In August last year the Community Foundation of the Ozarks formed a committee of arts leaders (including yours truly) and gave us a challenge with funding attached:
Come up with a program that sustains the arts in Springfield. Part one went into effect on March 14….and it’s big!…
Idea #1 was to create a brand new arts festival, but with the economy taking a sharp turn downwards after we started meeting, we had to come up with a fiscally responsible way to make it possible, and to make it innovative in a way that it could eventually sustain the arts. The philosophy: For the arts to be sustainable, the arts must help sustain our community, especially the children in our community.
Introducing Arts in Action – The 10 Weeks Festival.
- Step 1: Combine all the Springfield arts events (including University arts events) in a 10 week period and put them under one umbrella, fiscally responsible since these were events already scheduled.
- Step 2: Ask every audience member to donate a minimum of $1 to be placed in marked boxes or to send later in provided envelopes. The other option is to add the dollar to the ticket price
- Step 3: Split every dollar 50/50, half to establish a new arts education endowment, and the other half to an extraordinary new charity founded by Doug Pitt called Care to Learn. This is a charity that provides vulnerable children with the essential needs (food, clothing, personal hygiene) to help keep them in school. For every dollar raised for Care to Learn, Brad and Angelina (yes them!) and other individuals and companies have combined to match each dollar with 3 more! This means that the 50 cents turns into $2!
The goal is to raise $10,000 and at our concert on March 14 we raised over $1200, the running total for the first 10 days is now at nearly $2400! The response has been huge and the momentum for the initiative is building with more and more local press and more volunteers calling daily. People are scooping up the festival brochure to have a handy calendar of events and Americans for the Arts in DC has taken notice and are interested in finding out more. We are determined for the arts to make a tangible difference and this can only help the arts attendance, stature and importance in our community.
The funding was sufficient to hire an Arts Sustainability Coordinator (ASC) and for the marketing and materials needed. Our ASC is Leah Hamilton Jenkins, an incredibly talented arts administrator and a great Mezzo too! She put this together in only 5 weeks! I will keep you posted as to the running total and any further developments. Idea # 2 will coordinate our education efforts and that will be her next order of business after the festival finishes at the end of May, so more on that in the summer. Below check out our cool PSA’s being run on several channels. The first has a Tarantino feel to it and the second includes video and narration by Leah.
Our tag line: Get in, in 10!