Are you a singer, painter, sculptor, writer, photographer, designer, actor, musician, or other creative type? Are you part of an artist’s collective, musical band, theater company, gallery, cultural group, arts venue, or any other arts group? If so, it’s time to get your voice heard for Napa Valley arts. Arts Council Napa Valley, as part of our cultural planning process, has launched two separate surveys: one for individual creative people, and one for arts and cultural organizations. These anonymous surveys take only about five minutes to complete, and will give us vital information about your needs and challenges, as well as the first hard data on the economic impact of Napa Valley arts. At the end of the survey, you can enter to win fabulous prizes including a boat trip down the Napa River, lunch for two at Uva, a 2-day painting retreat, a show at the Opera House, and more!
Survey for Individual Artists of All Disciplines:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=53923605296
Survey for Arts Organizations:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=550423624198
If you are a creative person, or part of an arts organization, we invite you to fill out your survey today!
These surveys will help us further discover the story of arts in this community. The “maps” we developed of the layout of artists and arts organizations in each city create a startling picture. We can now compare populations of each city not just with their arts resources, but also with artist populations. For example, St Helena, with 5% of the population, has 16% of the artists and 18% of the arts resources in the county. This begs a question: why do artists want to live in St Helena? Yountville, with only 2% of the population, has 3% of the artists and a whopping 12% of the resources. If we knew nothing about Yountville, other than these statistics, we’d have to wonder: does Yountville have the population to support all of its arts resources? American Canyon, with 12% of the population, has only 2% of county arts resources. As the fastest growing city, how can we ensure that American Canyon arts resources grow to match its population? And Napa is emerging as the Big Kahuna of Napa Valley arts: 59% of the population, 59% of the artists, and 55% of arts resources.
Of course, these statistics are only a part of the story, but they go far in identifying the opportunities and challenges in each unique city. Moving forward, we’ll use all of this information to help shape the cultural plan. For instance, how do we play off the strengths in the city of Napa? How do we nurture the cities whose arts are less developed? Only through community input can we best answer these questions. The deadline to fill out the survey is May 4th; please join us in our effort to make an arts and cultural plan for Napa Valley, and fill out the survey today.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Mapping the Arts in Napa Valley
"If you think of the Napa Valley as a paint-by-number set, then the statistics ACNV has uncovered make for a rich palette by which we can deepen our view of the local arts assets and how they fit into the broader landscape," said cultural planning consultant Morrie Warshawski. These statistics, generated from our new Cultural Resources Database, are critical to understanding Napa Valley arts. For the database, we are working to capture all artists, arts organizations, educational opportunities, and arts venues in Napa Valley. The more we work on this, the more we realize we have to discover. So many arts collectives, while known to their members, fly under the radar of greater public knowledge. So many artists, even those that show across the country, haven’t been involved on a local level, so finding them is complicated.
One of our greatest discoveries so far is the need to prioritize how we are creating a welcoming and inclusive environment, both for our local arts, and for this planning process. In particular, we need to strengthen our outreach to the Latino population. As of yet, we’ve not been as successful as we need to be. Although we’ve gotten terrific leads, we’ve not been able to track down all of the creative Latinos that we know are here. Over the next few months, we hope to rectify this, and find better ways to reach ALL populations, so our plan truly speaks to everyone who calls Napa Valley home.
However, even with these challenges, we have made amazing discoveries: our Individual Artist database (which includes actors, writers, painters, dancers, filmmakers, etc.) has over 1,400 artists; our Arts Organizations database has over 90 entries; and our Cultural Resources database which includes all organizations or venues that support the arts- from coffee shops that hang local art to wineries with galleries to restaurants that have live music- has over 300 entries. This planning process can be likened to a story; the Discovery Interviews were a compelling preface to what we are going to learn, and these databases reveal the first few chapters of the tale of Napa Valley arts.
Even before we begin to survey the public, we can see the foundation of what we have: where the disparities are, the surprises, the opportunities. For example, only 9% of our cultural resources in Napa County are devoted to theater arts, while 40% are focused on the visual arts. Music resources make up 23%, while film is only a paltry 3%. But even more interesting is the resources compared to city populations. The city of Napa has its fair share of cultural resources as compared to its population; but the cities of American Canyon and St Helena are opposite images. American Canyon, the fastest-growing city with 12% of the population of Napa County has only 2% of the cultural resources in the county. By contrast, St Helena, with only 5% of the county population, has 18% of the cultural resources in the county.
What does this tell us? It is too early to start to draw conclusions, but we can see some trends, such as the tremendous opportunity to build the arts in American Canyon. But next we need to look deeper: for example, St Helena clearly is rich in the arts; but what art forms are under-represented in St Helena? And what makes an art-friendly town? These are the kinds of questions we seek to answer in this process.
An analysis of all of the cities, their populations, and the art forms available is on the ACNV website at
http://www.artscouncilnapavalley.org/cp/cultural_planning.shtml#mappingwww.artscouncilnapavalley.org. Stay tuned for the launch of individual artists and arts organization surveys in the coming weeks!
One of our greatest discoveries so far is the need to prioritize how we are creating a welcoming and inclusive environment, both for our local arts, and for this planning process. In particular, we need to strengthen our outreach to the Latino population. As of yet, we’ve not been as successful as we need to be. Although we’ve gotten terrific leads, we’ve not been able to track down all of the creative Latinos that we know are here. Over the next few months, we hope to rectify this, and find better ways to reach ALL populations, so our plan truly speaks to everyone who calls Napa Valley home.
However, even with these challenges, we have made amazing discoveries: our Individual Artist database (which includes actors, writers, painters, dancers, filmmakers, etc.) has over 1,400 artists; our Arts Organizations database has over 90 entries; and our Cultural Resources database which includes all organizations or venues that support the arts- from coffee shops that hang local art to wineries with galleries to restaurants that have live music- has over 300 entries. This planning process can be likened to a story; the Discovery Interviews were a compelling preface to what we are going to learn, and these databases reveal the first few chapters of the tale of Napa Valley arts.
Even before we begin to survey the public, we can see the foundation of what we have: where the disparities are, the surprises, the opportunities. For example, only 9% of our cultural resources in Napa County are devoted to theater arts, while 40% are focused on the visual arts. Music resources make up 23%, while film is only a paltry 3%. But even more interesting is the resources compared to city populations. The city of Napa has its fair share of cultural resources as compared to its population; but the cities of American Canyon and St Helena are opposite images. American Canyon, the fastest-growing city with 12% of the population of Napa County has only 2% of the cultural resources in the county. By contrast, St Helena, with only 5% of the county population, has 18% of the cultural resources in the county.
What does this tell us? It is too early to start to draw conclusions, but we can see some trends, such as the tremendous opportunity to build the arts in American Canyon. But next we need to look deeper: for example, St Helena clearly is rich in the arts; but what art forms are under-represented in St Helena? And what makes an art-friendly town? These are the kinds of questions we seek to answer in this process.
An analysis of all of the cities, their populations, and the art forms available is on the ACNV website at
http://www.artscouncilnapavalley.org/cp/cultural_planning.shtml#mappingwww.artscouncilnapavalley.org. Stay tuned for the launch of individual artists and arts organization surveys in the coming weeks!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)