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!