), plus supperclubs, casinos and concert halls, from symphony orchestras to rock festivals, playhouses to theaters to opera houses, movies from the set to the neighborhood multiplex to art cinemas to film festivals, and artspolitik from city hall to the state legislature.

That's a jack-of-all-trades experience in a whole bunch of class-conscious worlds with many self-appointed high priests. So, expect to hear some some high-velocity rebuttals from contributors offering counterpoint as we rebuild the roads of information and opinion as two-way, community-wide thoroughfares.

This blog and its threads will attempt a univeral approach to the arts and show business without demeaning one to the other.

High priests have their place, and their standards deserve defense. I myself am a devotee of Ayn Rand's cultural philosophy and live in a condominium named The Fountainhead, for which I have been board president. This is not entirely coincidence or serendipity.

Yet, the differences that propel community expectations populate the arena of the cultural cabaret. On the web, the stage is yours, mine and ours.

There is one caveat, however. Anonymous comments won't get a followup or response from here. To be taken seriously, you need to be taken at face value. Without a face, your comments have no value.

- Jack Zink

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The dust hasn't settled on the Florida Legislature's conference committee's slash of the state's arts funding, but another and longer-term crisis has arisen for cultural interests.

Late Thursday afternoon, Florida Cultural Alliance president Sherron Long sent out an e-mail to the alliance network warning that a dangerous clause in Senate Bill 1914 hasn't been removed, a clause adding "practical arts" -- with an "or," not an "and" -- to the state's requirement that students have at least one credit hour of "fine or performing arts" study to graduate from high school.

It took 20 years of lobbying by arts advocates to get the fine arts cemented in the curriculum. The new language if adopted in conference would make it possible for schools to strip fine arts and performing arts from the curriculum -- "practical arts" being shop, auto mechanics and nursing, Long says.

The companion House Bill 7045 has the language arts advocates want. Time is short for backers to influence legislators, but efforts were still ongoing Monday the 28th to get "practical arts" removed or alter the language. Check out the details at the FLCA website including contact information on legislators.

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