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Adrienne Flagg has been through this before.

Every year around this time, it’s the same circus. The city of Portland releases its draft budget. Tongues wag. Heads roll. The political jockeying for a piece of the budget pie begins. And for several years running now, the sad story’s been the same: the city threatens to cut a much-needed funding stream to the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center.

The 26 year old multicultural arts center — an old former firehouse founded by former City Commissioner Charles Jordan, sitting pretty on a highly trafficked block of Interstate Avenue in North Portland — is used to having its neck on the chopping block. Flagg, the center’s creative director, says she’s “grown exhausted” by rallying the IFCC-supportive troops each year to press their case to City Council.

They usually win back their funding. But this time, it’s not looking nearly as certain.

As the city considers how to plug a $8.8 million-dollar deficit and works to brace itself for a continuing shaky economy, one of the top items up for debate is the city’s usually generous spending of one-time budget appropriations: special projects, programs and one-time requests, many of them vital city services, not included in the regular city budget. The city's one-time requests budget has been slashed by 90 percent, from $24.9 million to $2.5 million.

This isn't good news for any arts group in Portland - the IFCC among them. That one-time budget appropriation has, for the past four years, helped sustain and grow the IFCC, according to Flagg. Although city funds were not used to hire Flagg as the center’s new creative director in 2005, at least $80,000 annually — sometimes more — has been pumped into the center each year since, a figure that the center must also match with their own fundraising. Though barely breathing as an organization when Flagg took the reins in 2005, the IFCC now has two full and one part time staff members, plus a part-time janitor, and runs multicultural art exhibitions, theatre performances and classes in their facility year-round.

For Flagg, making sure that the IFCC lives to see another year is not just her job as a staff member there. It’s personal.

When she was 13 years old and a member of the IFCC’s youth theatre company, Flagg got an early glimpse of the power of showing diverse communities through art, when she viewed tapestries designed by members of the Hmong community, a little-known southeast Asian ethnic group, on display at the IFCC. She says the experience of seeing those tapestries was “so riveting and so specific,” it transformed her, and offered “a much deeper understanding of my fellow folks in Portland.”

Flagg later went on to launch her own Drammy-winning career as a Portland actress and impresario, in addition to her work at the IFCC. Last weekend, I connected with Flagg about IFCC’s precarious state, and what's at stake: the Q & A follows the jump.

Stephen Marc Beaudoin: What’s the skinny on what’s going down at the IFCC, in your own words?
Adrienne Flagg: The lowdown is that we were not included in the Parks budget this year and we were included in the Parks budget each of the last 26 years. What it comes down to is I have to drop all my work here with artists and rally the troops around this one issue.

SMB: In your appeal email to the Portland arts community, you say IFCC has “been a leader in developing Portland’s art and theatre community.” How?
AF: In the theatre community, ask any actor where one of their gigs was. There’s a significant amount of people who made their debut on the IFCC stage.

Third Rail did their first several seasons here, and now they’re a powerhouse in town. In the visual arts world, Philemon Reid, he’s a painter and had work exhibited here on and off for 20 years. Thara Memory, he did a piece here at the IFCC in 1984, exploring the opera format, with jazz.

We’ve commissioned a jazz opera [from Memory], and Mel Brown’s involved, and [former Oregonian columnist S.] Renee Mitchell has written the libretto. Adriene Cruz has done many shows here over the years, and she was awarded a fellowship at IFCC, back when they had money to do that.

SMB: For many years, then-commissioner Sam Adams’ arts policy director, Jesse Beason, sat on your board of directors; during that time, Adams’ office showered praise and support on the IFCC. Beason left Adams’ office last year to work for a nonprofit housing coalition. How much do you attribute the city’s attempt to strip funds from IFCC to Beason’s departure from Sam’s office, and Sam’s current volatile stature as mayor?
AF: None at all. I don’t think the city’s trying to strip funding from the IFCC. The budgeting process and the relationship between onetime funding and ongoing funding has become very complicated. I think IFCC not being included in the budget this year, that’s not what anybody wanted.

Here’s an example that’s even scarier: there’s homeless programs that have been on one-time ask monies, to the tune of $7 million. All these groups that have been relying on one-time asks, there is no one-time asks any more, because of the state of the economy. I see this is an opportunity to fix a system that perhaps was not working in our city’s best interests.

SMB: Have you or anyone at IFCC spoken to Mayor Adams personally about this?
AF: I’m not sure. Jesse Beason may have, I’m not sure. I have not heard anything specifically back from Sam.

SMB: What does Parks Commissioner Nick Fish have to say about this?
AF: We haven’t had a conversation with him yet. We did have a really excellent conversation with his staff member, Hanna Kuhn. It was a very good meeting. It was more informational for us, but it enabled me to look at what our strategy should be. What’s sad to me is our artists and our very small staff here are spending so much time to advocate and re-adovate and re-davocate, when we really should be art making.

SMB: Why does IFCC specifically deserve this support from Parks and Recreation, when other small to midsize arts organization, and ones also ethnically or culturally focused like Teatro Milagro, are struggling just as much?

AF: That’s a great question. One of the reasons is our historical precedent in a public private partnership, and it’s a great example of how public private partnership should work. There are things Miracle Theatre could explore to be sure. Ours is just one model of how to do it.

Again, the history that we have, but also the fact that our mission is to fill the pipeline of artists throughout the city, and make sure the pipeline is diverse. There are, what, 178 theatre companies, and those companies are largely white. In my experience of going to the theater in Portland, it’s largely produced by white folks. IFCC’s mission is to grow the artistic community in Portland and grow the platform of diverse artists here, so those artists can grow and spread across the entire city. IFCC is a launching pad for them. I just got a call today, someone’s making a film with African American actors, and who do they call to find out where to start? They call me, and start here.

SMB: If Parks and Recreation doesn’t continue IFCC’s funding, could it be seen as yet another example of the city of Portland turning a blind eye to the needs of its minority and multi-cultural communities?
AF: There are programs in the city of Portland that help disenfranchised communities in times of crisis, and they do it really well, whether it’s housing or immigrant populations. IFCC is a really good example of how the city supports these communities not in a time of crisis, but in a way that is celebratory and that respects them and celebrates them on a daily basis.

I think sometimes the city forgets the work that we’re doing to support diverse populations. We’re not just an arts organization. There’s important story telling and important services that we’re offering.

[photo above: IFCC creative director Adrienne Flagg]