Arts Alive! to Receive Funding and Assistance from National Endowment for the Arts
In its ongoing support of rural communities, the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with the Housing Assistance Council, announces the 2021 communities taking part in its national initiative, the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD). Keene is one of four communities selected for a multi-day design workshop to address small scale and tangible design and building projects in the downtown “Arts Corridor” concept. This project is being led by Arts Alive! in partnership with many individual artists and organizations.
“The City of Keene is supportive of integrating arts into the planned infrastructure projects on Main Street, Gilbo Avenue, and Wilson Street. An arts-inspired design throughout this new arts corridor will unite the growing number of creative businesses developing property on the West side of Main Street. We believe a unified design in an arts corridor will help Keene market itself as a cultural destination and bring our growing arts community to life. Arts Alive! has been a valuable community partner for the past 10 years. Their success is anchored in strong community partnerships, and capacity in the community through hundreds of volunteers/supporters.”
- Excerpt from Letter of Support by Keene Mayor George Hansel
In addition, Keene and the other three workshop communities will participate in CIRD’s Design Learning Cohort for rural leaders, along with representatives from 15 other communities. With support from a range of design, planning, and creative placemaking professionals, the workshops bring together local residents and leaders from non-profits, community organizations, and government to explore design ideas that make their communities better places to live, work, and play.
“The opportunity to participate in the re-visioning of the corridor is really important to me and my teams. For starters, it is important to understand how to connect with the deep history within our future building, named for a famous Civil Rights activist, Johnathan Daniels. Also, it currently houses services for 100 Nights homeless shelter and is across the street from the actual shelter. Collaborative visioning is so important to building strong community relationships. We would value the process as a better way to understand the history of our new building and how we can avoid the negative impacts of "gentrifying" our block, and complement its neighboring community and attributes.”
- Excerpt from Letter of Support by Georgia Cassimatis, director of Friends of Public Art and owner of 17 Rox Artist Studios in downtown Keene
Since 1991, the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design has worked in communities with populations of 50,000 or less to enhance quality of life and economic vitality through planning, design, and creative placemaking. To date, the Arts Endowment has engaged more than 100 communities in all regions of the country.
“Design is a powerful tool to leverage local assets and celebrate culture; ultimately fostering a strong sense of place. As rural America recovers from the global pandemic, the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design stands ready to support the bold visions that communities like Keene have put forth to guide their future development.”
- Quote from Arts Endowment Director of Design and Creative Placemaking Jen Hughes.
Arts Alive! will be reaching out to individual partners and stakeholders, organizing focus groups with downtown employees, downtown residents, parents, emerging artists interested in having a positive impact on their community, and underrepresented populations that may have specialized expertise or interpretations of what accessible space looks like. During the winter of 2022, we will be hosting designers and facilitators in our community for a week to conduct in person meetings, conversations, and creative activities to coalesce a community vision.
“Designing unifying public spaces to bring together art s businesses in this area of town, as well as inviting in new communities to our arts & culture scene, would mean a lot to us as community members, to our businesses , and to our emerging nonprofit . It will transform an area currently overcome with paved striped parking lots into a place where people will want to visit - and take their coffee to go. It will elevate the arts & culture businesses and programming since we will be a part of a cultural destination area. And it will help us build relationships not only with the other arts presenters, but with local farmer s so we can improve our local sourcing for ingredients , and with some of the marginalized communities within the arts corridor footprint so that our nonprofit can have a greater impact and reach. For us, this project would mean more economic viability, sales , and jobs . It would mean greater mission reach for our nonprofit. And it would increase our pride in our collaborative community. We are excited about this opportunity.”
- Excerpt from a Letter of Support by Jeff & Eliza Murphy, owners of Brewbakers Cafe and two of the four co-founders of the new arts performance presenting group Nova Arts
The outcome of this work will be to have a clearly designed plan for small elements that can serve as the connective tissue between the arts infrastructure that has grown up around Keene in the last several years. The plan will also include fundraising opportunities to support the work. Arts Alive! will support the plan’s implementation beginning in the spring of 2022.
For more information on this program announcement, visit arts.gov/news or rural-design.org
If you would like to be involved in the project, please connect with Jessica Gelter to be put on our list.