Let’s leverage our loss of the Sundance Film Festival into action

We had a real opportunity to attract the Sundance Film Festival to Georgia.

But we fell short when Sundance announced that Atlanta did not make it from the top six to the final three cities: Salt Lake City/Park City, Utah — the current home — Boulder, Colo., and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Let’s not waste this disappointing loss. 

Sundance’s decision to no longer consider Atlanta gives us a wonderful opportunity to examine how we present ourselves as a center for arts and culture and what we can do to make sure we nurture our city, region and state as a true center for creativity and entertainment.

Traditionally, Atlanta and Georgia have a wonderful track record in going after sporting events, conventions and major corporate entities. We are less experienced in having an economic development strategy to seek and grow our cultural assets.

That was an issue when the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, the City of Atlanta hurriedly worked on presenting a proposal to become the new home of the Sundance Film Festival, the largest event featuring independent films and filmmaking in the country.

The experience of going after Sundance brought diverse players together who were excited about the possibilities that could emerge by attracting such a high-profile festival to Atlanta.

But some people have commented we were a day late and a dollar short.

We did try. Atlanta was one of 90 U.S. cities to throw its name in the hat in April to host Sundance. On May 6, Atlanta found out it had made the first cut of 15 cities. Unfortunately, the City of Athens and the City of Savannah also made the cut — meaning that Georgia was the only state to have multiple cities bidding for the festival. The state did not want to play favorites, so it stood on the sidelines.

Then, on July 19, Atlanta learned it was among the final six cities still in the running — and that the selection committee would do an onsite visit to the city, which happened 10 days later. In fact, Sundance picked Atlanta as the first city to visit because it was the most convenient for people to meet and access thanks to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Among Atlanta’s strengths, it was by far the largest metro area being considered. It had multiple venues and theaters where films could be shown. It has thousands of hotel rooms. And the city is used to hosting major groups. The city also has an amazing narrative as a center for civil and human rights with great diversity racially, ethnically and socially.

But Atlanta falls short when it comes to state and regional arts leadership, especially when it comes to funding.

Georgia is dead last among the 50 states in per-capita funding for the arts. As a city, region and state, we do not have the funding mechanism in place to support, nurture and seek major arts and cultural entities and events.

By comparison, Utah invests 1/10 of 1 percent of its sales tax for recreation, arts and parks. Many cities around the country have dedicated funding for the arts — Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, etc. 

While Atlanta collects significant hotel-motel taxes, most of those dollars are dedicated to funding stadiums and major sporting events. There is no mechanism to raise a dedicated funding stream for arts and culture — either in the city, the region or state.

We also do not have any entity for the arts that parallels the Atlanta Sports Council, which operates out of the Metro Atlanta Chamber but works closely with the Georgia Department of Economic Development and other statewide entities.

Should we create a Metro Atlanta Culture Council or a Metro Atlanta Arts Council that could convene the diverse players in our state — corporate, government and philanthropic?

Unfortunately, entities that we have created to support the arts in the past are only a shadow of their former selves — the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund, which is based at the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, and the Regional Atlanta Arts and Cultural Council, which started at the Metro Atlanta Chamber and then became a program of the Atlanta Regional Commission.

We have failed to galvanize our community to really champion the development of arts and culture in our region.

Looking around, we have so much to offer. We have a vibrant film and television industry — one of the top states in the country. We have more than two dozen film festivals already here — including the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, which has about 30,000 attendees a year; the Atlanta Film Festival, which has about 20,000 annual attendees, followed by the BronzLens Film Festival and Out on Film.

Just this past Saturday night, Morehouse College hosted the sixth annual Human Rights Film Festival. The festival premiered “Moses – 13 Steps,” a documentary that features the incredible career of Edwin Moses, the Olympic athlete who broke the world record for the 400-meter hurdles while he was a student at Morehouse.

There is so much energy and vibrancy to Atlanta arts, cultural, music and entertainment community, but we are so splintered as a region. Every city and or county is building performing arts centers, often not working in concert with others in the region. 

How can we find a champion, or champions, to bring together the various players for the greater good? Someone suggested we need our own Robert Redford, who championed the Sundance Institute, to grow our own cultural offerings. Could the Atlanta Committee for Progress, under the leadership of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and Chair Carol Tomé, an enthusiastic arts patron who is CEO of UPs, play a role?

The loss of Sundance reminded me of a significant story from the 1980s when Atlanta lost out to Austin, Texas in a bid to attract the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp, a research and development center credited with helping Austin grow into a high-tech business hub. 

The head of MCC’s search told Georgia leaders that Atlanta’s bid failed because of a lack of collaboration among the major universities in the state – namely the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech.

Over the next several years, top business, academic and state leaders created in 1990 the Georgia Research Alliance, which is composed of the presidents of the state’s top eight research universities with top business, civic and government leaders. The Alliance has encouraged cooperation and collaboration among the various players, and over the past several decades, Georgia has seen its status as a state for technology and research leapfrog over many other competing states.

We turned a loss into an opportunity to excel.

Let’s turn the loss of Sundance into an opportunity to shine. Let’s challenge ourselves to go from worst to first — remember the Atlanta Braves 1991 season? — when it comes to supporting arts, culture and quality of life in our state.

It’s a loss — and an opportunity — we must not waste.