Bay Area Cultural Plan
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"Bay City's great historic architecture is one of its defining cultural assets," says Louise Stevens
Diane Middleton
Executive Director of the Bay Arts Council
The Bay Area's Cultural Plan is quickly taking shape.
Designed to meet the cultural needs of the greater Bay Area, the plan sets forth a blueprint for the continued development of Bay County's cultural resources and assets, including tourism, facilities, historic sites, audiences, potential for economic development, and educational prospects.
Planning was initated in June of 2003 under the facilitation of Louise Stevens, Founder, President, and Executive Consultant of Artsmarket, a Montana-based consulting group specializing in strategic planning for arts organizations.
Grant monies from the Rollin M. Gerstacker, Bay Area Community, Smith, and Kantzler Foundations are helping to support the firm's involvement.
The Bay Arts Council is overseeing the coordination of all assessments and taskforce activities relating to the plan.
The Bay Arts Council, best known for their summer concert series and youth-oriented "edutainment" programs, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization dedicated to presenting and developing the arts for all people in Bay County.
Although the Cultural Arts Plan is scheduled to be unveiled to the public in December 2003, Diane Middleton, Executive Director of the Bay Arts Council, is confident that the plan can and will come together within that timeframe.
She credits her enthusiam to the "cooperative spirit" that has arisen from recent joint strategic planning sessions.
Six taskforce committees are involved in the design of the plan. A total of sixty community members in all from various arts and cultural organizations, businesses, schools, human service agencies, and the community-at-large are working together to create a plan that is both visionary and pragmatic.
"From the beginning, we didn't want only arts and cultural organizations involved in the plan's creation," said Middleton recently. "Everyone in the community has a chance to benefit from this plan so we knew that we would have to pull all these folks in to work on it."
Most recently, the facilities taskforce committee, chaired by Middleton, has been touring potential sites that could be used as a shared, central facility for local arts and cultural organizations.
Although Middleton declined to comment on what structures are being considered, she noted that several of the buildings considered have incredible potential for use.
Louise Stevens will return to Bay City in September to help the different taskforce committees blend their recommendations into one all-encompassing plan for the Bay Area, which will begin to be implemented in January of 2004.
In a recent newsletter to taskforce members, Stevens encouraged them to "Imagine Bay City as a Creative Center."
This is a beautiful vision that will need the helpof Bay Area residents if it is to become a reality.
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O. J. Cunningham |
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