The opportunity in Houston to discover and learn about diverse cultures, and for people to participate in traditional activities that they most identify with, is pretty good, but the potential is great and Houston is nowhere near living up to its potential as a thriving cultural center.

Houston has enjoyed its status as a modern city with a fairly stable economy and vast business opportunity. Its image somewhat predates its reality. Rapid growth has included great diversification of the population and extensive immigration. One in six, more than 16% of Houston's population, was born in a foreign country. When combined with those with foreign-born parents and grandparents, the modern predominant population of Houston becomes clear; Houston is international. In post-settlement and post-emancipation times, Houston has rounded its census numbers with historic and recent Latin American immigration and, since the 1970s, large gains in Asian, Middle Eastern and African immigration.

The steady increase in diverse international populations has brought different and more widely varied interests and practices to Houston than the Nineteenth Century immigrants that shaped Houston well into the 1950s.

While Houston could be described as a tall glass city with modern climate-controlled facilities, abundant energy resources and high energy consumption, as well as a future in space development, it would scarcely characterize Houston's diverse population. A great many Houstonians thrive on traditional service-driven markets, which are required to sustain a large population. Their quality of life depends on cultural identity, family activities and social opportunities and is not often rewarded by Houston's corporate associations, which thrive on patents, discovery of oil and new frontiers in space and medicine.

Visitors come to Houston for shopping malls, night clubs and modern industrial mystique. Houston's reputation for good restaurants, even as a basic cultural necessity, attracts tourists. Houston enjoys substantial prominence for Western high arts, but fails to promote its exotic and independent arts. Though Houston is prone to lead the way in homogeneous entertainment and corporatized development, and possibly because of this, many unique and eclectic activities continue to grow in popularity. Houston is known as a place that readily welcomes foreign visitors. It has little visible history, tradition or nostalgia to offer, but because of its changing identity, Houston has the greatest potential to greatly increase its tourism based on its status as a multicultural city with broad activities originating in many countries.

Cultural organizers and their associations, educational institutions, civic government, artists and musicians, Houston citizens and the media are all responsible in one way or another for developing and cultivating a better quality of life through improved activities and cultural literacy. The issue is clear: Will Houston community planners improve opportunities for education and cross-cultural participation to suit the new population, or continue to expect the ready assimilation of diverse groups into a narrow set of interests and activities which developed under different conditions more than a century ago?

A report from preliminary discussions with community artists and organizers will soon follow.

Organizers/Promoters
Organizations

Artists

Educators

Universities

Museums

Religious Centers

Government

Media

Requirements
Facilities

Funding

Networking

Promotion

The Internet

Results
Participation

Education

Talent

Community

Events

Live Music