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Getting Down to the Business of the Arts
New blueprint seeks to get region's creative juices flowing
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Business New Haven
11/16/1998
By: BNH
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In order to have a fighting chance of success, the latest plan to reap economic-development benefits from greater New Haven's wealth of cultural and creative resources will need to have the full weight of the community's political and business leadership behind it.
This time, it may.
The two-years-in-the-making “Regional Cultural Plan” was unveiled November 9, an ambitious road map designed to cement New Haven's place as the state's creative capital and to impose a measure of order onto how the community employs its cultural resources to stimulate renewed vitality.
Many of the institutions critical to making it a success are on board, including city government, Yale, the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven (natch) and some key business leaders.
Captaining the effort is former Woodbridge first selectwoman Nan Birdwhistell, who also serves as a senior vice president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce. As plan director, Birdwhistell will oversee the development of a regional marketing plan, an “assessment” of existing and potential facilities and financial stabilization of “key” arts institutions, many of which have foundered financially as the Elm City's corporate base eroded over the past decade.
“Adopting a cultural plan and hiring a plan director are significant milestones in establishing arts and culture as one of the region's top priorities,” said Birdwhistell. “This exciting agenda can only be accomplished through the coordinated efforts of many people and organizations. Together, the sum of our efforts will be much greater than its parts.”
The three-year, million-dollar undertaking will be paid for in part by a one-to-one grant from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, which will match corporate and private donations. A funding request to the New Haven-based Carolyn Foundation is under review. In addition, the state's bond commission has approved $450,000 for the New Haven Development Corp. to help cover costs for an arts facility study.
In addition, the plan's authors intend to create, fund and implement a long hoped-for plan to market the arts to potential audiences throughout the region and beyond. The group also plans to work with the National Arts Stabilization Program to create a framework and means by which financially troubled groups such as the New Haven Symphony Orchestra can attain a measure of operating stability and predictability.
Said UI Chairman Richard J. Grossi: “Our region's arts industry provides us with a competitive position that is unique and desirable - we have a breadth of resources that would be difficult for other communities to replicate. Rather than trying to create an industry from scratch, the regional cultural plan will fortify our existing arts, cultural and entertainment offerings in order to create jobs in tourism and arts-support industries.”
Grossi said that a more vital cultural community will have downstream economic effects. “Artists will benefit,” he noted, “but so will hotels, lighting designers, carpenters, restaurant owners and local small businesses, as well as larger corporations and educational institutions which wish to attract workers who are drawn to vibrant communities.”
The cultural plan group's vice chairman, C. Newton Schenk, says an important element to generating creative energy is to make New Haven a home, literally, to more artists, artisans and craftspeople. Citing Hartford's new Artspace development, he envisions rehabilitating some of the dilapidated blocks surrounding the city's Ninth Square into housing and studio space for artists.
The operating budget for the plan as drafted is $300,000 annually.
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