Sarah Lawson

You’ve probably never visited an art gallery or a classical music concert in Charlottesville, VA.

Though the area is known for its views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, historical landmarks, and local food culture, many people don’t consider it an arts destination. At Piedmont Council for the Arts (PCA), we see this every day.

Residents might know everything that’s happening in one area of arts interest, but nothing broader. Visitors tour Monticello or the University of Virginia, but rarely stay the extra day to explore our museums or see a play performed by one of our many community theater groups.

Very few people ever see the full breadth of the Charlottesville area arts community.

However, data from Americans for the Arts’ Arts & Economic Prosperity IV study in the Greater Charlottesville area showed that our arts and culture industry generates $114.4 million in annual economic activity, supporting 1,921 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $9.2 million in government revenue.

As the Charlottesville community continues to grow this arts and culture sector, we see a greater need to address this issue of coordinated cultural tourism. 

Kate Preston Keeney

Like many of my high school classmates, I never had plans to stay in my hometown of Roanoke, located in southwestern Virginia.

Among other reasons, it seemed to lack that something special in terms of arts and culture. The local theater had reduced its performance season; a much-anticipated visual art museum was struggling to stay open; and the independent bookstore closed to become just another bar.

And so, as is common, I left my hometown in pursuit of graduate school and a job in a metropolitan area. I was perfectly situated within walking distance to public transit, yoga studios, cafes, and world-class performance centers.

But now, I’m starting to look back.

Roanoke and its surrounding areas have begun to capitalize on its rich cultural history. Let me be specific, this culture is not new, yet it has just been unearthed with contemporary knowledge of cultural vitality, opportunities for partnerships and economic development, and community leadership and buy-in.

Roanoke has taken steps to put itself on the list of desirable places to live and has done so by elevating its distinct heritage. 

Emily Peck

Last week, I left snowy New York City to spend some time in sunny Ft. Lauderdale at the invitation of the Broward Cultural Division to talk with arts organizations about the many ways they can partner with local businesses.

We discussed how to build a successful and meaningful partnership by thinking of the needs of business first, and how to look beyond the usual suspects when thinking about potential business partners.

We were joined by local business leaders from Florida Power and Light and Merrimac Ventures who spoke about how partnering with the arts helped their business engage new customers, reach new audiences, and enhance the quality of life for their communities. For more tips on creating partnerships check out our Building pARTnerships on Your Own toolkit.

This type of training session is just one way you can use the resources of The pARTnership Movement in your community. Here are some other ideas:

• Tell your story: Promote great arts and business partnerships on twitter (#artsandbiz), Facebook, and YouTube. Don't forget to let us know, too!

• Give a presentation at your local chamber of commerce about how the arts can help local businesses. See how it worked in Montgomery County, MD! 
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Aliza Schiff

Every two years Arlington Public Art contracts a conservator to review our collection of more than 60 permanent artworks and for the first time this year our portable works—60 framed artworks hung in county buildings. This year’s review was recently completed and I am now reviewing the condition reports and making decisions with the rest of the Public Art staff on specific conservation and maintenance actions to take.

Some of the findings in the reports are straightforward and the recommendations are simple to implement. For example, mend the fence around a play sculpture in a park; or clean the dust and dead bugs out of a stained glass skylight at a community center. We have good relationships with other county departments especially Parks & Recreation and our Public Art Master Plan (see page 82) makes clear that sponsoring county departments are responsible for maintaining artworks in their facilities or sites.

Artworks that were commissioned by private property owners as a community benefit through the county’s site plan process are also reviewed by our contract conservator. Our Public Art Master Plan states that the site owner is responsible for maintaining the work of art as a community benefit in perpetuity. When these artworks need attention, I contact the property owners to have the work done. This often includes recommending products or specialists and I consult with the artist, if possible, and the maintenance plan submitted at the project’s completion. 

Selling our wares at the 2011 National Arts Marketing Project Conference.

Last week we launched a new regular series on ARTSblog that spotlights the staff here at Americans for the Arts. While Kristen Engebretsen happened to give an excellent podcast interview, not everyone has those opportunities; but, it got me thinking about coming up with a fun/interesting way for you to learn about the people behind the organization.

And that brainstorming led me to "Ten Questions with..." in which I will ask everyone the same questions and see where it takes us.

Of course, I then realized I have to start with me since it will encourage the rest of the staff to share. With all that in mind, here is the debut of "Ten Questions with..." as I have interviewed myself:

1. Describe your role at Americans for the Arts in 10 words or less.

ARTSblog editor; writer; part communications/part web team member; internal reporter.

2. What do the arts mean to you?

As I often say, I used to have musical talent—until my voice changed. I also acted a bit in middle school, high school, and one brief appearance in college. But, I have to admit that in addition to being something I enjoy attending or wish I had more talent or courage enough to try, the arts were a refuge for me as a kid. While struggling with your identity during that critical time period everyone reacts differently. For me, I had the whole The Tears of a Clown thing going on—I seemed happy on the surface, but felt very isolated on the inside. The arts, in this case mostly music and television, made me feel less alone. That's one of the big reasons why I feel passionate about the arts and arts education. 

Susan Soroko

Probably the best part of producing BizSmART for Arlington (Virginia)'s supported arts organizations was the pleasant surprise of unintended outcomes. Nothing salacious (sorry!), no misbehaving, but something that was an indirect benefit of having thought provoking speakers, interactive sessions, and opportunities to step outside daily challenges all in the same space at the same time.

As simple as it sounds, there was little way to plan, direct, or script a day that helped build our arts community.

On November 13, 2012, Arlington’s first BizSmART conference at Artisphere surpassed ‘symposium’ in both content and connectivity and drew on smart growth strategies for the arts. With the Arlington Commission for the Arts sponsorship of BizSmART, which began as a suggestion to create a symposium for arts organizations and Arlington Cultural Affairs' recent move to Arlington Economic Development, a new direction in meeting the challenges facing arts organizations took root. The arts in our area may be extensive, but as public and private funding dwindle, organizations still struggle.

Arlington is no stranger to breaking new ground on many fronts and the arts are no exception. In 1996, Arlington Cultural Affairs was the winner of the Ford Foundation and Harvard University’s Innovations In American Government Award, the first time the award was given to an arts program in a local government. Leveraging resources, materials and facilities of the county government and applying them to the arts made way for an incubator program that was soon to be replicated throughout the country.

"Wave Arbor" by Doug Hollis at Long Bridge Park in Arlington, VA.

(Author's Note: This post builds upon prior pieces by Dr. Elizabeth Morton and Angela Adams.)

I enrolled in Dr. Morton’s Exploring Evaluation for Public Art studio as a way to complement my experience as a working artist-art educator with a limited sense of the planning and evaluation process for public art. Over the course of the studio I came to see evaluation not as a zero sum game meant to occur after installation, but rather as an ongoing series of assessments conducted by and for major stakeholders, including, but not limited to, the intended audience.

While public art evaluation clearly includes examining the perceptions of the general public, it must also examine the processes and decisions that influence, direct, and ultimately, commission, new works.

One of the most rewarding aspects of this studio was the opportunity for cross-disciplinary dialogue created by the intentional interface of urban planners, designers (in this case, architecture & landscape architecture students), artists, and arts administrators.

Each of these roles fulfills an important and different function in the life cycle of the public art project; yet all too often we work in isolation from one another and/or use language that is particular to one discipline and foreign to another. The studio proved to me that we have a great deal to learn from one another and that increased cross-disciplinary collaboration will continue to yield exciting new contributions to the field of public art evaluation.

For example, as a predominantly 2D artist moving into the more design-based role of the landscape architect, the concept of site analysis took on an expanded meaning. From a conventional fine arts perspective, a site is a location where an artwork is placed, not necessarily a place that an artwork might inhabit over time. Artists would clearly benefit from the designer’s perspective of understanding site as an ongoing process, with multiple actors; yet this is a concept that is rarely discussed in undergraduate or graduate level art programs.

Angela Adams

Arlington County's public art program benefited greatly from our collaborative effort with Virginia Tech and Americans for the Arts mentioned in Dr. Elizabeth Morton's post from earlier this week.

Like many programs across the country, we are adjusting to the new normal of increased scrutiny of public spending as it relates to the arts. We are also adjusting to our recent relocation from the Department of Parks and Recreation to that of Arlington Economic Development and are just beginning to understand the difference in priorities between the two agencies and how these will impact our future work.

We are currently working on developing a white paper on the value of public art to Arlington through four lenses: community and social benefits; civic design and placemaking; economic; and aesthetic/experiential.

It is helpful that the field of economics has begun to look seriously at developing measurement tools for such intangible phenomena as human happiness or fulfillment as well as the intrinsic value of the arts, so there is an increasing body of literature to draw from here. The findings of the Virginia Tech students will similarly help us in making the case for how and why public art adds value to our community.

To summarize some of the more interesting (even surprising) findings of the four teams discussed in the previous post and their value to Arlington's public art program:

Dr. Elizabeth Morton

This course had its origins in a graduate assignment I had back in the early 1990s. My intimidating professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design provided only two requirements for our final paper: 1) that it be “interesting to him” and 2) that it be no longer than three pages.

I was relieved that he approved my topic of “how do local public art agencies evaluate their projects,” but was concerned about the page limitations. I needn’t have worried, since after reviewing as many of the agencies as I could in the pre-internet era, I did not find much.

At a presentation on public art in Arlington, VA, nearly 20 years later, a question from the audience made me think about my project again. I imagined that as the public art field had matured, surely there had been efforts to institutionalize some evaluative practices, but when I started making inquiries I realized that this was still a relatively unexplored topic.

Since Angela Adams and Liesel Fenner had both been kind enough to speak in my urban design policy class over the years, I approached them with the idea of conducting a graduate studio that would try to take on this topic. It’s a great testament to their openness to inquiry and commitment to the field that they very actively participated in the studio and contributed many hours and many insights.

Recognizing the complexity of the topic and the limitations of the three-month semester, and not having any idea about what we would find, we titled the course, “Exploring Evaluation for Public Art: Arlington County as Laboratory.”

Our 12 students hailed from five different countries and from three different programs (planning, architecture, and landscape architecture). To my delight, two of them were practicing public artists!

John Bryan

#1 Richmond has an enviable business community as evidenced by its being one of only 11 cities to be headquarters to more than five Fortune 500 companies and one of only 12 cities to have a Federal Reserve Bank.

#2 Richmond’s arts/culture community is likewise enviable as evidenced by its emergence from the recession with all of its major arts and culture organizations thriving: symphony, opera, ballet, theatre, art museum, science museum, history museum, children’s museum, botanical garden, and many dozens more.

#3 Richmond has a slew of enviable national creative superlatives such as being home to the #1 marketing company (Martin Agency – think Geico gekko), #1 public art university (VCU), #1 university advertising program (VCU Adcenter), and forthcoming building designed by the #1 architect (Steven Holl).

Those three sentences have resulted in a three-year Greater Richmond Chamber-led initiative entitled i.e.* - a grand partnership that spotlights and energizes creativity and innovation for three purposes: enable the business community to leverage the creative community in accomplishing real business objectives; provide expanded audiences for the creative community; and foster new relationships and partnerships.

Richmond’s local arts agency---CultureWorks---is one of the active partners with the Chamber’s i.e.* initiative and three current projects demonstrate the partnership’s value.

As National Arts and Humanities Month continues, amazing people around the country are hosting Creative Conversations!

This Americans for the Arts program, started in 2004, helps to unify groups of people engaged in arts and culture by sparking dialogue, spurring advocacy efforts, and creating networking opportunities.

So far this month, we have already had five great events in places as diverse as Nashville, Virginia Beach, Chicago, and Buffalo.

If you missed out on these events, never fear! October still holds over 30 more events – with more being added every day.

This week’s upcoming events include:

•    Artist Conversation with Don Seiden, artist and Jane Stevens, curator - Today, Oct 13! (Chicago, IL)
•    Champaign County ARSCONNECT: pARTner up! - Today, Oct 13! (Urbana, IL)

According to a December 2018 report from the World Economic Forum, by 2020—next year!—half of the global workforce will be made up of millennials. Despite the growing number of upwardly mobile millennials, young people are often overlooked as candidates for board seats in arts (and other) organizations. Most organizations are hyper aware of creating a well-balanced board, representing increasingly diverse communities. While we continue to actively address (and we must) race and gender diversity, age diversity is rarely considered. Leaving potential young board members out can be detrimental to an arts organization. A young board member brings energy, creativity and a fresh perspective. They often have a greater sense of inclusion. They can act as a peer to a young staff or to young visitors and attendees. Young board members also have a very deep social influence and can use it to promote programming, ideas, and giving. In a small community, like Lynchburg, social chatter can quickly increase attendance and helps to keep our organization top of mind.