The Local Arts Index website was officially launched by Americans for the Arts on Tuesday April 10 and features Jackson County, Missouri on their home page!
Visit, http://www.artsindexusa.org/ to see how the Kansas City region stacks up.
In April 2012, the city of Kansas City, Missouri approved 75K for the ArtsKC Fund – Kansas City’s regional united arts fund.
The purpose of the ArtsKC Fund is to help make Kansas City a more vibrant community by providing stable sources of new financial support for the arts, broadening access to high-quality arts experiences and promoting excellence in the arts and arts administration throughout the metropolitan area.
This is truly an investment in the city! With this support, the excellent quality and variety of arts choices that Kansas City has will continue to create a unique identity and attract a higher level of attention to the city as a cultural destination. In the Kansas City region, tourism alone generated $641 million tax revenue in 2010; $135 million in state taxes, $179 million in local taxes, and $329 million in federal taxes. Visitors to the Kansas City region last year sustained nearly 43,500 jobs and are associated with an income of $1.4 billion. But here is a really remarkable fact; among the 10.4 million overnight guests that came to the region last year, 83% came for leisure and spent $2.6 billion in 2010.
We congratulate the city of Kansas City, Missouri for leading the way in supporting the local arts community. To send a thank you to the City Councilmembers who supported this investment click here.
For more information about the ArtsKC Fund and grant programs click here.
Great article this week in KCMETROPOLIS.org - Kansas City’s Online Journal of the Performing Arts.
Harlan Brownlee, President & CEO for the Arts Council spoke with Karen Hauge about the wide impact of the Arts Council, the necessity of art in our community and education, and how the vibrant artistic life of Kansas City is continuing to flourish and attract attention nationally. Click on the link below to read the full article.
http://kcmetropolis.org/issue/march-28-2012/article/movers-shakers-and-stalwarts-harlan-brownlee
Chicago announced last Wednesday that out-of-town consultants, Lord Cultural Resources, would be leading the 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan Initiative.
Check out the article and view the blog here.
Cities all across the globe are seeing the benefits of what a cultural plan could to do for their city. Most recently added to the list is the City of Chicago who recently announced their launch of a new initiative to develop a 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan. The Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emauel directed the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to revisit the Chicago Cultural Plan which was first developed back in 1986. The plan will create an outline for Chicago’s future cultural and economic growth as the centerpiece for the City’s goal to become a global destination for creativity, innovation, and excellence in the arts.
Click on the link below to learn more.
On Friday August 26, 2011 the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City hosted an Arts Summit. Over 115 people across the Kansas City region participated. The goal of the meeting was to evaluate the readiness of the region for cultural planning by bringing together the arts community with business, government, education and civic leaders. At the end of the meeting participants were asked to fill out a 2-page survey. Below are the results. Arts Summit Survey Results
The support of elected officials and planning administrators is vital to the success of a Kansas City Regional Cultural Plan. The Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, in partnership with Missouri Citizens for the Arts, the Missouri Alliance of Arts Educators and the Missouri Association of Community Arts Agencies, recently invested in Capwiz; An online grassroots advocacy tool that allows for users to have an active and timely role in the Missouri political process through a variety of ways.
Capwiz enables us to deliver critical messages to lawmakers and ensures that our legislative agenda is received and heard at the Capitol.
Take action today! Please visit: www.capwiz.com/artskc
In the fall of 2010, Kansas City was selected to be one of 100 communities asked to participate in the first-ever research study directed by the Americans for the Arts called the Local Arts Index, an 18-month research initiative that serves as a complement to the National Arts Index. This study is meant to measure the character, vitality and performance of the arts in our community in a way that has never been done before.
The Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, over a five month period, collected data from the five-county, bi-state (Jackson, Johnson, Platte, Clay & Wyandotte) metropolitan area. On May 24, 2011 the last of our research was collected and turned over to the Americans for the Arts for final review. The information gathered was divided up by county and included research from 14 different indicators: Performing art venues, local ownership of local cultural resources, the local literary scene, arts festivals, provision of arts education K-12, performance and presentation opportunities for K-12, the coverage of local arts and culture in print media, reputation and artistic reach, tourism draw of local arts and culture, nightlife and the arts, tourism marketing of the arts, ethnic groups in the cultural life of the community, exhibition spaces and public art.
The final reports of these findings will place our community in a national context and are expected to be made available in the winter of 2012. However, the raw data alone has already proven to be extremely useful. It has helped us in building a strong advocacy message for the importance and value of the arts in our community, it has helped us to see what our strengths are, where we have opportunity for growth and has been a key component in beginning The Kansas City Regional Cultural Planning InitiativeLocal Arts Index Presentation – June 2011
On August 26, 2011 the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City convened over 115 individuals from the across the Kansas City metropolitan region. The goal of this meeting was to evaluate the readiness of the community for a regional cultural plan by bring together the arts community with business, government, education, and civic leaders.
President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Michael Kaiser, presented, followed by a town hall meeting facilitated by BNIM’s Director of Planning, Stephen Hardy. The discussion focused on two main questions: What do we want a cultural plan to accomplish and what would that process look like?