Arizona Report

In November 2008, I was fortunate enough to travel across Arizona visiting cultural organisations throughout that great State. The project was part of a research sabbatical supported by HI~Arts and the Scottish Arts Council.

At this time of economic uncertainty and structural change within the cultural sector of Scotland, I found it very timely to gain an insight into US models of arts development – development that exists within the context of much lower levels of public subsidy for the arts.  And whilst that context presents challenges, it also presents many opportunities for enterprising arts organisations.

I found community and arts development workers in Arizona to be highly entrepreneurial – working to embed the positive impact that the arts can have across a wide range of funding agendas.  And many cultural organisations in Arizona have mutually beneficial relationships with commercial sector including both small independent traders and larger scale business, which in turn make them very market focused when it comes to development audiences.

HI~Arts has now published a formal report which pulls together my findings during the research sabbatical, whilst detailing some individual case studies of initiatives that I feel might hold a particular relevance for the Highlands and Islands and Scotland.  The report can be downloaded from this web page, and complements the more informal blog that I wrote during my time in Arizona.

I am very pleased to report a number of unexpected outcomes from my sabbatical which are helping to sustain and develop some of the relationships that were forged during my time in Arizona.  I am delighted that arts marketer Matt Lehrman from Phoenix, Arizona, will now be visiting Scotland during June, to speak at Glasgow Grows Audiences’ annual conference.  Matt will also be visiting the Highlands and Islands during his time in Scotland.

From the recommendations that I made during my time in the States, I am also pleased that Matt’s organisation Alliance for Audience has been working with a UK-based online ticketing consultant on a new intiative entitled Project Audience (www.projectaudience.org) which will create international partnerships to explore the use of new technologies in audience development.

Other exchanges are also in the pipeline, with Puppet Animation Scotland speaking to a puppeteer based in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert region, and with a key Arizona cultural development organisation discussing the possibility of visiting Moray to find out more about development of arts facilities at the Findhorn Foundation.  I will, of course, report on future developments – watch this space!

In the meantime, I hope that the report proves interesting to you.  There is much quality arts development work taking place in Arizona that deserves attention.  If you have any observations or questions about the report or my time in Arizona, I’d be very pleased for you to get in touch with me through this blog.

It's a Wonderful Life in Yuma

The city of Yuma is a similar size to Inverness in the Highlands, and I came here to visit the Yuma Art Center.

Yuma seems to have a robust economy – like Inverness, it is the largest settlement in a predominantly rural region, and provides services for many smaller communities.  It is well connected on the Arizona/California state line, with Interstate 8 and a major railroad route running through the city.  As a result, Yuma is growing fast.

Unlike many arts organisations in the state, Yuma Art Center is funded predominantly from public sources.  In a very deliberate attempt by Yuma City Council to revitalise the downtown area, funding was made available for both the capital development and revenue costs of the centre.

Rex Ijams is the centre’s Arts and Culture Program Manager, and he kindly showed me around the centre buildings.  The newer building includes modern and spacious gallery, workshop and administrative office space, built in 2002.  This is attached to the town’s historic Yuma Theatre – a 650 capacity venue with a track record for performing arts and cinema.  Built in 1912, the theatre has had a chequered history – it has burned down twice (what’s that Oscar Wilde quote about once being misfortune, twice looking like carelessness?).

The arts centre is fostering strong links to the community through an intensive and high-profile education program – giving over large and prominent gallery space to displays of work by local school pupils who have regular art classes within the centre.  The centre is also working to develop public arts projects on Yuma’s Main Street.

It’s interesting to see that programming of both the centre’s main gallery and retail space is outsourced to local arts group, Yuma Fine Arts.  Whilst I’ve been in Arizona, I have been struck by the preparedness of arts organisations here to outsource, franchise or delegate services and roles.  Back home, many arts organisations try to do everything themselves – taking on catering and retailing operations on top of marketing, ticketing, programming, front of house, etc.

I often hear it said that small, under-resourced arts teams cannot afford to outsource work, or cannot afford to franchise potentially prosperous income streams to third-parties.  However, neither can small teams expect to have the time, energy or skills to take on such a diverse range of tasks in-house.  Indeed, such multi-tasking can seriously limit an arts organisation’s ability to make significant developments in any one area.

Perhaps US organisations are more realistic in this respect.  For instance, whilst the arts centre in Yuma doesn’t have the income of a retail outlet, it also does not have the significant expense or distraction of staffing, stocking and developing a retail outlet (which often involve many unrecorded costs which can wipe out any on-paper profits from such an outlet).

On the other hand, outsourcing doesn’t always work out the way one would hope.  For instance, I recently attempted to book tickets to a basketball game that is taking place on the last night of my sabbatical in Arizona.  Like many large-scale theatres, most of America’s professional sports teams outsource all their ticketing operation to Ticketmaster.  First, I tried booking tickets to the game online using the Ticketmaster website.  Despite being disgusted with the processing fee of nearly $10 that the site was going to charge me for a single ticket, I got as far as the checkout screen.  However, I couldn’t get any further because I didn’t have a US billing address.  I then tried the Ticketmaster phone booking line, which turned out to be one of those voice automated services.  After the computer at the other end of the phone repeatedly failed to recognise what I was trying to say to it, it decided to pass me on to a human operator, who subsequently put me on hold for five minutes.  I hung up, and despaired that so many cultural organisations are choosing to place such poor customer service between them and their customers – and this in the home of great customer care!  But enough of my rant…

Yuma Art Center works closely with the local visitor bureau, heritage organisations, festivals, cultural councils and the Yuma Chamber of Commerce, and the centre is certainly having an impact on the downtown area.  A number of new shops and cafés have appeared over the last few years.  Even a new multiplex cinema has also opened at the other end of the street, purchased by the Native Indian community using profits made from their desert casino operations.

Yuma is home to an impressive array of arts groups, including two semi-professional ballet companies, two visual arts groups and a community theatre company.  In fact, my other reason for visiting Yuma is to see local Yuma Community Theater perform a stage adaptation of Frank Capra’s classic It’s a Wonderful Life at the Yuma Historical Theatre.

My oldest and dearest friend, Miles, first introduced me to It’s a Wonderful Life one Christmas during our early teens, and I fell in love with it immediately.  Indeed, I remember running through the streets of our home town in Yorkshire yelling “Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls!” at everyone.  It’s been a staple of my Christmases ever since, so what better than to see a drama about small-town America performed by a small-town American theatre company on a small-town American Main Street in the run up to Christmas?  (By the way, it’s a very strange experience to be here in 30 degree heat with Christmas wreaths and tinsel hanging against a backdrop that looks like something out of a Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon.)

As for the show – sure, it was an amateur company, and the staging and acting were patchy at times.  However, professionally-trained actor Larry Stone did a fine job in the lead role of the put-upon George Bailey – and carried off a remarkable impersonation of James Stewart into the bargain.  I left the theatre with the usual tear in the eye and lump in the throat that I inevitably get during my annual viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life.

The following morning I woke up in my hotel and planned my next move.  During my time in Arizona, a range of exotic yet familiar names have been calling to me from roadsigns – Los Angeles, Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, Albuquerque…

As I left my hotel, I spied a sign to San Diego, and thought “Why not?”, and headed towards the west coast on the Interstate 8.  After all, I’ve never been to California, and after three weeks of meetings and travel, I need to hole up somewhere for a few days and start to write up some notes.  Plus, I’m supposed to be laying the groundwork for a major redesign of the HI-Arts website whilst I’m here, and haven’t had a chance to start thinking about that at all yet.

My adventure continues…

Marcus at the Curley School, Ajo AZ

I have found my new hot desk at the International Sonoran Desert Alliance offices in south-west Arizona.  This week I’ll be in residence here in Ajo (pronounced ‘Ah-ho’), the largest town to be found in the US half of the Sonoran desert.

Ajo began life as a copper mining town in the late 1800s.  Over the years Native Americans, Spaniards and Americans have all extracted the town’s mineral wealth, but it wasn’t until 1911 that copper began being mined on an industrial scale.  In 1921, Phelps Dodge, the nation’s largest copper company, took over mining in Ajo and became the main employer of much of the town’s population.  The town boomed during this period, and Phelps poored money into the downtown infrastructure – cinemas, recreation halls, schools…

In the mid 1980s, with depressed copper prices, Phelps Dodge moved out of Ajo and the copper mines closed.  Without work, two-thirds of the town’s population moved away Ajo.  The railways closed, along with many of the town’s amenities – essentially, the heart was ripped out of the town.  From over 10,000, the population fell to under 4,000.

By the mid nineties, the town’s original secondary, middle, primary and elementary schools had closed.  Currently, only 46% of Ajo’s working-age population is in employment – and only half of those workers are in full-time employment. The International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA) are tasked with turning around that decline… and they are using the arts and heritage as tools to accomplish their mission.

Recently, Tracy Taft and her team at ISDA bought up the Curley School – the beautiful old secondary school that sits in the heart of the old town.  Using affordable housing tax credits, heritage restoration funds and a $200,000 bank loan, they were able to turn the old classrooms into 20 workshops and residences for artists. The school corridors provide exhibition space, and a further 10 units were renovated in the former middle school in the square behind the Curley School.  Adverts were placed on websites across the US to encourage artists to relocate to these affordable apartments/studios. 

Whilst in other towns (Tubac, Bisbee), this immigration of artists has happened organically over decades, ISDA are engaged in an experiment to see if such growth can be manufactured intentionally.  And it seems that it may work – in the Curley School’s first year of operation, 26 units have been filled – the majority by artists from other States.

However, the ambitions of ISDA don’t stop there.  They have also purchased the old primary school and turned it into a community arts space, where young people excluded from school can work towards an equivalent to a school leavers’ diploma, through a programme of arts and ICT studies.  Recently, they have been teaching the students how to create mosaics from waste tile fragments – the resulting colourful mosaics have been sold to local businesses as signage, bringing funds back into the programme and building confidence in the young artists.

ISDA propose to complete the school redevelopment by turning the town’s old elementary school into a retreat and conference space for international artists – bringing fresh perspectives and talents into the region and spreading the word about Ajo globally.

And that’s not all.  They are now turning their attention to the town’s main plaza.  Along with the schools, the plaza forms the heart of the old town.  Once a bustling and elegant centrepiece to the town, the square is now all-but deserted.  Nick Francis, who is now managing the plaza project, gave me a walking tour of the dozen or so units on either side of the plaza, which include two sizeable abandoned venues – a cinema and recreation hall.  ISDA sees the plaza as a more commercial opportunity, and Nick proposes to turn some of the units into affordable office space, prime location apartments, and retail/catering outlets.  By doing this, he hopes to be able to afford to save one of the performance spaces, and to fund back into ISDA‘s community development work.

I have been saddened to see the number of communities in Arizona which have lost their downtown due to the establishment of out-of-town shopping malls.  In a few cases – as with Tucson – the depopulation of downtown has made rent in these areas affordable enough for artists to move in, bringing vibrancy back to the neighbourhoods.  In time, however, this vibrancy can then lead to the return of big business into downtown, pushing the prices back up and forcing artists out.

One artist explained this effect as follows: “They get pest control to chase the rats out of downtown to make it habitable for artists.  When the artists make the place vibrant, they get the developers to chase the artists out again.”

Nick suggests that the way to avoid this recurring pattern is to ensure that artists can take ownership of their premises – or, at least, that affordable rents are safeguarded over a sustained period.  This eems possible under the affordable housing tax credit system in the US.

Whilst their mines may have closed, their influence is still palpable in Ajo.  Old shift patterns worked at the mines still dictate the rhythm of the community.  Many miners would start early (5am), and shifts would end at 9pm.  To this day, if cultural events are programmed beyond 9pm, many audience members will walk out before the end.  Also, the mining company funded a lot of the entertainment in the town, and ISDA still find it hard to get audiences to part with money for events.

Recently, mining companies have started to reconsider the viability of the Ajo’s old mines.  However, a feasibility study that was planned this year has been shelved due to the global economic crisis.  It seems that Ajo cannot count on their old industry coming back to save the town.  Perhaps it will be the arts that play that important role.

Ajo is a a defining moment in its history.  Will decline continue, or will the efforts that are being made by the dynamic team at ISDA and others turn things around?  Having met the team here, I feel very optimistic and excited about the town’s future.

Again, I have been welcomed so generously in this community – last night, I was invited to dinner to meet the staff of ISDA.  Tomorrow I’ll be leading a marketing workshop for the artists of the Curley school, so I hope I can give something back.

In the meantime, this evening I took a drive up into Organ Pipe Cactus National Park to watch the sun set along a 20 mile loop road through the hills and canyons.  Glorious.

Mariachi statues in Tubac AZ

I moved on from my retreat at Diamond Mountain in the middle of the week – brain and body sore from a strict regime of aikido, debate class and sleeping outdoors.

Traveling south from the cooler air of the high desert towards the Mexican border, I’ve noticed the air getting warmer, a growing number of Mexican voices on the radio, and an overwhelming presence of border patrol vehicles.  On some of the minor desert roads in the far south, border patrol cars actually outnumber other travel, such is the challenge of illegal immigration here.

I’ve been driving through Arizona’s wine country.  It is much hotter here, but the land is more fertile, and this area is renowned for its vineyards and wineries, as much as for its ranching history.  I visited the communities of Sonoita and Patagonia – both pretty villages with a number of craft shops and community arts organisations – before reaching the less pretty town of Nogales, which straddles the Mexican border.

However, my destination down here is the town of Tubac – “where art and history meet”, according to the sign.  I’m staying in the Tubac Country Inn, the most luxurious accommodation of my trip so far – which is just as well as this is the first bed I’ve slept in for days.

Tubac was founded in 1752 as the first Spanish colonial garrison in what is now Arizona, although things started way before that (it’s believed that the Tubac area has been inhabited over 11,000 years). However, Tubac didn’t really come into its own until the twentieth century, when artists started to flock to the town from across the US, inspired by the incredible light that falls on the landscape of southern Arizona. 

In 1948, noted painter Dale Nichols moved to the town from Nebraska and set up an arts school in five adobe buildings.  Whilst the school closed within a year (apparently the local ranchers and folks from Tucson hadn’t been so serious about pursuing an education in the arts after all), by the end of the 1940s a small artists’ colony had been established.

The town now has a population of around 1,000, and its commercial centre consists of around 90 outlets of which 80 are galleries, craft shops and artists’ studios.  I’ve never seen such a concentration of arts facilities in one place.  It’s as if Maslow’s hierarchy of needs had been turned upside down.  Everywhere you look there’s another small but perfectly formed creative hub – Galleria Tubac, Clay Hands Studios, Creative Coyote, Sunrise Jewellers, Designs in Copper, Tubac Art Exchange, Karin Newby Sculpture Gardens, to name but a few.

Many of the outlets have yards brimming with pottery and metalwork – much of which is left out at night when the shop is closed.  Some shops even have notices directing out-of-hours customers to post payment through the letterbox and help themselves.  It’s just that sort of community, I guess!

Right at the heart of all this is the Tubac Center of the Arts, a combined visual and performing arts venue and the only not-for-profit organisation in town.  I met with their busy, small team yesterday.  Like many non-profit cultural organisations in the US, they received less than 10% of their income from public subsidy, and rely heavily on donations and earned income to programme their gallery and performing arts series.

Last night, I attended one of their events, entitled “Tubac Swings” (before you ask, it was an evening of jazz music of the Benny Goodman and Count Basie school – our esteemed Arts Journal Editor would approve!).  The band leader was Frank Guldseth – his biog notes that he is recently retired from the CIA and, sure enough, he led the 16-piece band with a precision and attention to detail you’d expect from a former Central Intelligence Agency man.

Today, I have spent an enjoyable day pottering around the galleries in town, chatting with gallery owners and artists.  There are interesting parallels between the landscapes of Arizona and the Highlands and Islands – the mountain formations of the two regions can be strikingly similar… just substitute the desert between for lochs.  Indeed, the best of the contemporary landscape artists’ work here has a resonance with the the work of Scottish artists such as James Hawkins or Wendy Sutherland.  It would be fascinating the organise an exchange of work, but it is difficult to find agencies here that would facilitate such a thing.  I’m increasingly struck by how lucky we are in Scotland to have a funding infrastructure that supports the export of work and talent.

During my wanderings, I had a particularly interesting conversation with Gerald Dawavendewa, owner of Tohono Village Enterprise – a gallery and gift shop dedicated to the promotion of work by the local native Tohono O’odham community.  The quality of craftmanship of their work is astounding.

However, Gerald pointed out that, until very recently, the Native Americans had only created work as part of their religion or as “decoration”.  It is only the last couple of generations that have created “art” as a means of self-expression, rather than to reinforce the identity of the group – and this has proved controversial within some Native Americans, where the communities have not taken kindly to their traditional crafts being corrupted or being expressed in a more contemporary way.

Gerald, himself a descendent of the Hopi tribes, explained that according to his lineage weaving is traditionally a man’s craft.  Such taboos are still in the process of being challenged.

So, another fascinating few days in Arizona.  I’m spending the evening relaxing at the local Tubac Inn, where a local covers band, Chuck Wagon and the Old Wheels, is playing the sort of crowd-pleasers you might expect in a former ranching town – Rawhide, American Pie and Honky Tonk Woman (twice). ]]> http://northings.com/2008/11/15/the-mexican-connection/feed/ 0 http://northings.com/2008/11/06/tucson-arizona/ http://northings.com/2008/11/06/tucson-arizona/#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:22:23 +0000 http://marcusjwilson.northings.com/?p=32

'Saguaro' by Maynard Dixon

Yesterday I picked up a surprisingly large hire car and moved on to the second stop on my trip, Tucson.

So far I’ve had to run the gauntlet of conversations with the taxi drivers of Sunrise Cab Co, which has been an experience ranging from fascinating to unnerving – especially in the case of one driver who was trying to convince me that the original Celts were twelve foot tall and had ties to Planet ‘X’.  So it was a liberating experience to hit the open desert road in my shiny red Chevrolet Aveo – KYOT Smooth Jazz FM my station of choice on the radio.

I’m staying here in Tucson at a place called La Siesta which is referred to as a ‘Heritage Motel’ (is that an oxymoron, like ‘jumbo shrimp’ or ‘military intelligence’?).  In fact, it’s a very friendly place, with small red brick apartments set in a horseshoe shape around a expansive porch.  It’s on what used to be the main drag through Tucson, now a mile or so from downtown, and consequently it has some older, more characterful buildings.

Unlike Phoenix, which has seen a rapid growth that has turned much of its sprawling suburbs into a concrete jungle and swallowed up neighbouring communities, Tucson feels well planned, laid back and proud of its collective heritage.  That heritage is very evident through the architecture, and the colourful painted neighbourhoods.

The downtown area teems with galleries, craft shops, delightful public artworks, and a diverse variety of small and mid-scale venues.  The noticeable presence of students from University of Arizona and Pima Community College add a grungey and vibrant feel.  Tucson is a very ‘walkable’ city, and I wore out a pair of shoes pacing the streets.

I find that walking is the best way to get to know a city, but when I tell the people here that I’m on foot they often look at me as if I’m totally mad, and potentially dangerous.  Everyone drives here.

This morning, I visited the Tucson Museum of the Arts, which featured a very fine exhibition of work by Maynard Dixon, an artist who drew inspiration from Arizona and made his home here in the early 1900s.  Dixon’s work, whether oils, pastels or watercolours, shimmers with thousands of colours, evoking the vibrancy of the desert – rather than the barren landscape that one often imagines.

The museum also run tours of ‘old Tucson’, and I was shown the remnants of the first adobe settlements of the first Europeans to reach the West, and some of their later architecture.  Apparently the doorways on some of these residences were designed to be large enough to allow a horse to be ridden through the house’s main hallway.  So much for leaving one’s shoes at the front door.

Behind much of this rich arts development work in Tucson and rural Pima county is the Tucson Pima Arts Council, which is possibly the organisation with most similarities to HI-Arts.  I met with Director Roberto Bedoya (what is it with Roberts and arts development?), and his colleagues David Hoyt Johnson and Leia Maahs.

The Tucson Pima Arts Council was one of many regional councils across the US to be set up with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts in the early 1980s, inspired by the model offered by UK Arts Councils.  The bulk of their work involves the grant support of other non-profit arts agencies and creative individuals, but they also have a strong programme of projects linking the arts with communities and the social issues in this rural county on the Mexican border.  Their strategic planning is highly impressive, and centres around the shared experience and values of their diverse community – which includes a number of Indian reservations.  Being an arts administrator here requires huge sensitivity towards social and cultural issues.

Walking back from downtown, I dropped in at one of the exhibitions curated by the Tucson Pima Arts Council – a showcase of the work of rurally-based artists at the city’s impressive modern library space.  Tonight I have an invitation to their public reception to herald the start of the Open Studio Weekend in Tucson and Pima county, which features some 155 artists’ studios.  All of this is achieved by a team of just seven staff… it’s all very impressive.

Obama's Phoenix Headquarters

It has been a long and historic day.

It started at 9am with a meeting at the Arts and Business Council of Greater Phoenix – an agency charged with helping cultural organisations to forge mutually beneficial partnerships with the commercial sector, and an American cousin to Arts & Business Scotland.

Debbie Paine and her small team manage to run an impressive range of services, training business leaders to mentor and sit on the boards of cultural sector non-profit organisations.  They also play an extremely important role in a State where the arts are so reliant on support from the commercial sector.  The names of a number of businesses – such as American Express and Wells Fargo – seem to come up time and again as major supporters of the arts infrastructure here.

On my return to downtown Phoenix, I took some time between meetings to wander round Heritage Square – a striking remnant of Phoenix’s Victorian past.  The Rosson House is the cornerstone of a city block dating from the late 1800s.  Museums, shops and restaurants now inhabit the block, which encompasses the only remaining group of residential structures from the original town of Phoenix.

I took a leisurely look around the Arizona Science Center, and managed to catch a fantastic film at the IMAX cinema, Grand Canyon Adventure 3D – an artistically-realised documentary with an environmental message.

The use of new 3D technology was thrilling – one moment suspending the viewer over the Canyon itself, the next plunging into the white water rapids.  Add to this a shimmering and expansive score by the Dave Matthews Band, and voiceover by Robert Redford, this has to be one of my most magical cinema experiences.

In the afternoon, I met with Robert Booker and his colleagues at the Arizona Commission on the Arts.  Robert is a highly knowledgable and articulate arts professional, with distinguished goatee beard – not unlike another similarly-named executive director I know!

I have been extremely impressed by how all of the people I have met with to date have been so very gracious and generous with their time – and Robert and his team gave me some fascinating insights.

After the meeting, around 3pm, I wandered down to the Phoenix headquarters of the Barack Obama presidential campaign – essentially, an old house in the middle of the bohemian arts quarter of the city on East Roosevelt Street.  There was a general bustle and air of excitement, with campaign volunteers making final phone calls, well-wishers spilling out onto the streets, and stalls outside selling t-shirts with the slogan “END OF AN ERROR – 11.4.08″.  A great atmosphere, and I spent a pleasant hour speaking with folks there.

This evening, I had the immense privelege of being invited to the Scottsdale home of Matt Lehrman, Executive Director of Alliance for Audience, where his friends and neighbours had gathered to watch the drama of the election unfold on CNN.

The taxi journey to Scottsdale was slow – State Freeway 51 had been closed by police (apparently to allow Sarah Palin’s cavalcade to travel to a final rally with Senator McCain in Phoenix later in the evening).

Matt and his family were the perfect hosts – plying me with wonderful chili, a strange but enjoyable jello/rum concoction, and a chocolate cake with icing that proclaimed “Good Riddance to George”.  We played a game to see who could guess which candidate would capture each of the swing States.

But soon in the evening – sooner than I’d anticipated – the results were in.  I’m sure they will be celebrating late into the night at that old house on Roosevelt.  As for me, I’m still on British time.  It feels late, I have to move on to Tucson tomorrow – and it’s been a long and historic day.

Arizona State Fair 2008

I woke early at 6am – which isn’t so bad considering that is 1pm British time.  I think I may have beaten the jet lag by staying up late last night.

As a result, I left the motel by 8.30am and found the neighbouring barber show already open for business so I went to get a haircut.  Odd to see a barbers open so early – especially on a Sunday.  Phoenix doesn’t feel too much like a 24-hour city, but the hairdressers are obviously keen!  After clippers, scissors and cut-throat razor, the barber produced a bizarre electronic massage machine and worked on my shoulders and neck – a somewhat unnerving experience that send my entire vision wonky for a while.

Freshly coiffured, I started to make my way on foot to the north west of downtown to catch the last day of this year’s Arizona State Fair (think of the Royal Highland Show or Great Yorkshire Show – only much, much bigger).  At its heart, the annual fair has had agriculture at its core since its beginnings in 1884, but is now a sprawling mass of fairground rides, food and drink stalls,  petting zoos, crafts outlets, and stages featuring music and dance.  Apparently, the fair draws over a million visitors, and features famous acts like Meat Loaf and Sheryl Crow on its main stage.

The whole thing is a sensory assault of sounds, colours and – in particular – smells.  Every kind of meat seems to have been broiled, smoked and flame-grilled for the delictation of the crowds.

Rodeo at Arizona State Fair

Not having seen a rodeo before, I headed straight to the grandstand to watch cowboys cue up to get thrown from their bucking broncos and then half trampled, all to the sound of cheering crowds.  Nearby, another competition was being held for the cowgirls.  This seemed to involve the participant plus horse hurtling down a track towards a lone goat, then dismounting the still-moving horse, straddling the goat and binding its hooves with twine.  The same poor goat had its hooves bound and then untied about twenty times and looked seriously confused.

After spending a pleasant morning at the fair, including a hair-raising chairlift ride 30 metres off the ground, I walked the two miles back into downtown Phoenix.  Not that Phoenix really has a downtown as such.  In fact there’s no real discernable centre to be found, apart from some malls and Heritage Square (where I enjoyed a surprisingly good pint of Tetleys in a “British pub”, which boasted Andy Warhol-esque screen prints featuring the Queen and Benny Hill).

Nothing can prepare you for how few people actually take the choice to walk in the US.  In nearly an hour, I passed two – maybe three – fellow pedestrians.

Later in the day, a waiter asked me what I thought the biggest difference between the UK and US was, and I told him “everyone drives everywhere here”.  He agreed, saying that it was because everyone was in a hurry.  I’m not sure if that’s true – the desert heat puts pay to that.  However, because there’s so few people out walking, they tend to stand out as an oddity – and not to be trusted, perhaps.  Such a shame when so many beautiful houses along the wide highways and palm-lined boulevards that I passed are surrounded by ugly metal gates and fencing.  You can’t help thinking that people might not have to live under such tight security if only the sidewalks were full of more people walking from A to B.

I decided to spend the afternoon in a community that I could walk around in.  Tempe is the main College area to the east of central Phoenix – an attractive community with plenty of cafes, restaurants and great second hand books stalls.  I managed to find a beatiful old copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden – one of my favourite books.  Now, there’s an American intellectual who talked the talk and walked the walk.  Indeed, Thoreau wouldn’t be averse to pacing the sidewalks of modern America.

Anyway, it’s down to business tomorrow, with the first of many meetings with arts organisations here in the State capital.  The American election is also only a day away – and more on that tomorrow.