It's been an eventful year in the arts, one that finds some organizations at a plateau and some terrific projects at a precipice.

        I have a stocking full of holiday wishes for the folks who are trying so hard to make Greater Cincinnati an even better place to live.

        • For the Regional Cultural Alliance (RCA), I wish a great project to start right after the first of the year. They need to let the eight-county region know what an alliance could mean to all of us.

        Hamilton County's wished-for investment has left the table. Now is the time for the alliance to find an attention-grabbing project and some money to carry it out. Build that constituency.

        Here's my question to you. What do you want? What's the dream project that would bring you and your family to the arts?

        Should it be something that brings the outlying arts to a central location? Perhaps a cultural passport, something that allows culture vultures to explore, maybe a different neighborhood one Saturday every month?

        Call, write or e-mail your answers.

        • I wish arts supporters throughout the region, led by the RCA, Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts, veterans of City of Cincinnati's Arts Allocations committee, supporters of arts education efforts such as ArtLinks and Association for the Advancement of Arts Education and civic groups like the Women's City Club, Cincinnatus and Citizens for Civic Renewal would join together for some at-home arts advocacy.

        Every year the institute sends a bus to Columbus to spend a morning talking to state legislators, but advocacy has to start here.

        Ohio's Arts Advocacy Day is March 14. National Advocacy days are March 19-20. I wish Greater Cincinnati arts supporters could organize an Arts Advocacy Week from March 13-20. Visit local politicians in their offices. Bring along fistfuls of letters from school kids writing about what arts mean to them. Invite politicians to arts events.

        Come together in a show of the power of the arts.

        • For Cincinnati City Council member Phil Heimlich, I wish an open mind. On Dec. 12, Mr. Heimlich, whose term on council is running out, put forward a motion that “the city not provide funding for the Regional Cultural Alliance.”

        Because there isn't a funding request for the alliance in the city's budget, this looks like a pre-emptive strike. At this embryonic stage, it's impossible to know whether the alliance could be of significant value to the city in the future. Last week, council passed Mr. Heimlich's motion unanimously.

        Mr. Heimlich's longstanding efforts to protect current and future generations of citizens from the arts could have a positive result. I wish that this open hostility would galvanize arts supporters into demanding to know candidates' positions on the arts. I hope they'll ask Mr. Heimlich for some serious answers if he's put forward as a candidate for Hamilton County Commission in the next election.

        • Will the Olympics make it to Cincinnati in 2012? Whether they do or not, I wish the series of themed festivals (storytelling, Appalachian culture, Freedom) planned to lead up to an Olympiad could happen anyway. What a boost for the region, particularly if those festivals accessed hometowns and neighborhoods.

        How could they happen without an Olympics? That's part of what a Regional Cultural Alliance could do.

        • I wish a successful campaign for the 2000-2001 Fine Arts Fund. And I wish the fund would expand its concept of the annual Sampler Weekend (this year scheduled for Feb. 10-11.) Why not a Friday night sampler of events for grown-ups preceding the Saturday and Sunday family days for those of us who love the arts but don't have kids?

        One more fund-related wish: I wish companies, like Kroger, wouldn't use the Fine Arts Fund as a right of refusal for requests from mid-sized arts organizations.

        While the fund's parent Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts has created an “associate” category for a handful of smaller groups, their contribution is a pittance, as little as $40,000 for groups with a $750,000 budget. It's not the same as the hundreds of thousands and even millions that go to the Big Eight.

        • For Playhouse in the Park and Cincinnati Opera I wish the national recognition they deserve.

        • For the Contemporary Arts Center, I wish a smart art campaign that will start drawing new members now, years before the doors open to the Zaha Hadid building. No matter what a building looks like, it's what's inside that counts, including long-term supporters.

        Just across the street, the touring Broadway Series is an example of how curiosity enormously increased the size of the audience — briefly. The Broadway Series is a commercial enterprise. In the public-funded arena, there's always a large and reasonable question to be considered: What should the relationship be between public participation and public funding?

        • For the Underground Railroad Freedom Center, I wish a functioning small theater that could make the center an evening focal point of the Banks.

        The center's plans include a small auditorium with a basic platform stage, but its configuration will limit options to choirs and one-person shows.

        When staffers talk about use of the space, they mention gospel choirs and a one-woman show about Harriet Tubman.

        While Freedom Center planners acknowledge that their definition of diversity reaches beyond African-Americans to all populations who have freedom issues, clearly no thought has gone into how that could translate to performance.

        There's an opportunity to be seized as the only potentially multicultural entertainment venue on a popular, reinvigorated riverfront.

        I wish the Freedom Center would take advantage of a singular chance to be a national — as well as a regional — beacon with embracing programming that would bring audiences downtown at night.

        • I wish more acting interns from Playhouse and Ensemble, and more graduates from College-Conservatory of Music's drama program, would stay in town and help build our base of trained performers and expand the choices on our theatrical calendar.

        The local acting pool has grown considerably over the last few years. Like Chicago and New York, chances are if you're dining in a downtown restaurant, you're being waited on by an actor or actress augmenting their meager income. I wish you would tip them well.

        • I wish the Emery Center a slam-bang campaign chairperson who can get a $2.5 million public campaign rocketing toward success in early winter. Two years from now I wish we'll be looking at a rehabbed Over-the-Rhine theater, and instead of asking “why do we need it?” we'll all be marvelling, “whatever did we do without it?”

        • For The Carnegie I wish a rapid construction schedule and the kind of calendar of events for its re-opening that will make audiences head for Covington to rediscover it.

        • Parents, I wish you'll give your children the gift of live entertainment, and I wish you wouldn't just settle on the Broadway Series unless it's The Lion King. If it's The Lion King, don't bother to think twice.

        But if it's anything else, think about whether your child will be sitting up close where the performers come across as people. Think about whether the performers are professional. It does make a difference. Think about what a youngster raised on computers and video games will still find it magical.

        Chances are the show we loved when we were kids 25 years ago won't speak in the same way to a child brought up in a different world. Find a new show your whole family can discover together.

        • I wish a plot line for the next production by Saw Theatre, Cincinnati's visually astonishing, nationally acclaimed puppetry art company. The artistry is amazing, and to apply it to a classic — from the ancient Greeks to Shakespeare — might be a spellbinding experiment.

        • And with everything we do have, I continue to wish for what we don't have.

        Most cities (even smaller ones like Louisville and Columbus) have theater companies that specialize in women's work. I miss powerful minority theater. It would be great to have a real cabaret.

        I wish we could find ways to support our mid-sized arts companies, which now number in the dozens and somehow manage to do estimable work even as they struggle for survival. I wish we could help them grow.

        • Most of all I wish daily encouragement from all of us to all of them. Arts and artists make Cincinnati a better place to live.

        Jackie Demaline is the Enquirer's theater critic and roving arts reporter. Write her at Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati OH 45202; fax, 768-8330; e-mail, jdemaline@yahoo.com.

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