Heart of the Arts revived

["bill london" <bill_london@hotmail.com>]

On Saturday, I went to the public meeting hosted by the Moscow Arts 
Commission and featuring John Villani, author of the book "100 Best 
Small Arts Towns".  As you might have guessed, the book lists the most  
arts-friendly small towns in the US (Moscow and Sandpoint are both on 
his list).  His topic was cultural tourism, which is economic 
development through attracting visitors to cultural events.  

Moscow doesn't have the tradional visitor draws (like lakes or rivers).  
Cultural tourism is a benign kind of way to bring money into the 
community that strengthens the community fabric instead of ripping it 
apart as a new 100-worker factory would do.  In addition, developing a 
strong reputation for arts results in bringing interesting and creative 
people to a community to live and work.  For all those reasons, I like 
the idea of strengthening the strong arts/cultural calendar that already 
happens in this town, and marketing this town as a cultural destination.

So, I went to Villani's talk.  The audience of about 20 included an 
interesting mix of chamber/EDC folks who like the economic development 
aspect, city government people trying to shephard this process, and arts 
people who want to build more art-focused community events.  

The essence of his talk was that grassroots, home-grown arts events and 
marketing programs are the best and most successful.  Also, that using 
historic buildings (like the Whitworth) as cultural centers has been 
very successful nationwide.

What appears to be happening now in Moscow is a revival of a marketing 
program to boost Moscow's arts/cultural events from the mid-1980's.  
That program was called the Heart of the Arts.  It was organized by the 
director of the chamber John LoBuonno and an arts community volunteer 
named Susan Davis.  They got some grant money from the Idaho Travel 
Council, printed some posters, and put some ads in West-side media.

The Heart of the Arts had some success.  It did give cultural events in 
Moscow a sense of representing a community and being part of Moscow's 
year-round arts calendar.  It may have even encouraged some tourism (I 
don't think anyone ever measured any of that, however).

Anyway, as I understand both the Moscow Arts Commission and the Economic 
Developemnt Council are looking at ways of reviving that marketing plan.  
The idea of a revived Heart of the Arts campaign was one of the 
suggestions from the economic development group at the Community 
Retreat.  Perhaps it's time has come.

I hope so.  I welcome it.  Any other opinions or updates on this?

BL


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