Small Town Big Arts

Sometimes the catalyst for artistic output isn’t an artist or an arts organization but an economic development office or a community development corporation. I call this "The Cultivator."I had the good fortune the last couple of months to colaborate with SMU DataArts as they released their Top 30 Most Arts-Vibrant Rural Counties study. This collaboration involved taking a deeper look at these fantastic communities and put me touch with Kay Decker with the Freedom West CDC in Woods County, Oklahoma, one of the top 30 most arts-vibrant counties identified in the study. Kay opened my eyes to another category of organization that can thrive in a small community. In this month's podcast, we talk about how a non-arts focused organization can be the catalyst to arts vibrancy in a community.

As we move through the summer and many look to the 2024/25 academic year, Small Town Big Arts wants to put a new textbook on your radar. The book, Rural Arts Management, written by Elise Lael Kieffer and Jerome Socolof, provides a valuable resource for scholars, advanced students and reflective practitioners at the intersection of the arts and rural studies. From the book's description: "The arts and arts management exist in every corner of the world, from the largest city to the smallest town. However, just as a metropolis and a hamlet bear little resemblance to each other despite similar basic needs, arts organizations in the former frequently bear little resemblance to those in the latter, and many foundational arts management texts give little attention to rural settings. This book combines insights from research and practice to fill that knowledge gap and help readers understand arts administration in rural communities."Geoff sits down with Elise and Jerome to discuss the goals of the book, their findings, and the importance of rural arts. To order the book (starting June 19th) follow the link below: Rural Arts Management: Routledge and CRC Press

This month, we are sharing another and fantastic podcast about small town life.Small Town Secret Sauce is a show all about empowering you to create the life you want in a small town. Join Barton Quigley as he explores the joys of living a simpler life while succeeding in your business or community organization and overcoming the unique challenges of a smaller population. With inspiring interviews and stories of entrepreneurial success, you will be motivated to take charge and thrive in your small town community.In Episode #16, Barton inteviews Small Town Big Arts host Geoffrey Kershner. Make sure to subscribe to Small Town Secret Sauce on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and share!

Strategic planning is not merely a bureaucratic exercise—it's a vital tool that small town arts organizations can use to define their future and ensure their relevance and resilience in their community. With all this said, strategic planning can be extremely difficult for small organizations in small communities. Bandwidth is at a premium and this includes bandwidth of time, finances and people. Strategic planning facilitation can be expensive and time consuming. This month we welcome back Virginia Commission for the Arts Executive Director Margaret Hancock. The Virginia Commission for the Arts worked with the consulting firm Spark Mill to create an open source and FREE strategic planning workbook. As a grant giving agency, she speaks to the importance of a strong strategic plan and a pathway to execute a plan with limited and stretched resources.

In January's podcast, Geoff shared five successful organizational models he has seen emerge repeatedly in multiple communities. The Collaborator, The Center, The Facilitator, The Enclave and The Developer. To learn more read: Successful Business Models for Small Sown Arts DeliverySmall Town Big Arts would now like to add a sixth organizational model, "The Torchbearer." Listen to find out more.

Small Town Big Arts has identified that one of the key qualities that leads to small community organizational longevity is that the art work produced reflects with specificity the community the organization serves. The identity of the organization is tightly entwined with the community itself (history, culture, landscape, and/or geographical). This month's episode shows you a path to this type of work, what it can look like, and the impact it can have in your community. We speak with playwright James McManus who specializes in developing community based "docudrama." We talk about his approach, his experiences, and how this type of work can tear down barriers, build bridges and enrich your small town.Learn more about Jim and his work here: https://newplayexchange.org/users/11130/james-mcmanus

Over the last year and a half of research in the field, Geoff has noticed that success in small community arts delivery often occurrs in organizations that have similar operating approaches. For this month'ss podcast, Geoff shares five successful organizational models he has seen emerge repeatedly in multiple communities. The are... The CollaboratorThe CenterThe Facilitator The Enclave The Developer To learn more, read: Successful Business Models for Small Sown Arts Delivery

Since 2015, SMU DataArts has taken a look at the arts vibrancy of every community in the United States. This study, through 13 variables, itendifies the top 40 most vibrant arts communities each year. https://culturaldata.org/arts-vibrancy-2023/executive-summary/Geoff has the honor of speaking with SMU DataArts' Research Director Jen Benoit-Bryant about the study, its variable, and what makes their top 10 small communties "arts vibrant."Also, you can watch a recent SMU DataArts webinar about the study and hear from some of the top arts-vibrant communties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAKXIsj2f08

Geoff engages in a thoughtful conversation with Margaret Hancock, the Executive Director of the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Committed to upholding the Commission's mission, Margaret is actively advocating for the equitable distribution of state funds to reach every municipality in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Notably, the current disparity in funding primarily affects smaller rural communities scattered throughout the state.It is crucial that public funding for the arts extends beyond densely populated cities in Virginia and also reaches rural towns and less populated counties. The reasons for this imperative are manifold. Firstly, there is the evident issue of equitable distribution of tax dollars, impacting the entire citizenry. Additionally, there is a significant cultural impact that these funds can bring about. The arts serve as economic drivers, enhancing the quality of life in any locale. Finally, when these funds reach every corner of the state, the politics of advocacy for the arts become less contentious and are not a wedge issue. The arts should be perceived not as exclusive but as something for everyone, everywhere.

Keene, NH has about 23,000 residents and is the home of Keene State College. It is two hours from Boston and about three hours from Burlington. There is no major interstate and the last leg of the drive from Logan International Airport weaves down two lane roads. Nestled in Downtown Keene is an old brick warehouse. It is home to a fantastic partnership between multiple businesses and organizations. During the day, it is home to Brewbaker’s Cafe. At night, the space turns into a music venue with multiple concerts produced each week by Nova Arts.This collaboration, also supported by Arts Alive!, is building a culture where the people of Keene can discover new music, create and perform music of their own, and have what so few small towns have; an authentic music scene.

This is the first of two episodes this month. The first focuses on a fantastic organization right in my own backyard; Wolfbane Productions. Wolfbane is in Appomattox, Virginia. The county of Appomattox has a population of 16,353 and is home to the historic site where General Lee surrendered to General Grant, ending the Civil War. The community, about 18 miles from Lynchburg, VA, is an agricultural community filled with farmland and rolling hills.For 16 years, Wolfbane's Artistic Director, Dustin Williams ("Gene's Boy" as we will discuss), has built a resilient, inventive, and joyful community of artists. These artists are comprised of local actors but also a large cohort of performers from larger metropolitan areas. We discuss how Dustin has created an artistic home for so many and how what may seem a contradiction in these divisive political times when rural communities are pitted against urban communities through political movements and media narratives. We learn how at a Wolfbane Production, people discover they have much more that binds them than tears them apart.

This month I have a brief episode I recorded at the Radically Rural conference in Keene, NH. I plan to do two episodes in October and I have some fantastic stories to share from my time in New England. For more information on the Radically Rural conference, please visit: https://www.radicallyrural.org/

As we enter Season 2, we look at two different models of patron and donor engagement for small community arts organizations: the subscription and the membership. The decline of subscriptions over the decades is not new news to those in the arts administration field, but this old model of ticket engagement isn't without its modern-day merits. Memberships have their patron engagement benefits and are more flexible than subscriptions, but they also push organizations into a more transactional relationship with their patrons.We welcome back Cyrus Pace from The Jefferson Center in Roanoke, VA (pop. 99,261) to discuss. The Jefferson Center uses the subscription model, while my organization in Lynchburg, VA (pop. 79,285), the Academy Center of the Arts, uses the membership model. Whether you have an existing approach or are looking to engage your patron base, we have some advice to share.

It has been one year since Small Town Big Arts was launched. The genesis of this online resource for small town arts delivery came from a strategic planning process facilitated for Second Stage Amherst, a community arts center in Amherst, Virginia. Geoffrey Kershner, host and founder of Small Town Big Arts discovered in supporting Second Stage in their planning that there were no consolodated resources for those delivering the arts in small town America. Thus, Small Town Big Arts was born. In looking back on the last year, we visit with Jessy Shipe the Director of Second Stage Amherst (www.secondstageamherst.org). Jessy became the Director of the organization soon after the completion of the 2022 strategic planning process. She shares what the last year has been like, the successes she has found, and the obstacles that still exist. Jessy is a fantastic example of one of the unfortunate but key ingrediants of many successful small town arts organizations, the luck of finding someone who provides a level of dedication and work ethic that moves beyond what an organization can normally afford in the free market American workforce.

Recenlty I opened my local paper in Lynchburg,VA and saw the following headline: "Orange County Board yanks arts center funding over drag design class." This struck a chord for many reasons. For those of us in the arts, there are a number of ways that cultural insitution's programming have fallen into an extreme right wing political playbook and this fit the mold. It also struck me because I serve on the Virginians for the Arts board of directors with the Arts Center in Orange's President, Ed Harvey. I reached out to Ed and asked if he and his Executive Director, Anna Pillow would be willing to discuss their recent collision with the Orange County Board of Supervisors. They were brave enough to say yes. On this episode we hope their insight will help many of those delivering the arts in small town American at a moment when trying to expand horizons and reach new audiences might collide with a segment of the community that wants to coin such actions as political. When the line between culture and politics is blurred, what is one to do?

This month we tackle the issues around maintaining an arts facility. If you are looking to build or renovate a building for the arts or have a building you deliver the arts through, this episode is worth a listen. Leading an organization that can both deliver its mission effectively and budget for facility depreciation is very difficult. We speak with Cyrus Pace at the Jefferson Center in Roanoke, VA (pop.98,865) to discuss in depth the struggles that many of us face and a recent study one of Cyrus' graduate students from Virginia Tech conducted around the successful business models of comparable historic theaters. I am particularly excited to share this conversation because during the darkest days of COVID Cyrus and I formed a bond. We began a bi-weekly Zoom call to strategize and to supply each other emotional and psychological support. Even post COVID, we continue these meetings because of their utility to our ongoing work. Bringing one of our conversations to Small Town/Big Arts seems like the perfect way to begin the new subject matter format of the podcast.To learn more about Cyrus Pace's organization, the Jefferson Center, visit their website at: https://www.jeffcenter.org/

We are making a pivot in the podcast in the coming months. We will be tackling specific subject matters that are pressing for those delivering the arts in smaller communities. Before we make this pivot, it is time to reflect on the fantastic organizations we have showcased so far. Common with all successful small community arts organizations are some specific qualities. I have identified 5 of them. In today’s episode, I will name them and explain them and hope they will be helpful to our listeners efforts to deliver and support the arts in small town America.

We have spoken with a wide range of organizations. We have looked at smaller community arts delivery in the farmlands of Wisconsin, in the mountains of Kentucky and even on the Alaskan coast. This month's episode we continue to examine the complex beauty of small town arts delivery in America when we speak with the leaders of a unique organization based in Arizona but whose mission operates transnationally. Border Arts Corridor (BAC) was founded in 2015 as an arts organization located in Douglas, Arizona. BAC recognized a need for an arts organization dedicated to telling the narrative of those who create art within their unique border community. Since their founding, they have prioritized serving their dual communities of Douglas, AZ and Agua Prieta, Sonora in Mexico. They do so by creating art installations, workshops, and programming for individuals on both sides of the border. I was honored to speak with Artistic Director Martina Rendon and Founder Jenea Sanchez. They have a unique perspective of how to navigate their transnational work and their deep commitment to their unique communities. To learn more about Border Arts Corridor, visit their website at: https://www.bacaz.org/

This month we continue the story of my organization's 30 million dollar historic theatre restoration project. Over two podcasts I interview some key board members that were part of an organizational transformation that lead the Academy Center of the Arts out of a period of austerity, negativity, and debt and into an era that would see a completed theatre restoration project, a quadrupling of our operating budget, and ultimately emerge debt free. In Part 2 (February 2023), we will speak with three former Academy board members. George Zippel ( former CEO of Genworth Financial and former board member), Rob Tayler (retired owner of Taylor Brothers Inc. and former Chair of the Construction Committee), and John Fees (retired Executive Chairman of BWXT and former board member/fundraiser/construction committee member). These former board member discuss how it was possible for a small non-profit organization in a small city to punch above its weight and execute a complex 30 million dollar construction project.

This month and next month, I am excited to share a part of my own story. From 2012 to 2015 I was straddling a tenure track position at a liberal arts college while also running a small theatre company here in Lynchburg, VA (pop. 79,697). I was plugged into the arts locally (I grew up in a nearby county) and I was very aware of the Academy of Fine Arts (later renamed the Academy Center of the Arts) and its efforts to restore a historic theatre that had laid dormant for nearly 60 years. The project all in all would cost a total of 30 million dollars and the efforts to build belief around its viability had stalled. The narrative in Lynchburg was that this project was just not possible. I too believed this narrative until some important community leaders that I speak with over the next two episodes changed my mind. In 2015 I would take a leap of faith and leave my teaching position and my theatre company to become the Executive Director of the organization. I was lucky enough to become a part of a team that changed the organization's narrative and made the impossible possible. Over two podcasts I interview some key board members that were part of an organizational transformation that lead the Academy Center of the Arts out of a period of austerity, negativity, and debt and into an era that would see a completed 30 million dollar restoration project, the quadrupling of its operating budget, and emerge debt free. How did this happen? Hear from a group of leaders who through volunteerism provided expertise and credibility to a struggling but important community project and changed the culture of the institution and perhaps even the wider community. In Part 1 (January 2023), we will speak with three former Academy board members. Sackett Wood (CEO of Moore and Giles, former board president), George Dawson (retired CEO of Centra Health and former chairmen of the capital campaign for the theatre), and John Fees (retired Executive Chairman of BWXT and former board member/fundraiser/construction committee member). These former board member discuss how credibility was brought to both the capital project and the organization and how organizational change in a small town arts organization can happen.