Welcome to the neighborhood, UCCS

Our mini-cultural district in downtown Colorado Springs is getting a new member! UCCS, representatives of Nor’wood Development Group and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center announced last week that the space which has been known as the FAC Modern will be reborn as the UCCS Gallery of Contemporary Art 121, or GOCA 121, and will continue to build on the long tradition of contemporary art exhibits at UCCS. Caitlin Green, interim director, Gallery of Contemporary Art, said the new venue provides an opportunity to reach new audiences and develop a forum for critical discourse on contemporary art. GOCA 121 will be situated between two other downtown creative centers, us at COPPeR and the fabulous foodies at Nosh. The FAC Modern’s final exhibition closed Nov. 13. UCCS will open its first exhibit Feb. 5, 2010. More when that comes around.

We're sad to see the FAC move out, as they have been excellent neighbors, but we also understand. “The FAC MODERN served us well,” said FAC President and CEO Sam Gappmayer. “We will be forever grateful to the generosity of Chris Jenkins and Nor’wood Development for providing the Fine Arts Center and its patrons this amazing space. The MODERN allowed us to continue to present world-class exhibitions without interruption during our expansion. But the time has come for us to pay it forward. We couldn’t be more pleased to hand off the MODERN to UCCS and their talented gallery director Caitlin Green, who will bring exciting programming to the Plaza of the Rockies.”

We're delighted to welcome GOCA 121 and UCCS to the neighborhood, and we look forward to co-hosting Friday art opening receptions with GOCA 121 in the new year.

Cal Otto

Sad news last week from the Pikes Peak Library District:

"Calvin Otto, our Pikes Peak Library District Board of Trustees member and champion of literacy, historical preservation, and community engagement, died Monday, November 23. His death is a great loss to our library family and the community that we serve.

For those of you who did not have an opportunity to know Cal personally, here, in brief, are some of the things he did on our behalf:

Cal’s involvement with us spanned nine years, during which time he co-founded All Pikes Peak Reads and the Regional History Symposium, orchestrated the development of the PPLD Foundation, established an endowment to support Special Collections programming in perpetuity, fostered PPLD’s partnerships with UCCS THEATREWORKS and the World Affairs Council, and worked tirelessly on projects such as the 1905 Carnegie Garden, Fountain Branch Project, and others.

Cal attended every Summer Reading Party during his tenure, never missed an opportunity to represent the Trustees to staff and the public, and treated everyone he encountered in a gracious and genuine way.

Before coming to Colorado Springs, Cal founded the American Ephemera Society, The Virginia Festival of the Book, and served on the Vermont Council of the Humanities, The Virginia Humanities Council, and eventually Colorado Humanities.

Cal is survived by his wife, Patricia Otto; his daughter Sharon Mertens, Gary H. Mertens, and grandson Christopher Mertens; his son James R. Otto, Laurel Otto, and grandson Nicholas Otto.

A memorial service will be held Friday, December 4 at 2 p.m. at Broadmoor Community Church, 315 Lake Ave. All Pikes Peak Library District facilities will close at 1 p.m. on December 4 to allow staff to attend if they so choose.

If you wish to make memorial dedication, donations to the PPLD Foundation have been requested by the family in lieu of flowers."

Eight Years of Cultural Resurgence

Last week a number of folks gathered for a discussion about the state of the arts in the Pikes Peak region. Hosted by the Bee Vradenburg Foundation, about 45 people gathered to talk about how to capitalize on the momentum gathered in the past few years and move forward to continue to capitalize on the incredible depth and breadth of our arts scene. Check out this slide show to see what we're talking about!

11.04.09 Eight Years

View more presentations from Bee Vradenburg Foundation.

Rocco Landesman announces new direction for NEA

At the 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts conference, Rocco Landesman laid out his new direction for the National Endowment for the Arts. Click here to read his full remarks.

In it, he talks about the need for optimism. "Art is the most optimistic of activities: the ballerina standing en pointe or being thrown high into the air, lovers breaking into song in musicals, painters through history rendering success in war and hunting, or religious imagery or the exuberant discovery of new forms and shapes, the thrilling, spontaneous riff of a jazz saxophonist, the emotional release of comedy, even tragedy in the Aristotelian sense of catharsis and lessons learned."

He also lays out his simple direction for the NEA:

Art works.

I hope you read it. It's given me lots of food for thought this week.

Theater scene in Springs expanding

This weekend serves as a poignant reminder of the tragedy of abundance.

There are too many cool music events, festivals, art openings to hit them all up. This is true most weekends, but this weekend in particular features an abundance of theater. Our theater scene, all of the sudden, is thriving!

This weekend, count 'em:

Broadway Bound at the Fine Arts Center
Our Town at Theatreworks
The Arte of War presented by Theatre 'd Art
Ten Minutes Max at the Manitou Art Theatre
Face The City at Venue 515

and the newly resurrected Star Bar Players are performing The Weir in a warehouse space.

Plus, in two weeks, the new theatre troupe, Springs Ensemble Theatre will launch with a fundraiser.

Whilst perusing the blogs this morning, I stumbled upon this blog about audience development in the theatre. As our theatre community grows (and I, for one, believe a population of almost half a million can support a lively and diverse theater scene), we might do well to heed the advice of our peers in the industry. Make sure you read the comments at this blog.

Four years ago...

Like any good nonprofit, we here at COPPeR recently held our annual strategic planning session with our staff and board of directors. 2010 will bring us to the end of our initial five-year strategic plan, so as part of our meeting, we looked back on our accomplishments. I'm going to share some of the highlights with you here, since it tells the story of how far we've come in such a short time.

Let's take a trip back through time. Imagine, if you will, a distant moment in the past. It was the year 2005. Having trouble remembering what the world was like way back then? Here are some reminders.
The White Sox had their first World Series win since 1917. Chicago fans went wild.
Everyone was reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
New Orleans was still an intact city.
House Majority Leader Tom Delay was indicted. Now he is appearing on "Dancing with the Stars."
Nobody except for a few college kids were on Facebook.
An unknown named Miley Cyrus audition for a role called Hannah Montana.
Everyone thought real estate was the most secure investment ever
Nobody tweeted.
And of course, there was no COPPeR.

After the 2003 Arts Summit, Susan Edmondson, Kimberley Sherwood, Michael Coumatos, Judy Noyes and other key leaders in the community got together to start exploring the options of founding a cultural office. Through their research they discovered that Colorado Springs was the largest city in the nation without a professionally staffed cultural office, so they moved forward with a plan to create a regional nonprofit organization that could serve that function: operating as the spokesperson for our entire creative community--a central source for information about our arts scene. After many focus groups and planning, an initial strategic plan was written. The following are goals from that plan.

In the plan? Our proposed budget was $203,000, with monies coming from foundations, individuals, and $49,000 as a contract for service from the City of COS, two full-time staff and one part-time employee. Reality in 2009: Our annual budget is around $175,000 excluding rent and in-kind gifts, and we receive $39,000 from the City of Colorado Springs. We have two full-time staff and a part-time intern from UCCS, who receives credit. The fact that these numbers are so close is impressive indeed. However, it's important to note that this is about 1/4 the budget typical for a cultural office for a city our size, and 1/10 the city support typical for a city our size and 1/3-1/4 the staff typical for a city our size.

Our 2005 Mission: Connecting residents and visitors with arts and culture to enrich the Pikes Peak Region.
Our 2005 Vision: A community united by creativity.

Our goals:
1. Build cultural participation
2. Foster sustainability of the region’s cultural arts industry.
3. Advocate for the region’s cultural vitality.
4. Leverage cultural assets to promote a positive regional brand and image.
5. Foster authenticity.
6. Provide sustainability, growth, accountability and diversified support for the cultural office.

Mission, vision and goals in 2009? Ditto.

In addition to those broad goals, we had some very specific outcomes in mind.

1. Launch a comprehensive cultural events calendar. Done and done! After painstaking research, we contracted with Artsopolis to build PeakRadar.com, which went live in 2007. We now have full-time staff, Kevin Johnson, and PeakRadar is the number one arts website in Southern Colorado, experiencing hundreds of thousands of page views monthly and proves month after month that is building audiences for arts groups in the Pikes Peak region.

2. Coordinate "Arts and Economic Prosperity III" impact study. Together with the Bee Vradenburg Foundation and Americans for the Arts, we participated in this national benchmark study in 2005 and 2006, releasing the results in 2007. We will participate in Arts and Economic Prosperity IV starting in 2011.

3. CBCA Leadership Arts – This goal was to create a workshop to engage more business leaders in arts nonprofit boards. Because the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts does such a good job with this training, we refined this a bit to instead offer trainings to arts nonprofits, with topics like marketing and communication, board governance, budget performance and digital media. Early this Spring, our arts "boot camps" helped more than 70 representatives from arts organizations all over the region.

4. Publish cultural amenities brochure with info on more than 80 arts organizations. The first edition of The COPPeR Pages was released in Fall 2007. Then, after two years of research, the second edition of COPPeR Pages was released in August 2009. People pick up their free copies at our office every day, and to date more than 9,000 copies have been distributed.

5. Offer best practices leadership for community projects – This was originally conceived to be providing leadership on projects like like Memorial Hospital healing arts group, City Auditorium renovation. Instead this has been: The Quality of Life Indicators Project (I serve as co-chair for a vision council), Dream City, Fire Station 8 art commission jury (I served on the jury and helped with the RFP), and serving on the marketing committee for the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

6. Assist in business planning and launch of Arts Fund
Currently the Bee Vradenburg Foundation is doing a feasibility study with the Pikes Peak Community Foundation. COPPeR staff and board have participated in interviews.

7. Develop membership structure - while not a formal membership structure, we did launch our Arts Partners program, in which we encourage local arts organizations to show their buy-in by making a donation to our organization.

8. Neighborhood Arts Program - this isn't developed exactly, but some elements of this will likely be addressed in the Cultural Plan.

9. Cultural tourism support - we work closely with the CVB, and have been quoted in American Way Magazine and United Airlines Hemispheres magazine, as well as Denver's 5280 Magazine and others.

10. Launch high-visibility community event – We have certainly accomplished this with our Studio Bee concert series, The Business and Arts lunch (a partnership with the Chamber of Commerce), and our participation in First Friday art walks and gallery openings.

11. Brand identity project – We launched Volume I of the Sounds of the Pikes Peak Region CD in 2008, which has birthed a concert series and more notoriety for the local music scene.

12. Provide networking functions, e-newsletter of arts and cultural news for the region. Yes! We do both.

We couldn't have anticipated the rise of new media: Facebook, Twitter, integrating PeakRadar with the Fort Carson texting service, Examiner.com, and more!

We certainly didn't expect to have a fabulous downtown storefront office space necessitating regular office hours and where every day people walk in off the street to find out about arts opportunities

We didn't know that space would be adjacent to a fine art gallery, enabling joint art opening receptions and staff time in ensuring solid exhibits for our walls.

We didn't know that the we would be encouraged to launch a process for the Cultural Plan by a statewide planning process.

We didn't know we would have the opportunity to partner with the Chamber of Commerce on the annual Business and Arts lunch, honoring businesses that support the arts and showcasing local performers.

We didn't expect to have booths at festivals and send our staff for speaking engagements all over El Paso and Teller counties.

We didn't expect to co-sponsor a free, monthly concert series at the Pikes Peak Center.

We didn't expect to be a presenting partner for the region's first Poet laureate project.


Of course, we also couldn’t have anticipated a global recession that affects city budget, tourism/LART revenue, foundation giving, corporate giving and individual donations.

Our staff is earning accolades on the state and national level. I have received scholarships from Americans for the Arts and am an active participant in AFTA’s emerging leaders network and U.S. Urban Arts Federation. And just recently I was asked to join the Colorado Council on the Arts’ Peer Assistance Network. And Kevin Johnson is a tech whiz whose expertise has guided our success. He also received a full scholarship (including air travel and room and board!) to the 2008 National Arts Marketing Partnership conference.

Now is not the time to rest on our laurels. We have more work to do, and it is good, honest work. But in this time of uncertainty, it is nice to look back at our accomplishments....just think where we will be four years from now!

Federal Stimulus Money Arrives

Remember way back in early 2009 when Americans for the Arts (including Bob Lynch, Robert Redford, John Legend and others) and countless other brave souls in congress successfully lobbied to include a paltry $50 million in the stimulus for the National Endowment for the Arts? (In case you're curious, that $50 million represents barely even a droplet in the $787 billion stimulus package)

Well, that $50 million has now been distributed, and it's trickling down to our own local arts community. There are some extremely misinformed comments on the story in today's Gazette about the $30,000 awarded to three organizations. It appears that despite our best efforts to educate the public that arts jobs are real jobs, there is still much work to be done.

In accordance with federal stimulus policy, these funds are specifically earmarked for retaining jobs in the arts. These are real jobs held by real American people. They are artists, musicians, filmmakers, cultural managers, stagehands, gallery staff, technicians, costume designers, marketing directors, IT staff--the list goes on and on. They are part of the economy. They earn paychecks, they pay sales taxes, they enter into mortgages. They work hard to support their families.

The stimulus money was designated by the NEA to the more than 4,000 local and state arts agencies throughout the nation. The reason for this? These agencies have nearly 50 years of proven history as good stewards of tax dollars and can ensure speedy disbursement to local projects. In Colorado that meant the Colorado Council on the Arts (CCA), the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs (DOCA), and the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) awarded 47 Colorado non-profit arts organizations with $568,040 in federal recovery funds to preserve or restore 313 salaried and contract positions.

DOCA alone announced $225,000 in stimulus grants to 15 Denver arts organizations. A few people have been contacted me, concerned about a perceived inequity between Denver and the Springs. It's important to note the distinctions between our communities. There's more going on here than immediately seems apparent. As I pointed out to the Gazette reporter, we have fewer arts organizations with paid staff in the Pikes Peak region, and these grants are specifically for preserving jobs, not creating programming.

Second, we don't have a mechanism for delivering the funds to arts organizations in the Pikes Peak region. While COPPeR is in many ways a parallel organization to DOCA, we are a private nonprofit, and we are not set up as re-granting organization at this point in time. Similarly, the Department of Cultural Services within Colorado Springs City government also does not operate as a re-granting agent. In fact, Cultural Services was not even eligible beacause they had not received a CCA grant in the designated time. Furthermore, if Cultural Services had been eligible, they would have most likely applied to save the jobs that are hemorrhaging from the 2010 budget. To read more about proposed City budget cuts, which include closing the Pioneers Museum,click here.

Our arts community has grown immensely in the past five years. I truly believe that momentum is not slowing. But we face new challenges, and we must accept that we are growing incrementally. Like many, I wish that more than $30,000 had made its way to the Pikes Peak region (and indeed, I know many worthy organizations that did apply), but at this time, we simply don't have the infrastructure of Denver to offer the kind of support they can.