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.

Online Forum discussion of NEA and Federal Arts Policy

Over on the right side of this blog, you can see links to some of my favorite blogs from around the community and dealing with arts on a state and federal level. I don't have nearly enough time as I would like to read all of the scholarship and research out there. Thankfully, there are blogs that aggregate the information in a well-written, concise way. One of my very favorites, Barry's Blog by WESTAF's Barry Hessenius, just announced perhaps the most ambitious online Federal Arts Policy discussion ever attempted.

Starting on Tuesday, September 15, this six-week long online discussion will attempt to bring together arts service organizations, past NEA administrators, the private sector, artists, foundations and emerging leaders, including one of my other favorite arts bloggers, Createquity's Ian Moss, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the Americans for the Arts Convention in Seattle this June.

If you're not an arts policy wonk, consider the questions that will be among those addressed in this six-week forum:

• What should be the role of arts & culture in the economy, in foreign affairs, in education, in health services, in civic life?

• How can the various federal agencies that have some role in arts funding or otherwise coordinate their efforts, and where and how should the arts be represented in the White House and in formal policy making – or should it?

• How do we best nurture and develop all the multicultural arts traditions of a diverse society?

• How do we create equal access to arts & culture for every citizen?

• How do we build bridges between the "for-profit" and nonprofit arts industries and promote cooperation and collaboration where it is to the mutual benefit of both parties, or to the larger society?

And what should be the role of the National Endowment for the Arts in any of this? In terms of a national arts policy, what do we want for our artistic community in America, and what do we want from it?

This has a lot of potential, and the technology truly means that everyone can participate. So I ask you--please alert any artists, arts organization staff, Board and constituents/client base about this upcoming online forum so that as many people as possible might participate.

Read more about the project here.

Arts Organizations for Health Care Reform

Unfortunately, artists and employees of nonprofit arts organizations are keenly aware of the state of healthcare today. I am inspired to read that 23 national arts organizations have added their voices in support of healthcare reform. Here is their complete statement:

August 12, 2009

As national arts service organizations representing thousands of nonprofit arts organizations at the state and local level as well as serving thousands of individual artists across the country, we call on Congress to pass a health care reform bill.

The current economic crisis has affected the cultural sector as dramatically as it has the millions of unemployed and uninsured Americans. Like others who have fallen through the cracks of the current system, many in the cultural workforce work independently or operate in nontraditional employment relationships, leaving them locked out of group healthcare coverage options. Additionally, soaring health care costs are consuming the ever decreasing budgets of nonprofit arts organizations hit hard by today’s economic recession. The time for reform that delivers high quality and affordable health care for businesses and individuals is now. We call on Congress to pass:

• A health care reform bill that will create a public health insurance option for individual artists, especially the uninsured, and create better choices for affordable access to universal health coverage without being denied because of pre-existing conditions.
• A health care reform bill that will help financially-strapped nonprofit arts organizations reduce the skyrocketing health insurance costs to cover their employees without cuts to existing benefits and staff while the economy recovers. These new cost-savings could also enable nonprofit arts organizations to produce and present more programs to serve their communities.
• A health care reform bill that will enable smaller nonprofit and unincorporated arts
groups to afford to cover part and full-time employees for the first time.
• A health care reform bill that will support arts in healthcare programs, which have shown to be effective methods of prevention and patient care.

There is little time to waste as a broken system continues to leave far too many behind and adds trillions to our national debt. Millions of cultural workers stand ready to assist our leaders with solutions that protect all Americans and its creative sector with guaranteed universal insurance coverage deserving of the wealthiest nation in the world.

Americans for the Arts
Alliance of Artists Communities
American Art Therapy Association
American Association of Community Theatre
American Dance Therapy Association
American Music Therapy Association
Americans for the Arts Action Fund
Arts & Business Council
Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design
Association of Writers & Writing Programs
Business Committee for the Arts
Fractured Atlas
Grantmakers in the Arts
Literary Network
National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture
National Center for Creative Aging
National Dance Association
National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts
Theatre Communications Group
VSA arts

The Best in Public Art from Around the Nation

I've got public art on the brain these days. Sitting at my desk in downtown Colorado Springs, I have a fantastic view of several pieces of public art, including Chris Weed's new paperclips, two butterflies and the bronze sculpture of William Seymour by Stephanie Huerta at the bench where the downtown shuttle stop used to be (sigh...).

One of the most enjoyable sessions at the conference in Seattle was the public art year in review. Jurors Janet Echelman and Mildred Howard selected 40 of the best public art works in the United States, including projects from 32 cities in 15 states. The works were chosen from more than 300 entries across the country.

All of the projects were stunning, but here are just three of my favorites:

Language of the Birds in San Francisco, CA at Broadway and Columbus (in front of the legendary City Lights bookstore) by Brian Goggin and Dorka Keen. It is the first permanent solar-powered public art piece in the United States. Note that the sculptures are suspended books with solar panels, that, when illuminated, look like birds. Here's a video of the installation.

Language of the Birds from Thomas Both on Vimeo.

The second project is in the Jacksonville, Florida airport. Called simply "Gotta Go," this piece by Gordon Heuther is a breath of fresh air for weary travelers. Bob Lynch, head of Americans for the Arts, told a story about being in the airport looking at the piece when someone came up next to him. They started talking about the work and the person said, "This is really beautiful. Is it art?"













The third is Raine Bedsole's Remembering Boat in New Orleans. The piece is a memorial to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It features a poem by Tony Fitzpatrick
water has nothing to do with luck
and everything to do with chance
water is the music of consequence
the water is hungry... the water wants



These are just three of the 40 projects we got to see. I like these three because they show the real range of public art. It can be evocative, representational, symbolic, a statement of memory or whimsical. But it always starts a conversation.

Paperclips, Public Art, and the Pacific Northwest

Wow--leave town for a week and a giant landmark arrives! After arriving back from the Americans for the Arts convention in Seattle, I was delighted to discover Chris Weed's newest piece of large-scale public art in front of our office. Friday night at the opening reception for Art on the Streets Chris won first prize! Congratulations to him. We're thrilled to have such an eye-catching and playful piece in front of our office and doubly thrilled that it's by a local artist. Go, Chris. It's been a ball to watch the passersby gawk and the children climb all over the work. The paper clips have also resulted in a dramatic increase in traffic into our office (see the little door - that's COPPeR- come visit us!), so I have been woefully neglectful in writing in this little blog. Hi, readers, nice to see you.

So, Seattle. This was my second year attending the Americans for the Arts annual convention, and I was pretty excited about its location (the convention is in a different city each year; last year was Philadelphia, next year will be Baltimore) because my mother and one of my best friends live there. I was also excited because this convention provides such great opportunities to connect to my colleagues at local arts agencies around the country in a truly meaningful way. This year the Pikes Peak region had four representatives--in addition to me, the fabulous Susan Edmondson of the Bee Vradenburg Foundation and COPPeR board member was there, along with my dear friend (and PeakRadar's Kevin Johnson's fiancee) Amber Cote, executive director of FutureSelf, and Wendy Mike, former executive director and founder of FutureSelf and creativity champ. It was great to have such strong representation from our community-- and I think it's a real sign that our arts community is growing up.

I arrived in Seattle and my mom picked up from the airport. We decided to have a late dinner before she took me to the hotel (thanks to Amber for letting me crash in her room. I would have stayed at mom's but she lives in West Seattle and commuting would have taken away valuable networking time). I have a thing for grocery stores, especially Asian grocery stores, so we went to Uwajimaya.

After yummy sushi and a bahn mi, Mom dropped me at the hotel and headed home. Sidenote: my mother is a working artist and she lives in the coolest place ever -- the remodeled and repurposed Cooper School, which has been converted into an arts center complete with affordable housing for artists, part of the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center. More about that in a later entry.

The conference kicked off with a lively plenary by Bill Ivey, in which we got a behinds-the-scene glimpse at what life in DC was like during the presidential transition. Bill Ivey was chair of the National Endowment for the Arts during President Clinton's administration, and he was also part of the transition team and is the author of Arts, Inc. . One of the most important pieces of advocacy Americans for the Arts completed last year was lobbying to have every single presidential candidate form an official arts policy. I remember hearing about this at last year's conference--it ended up taking on a much bigger scope when Obama was elected, since his was among the strongest arts policies. Here's an interview with Mr. Ivey at the conference in Seattle, courtesy of ArtsJournal.



More coming soon. Just wanted to give you a teaser!

Americans for the Arts - Seattle 2009

I'm tying up loose ends here before I head off to Seattle tomorrow for the annual Americans for the Arts convention. I attended the convention for the first time last year (in Philadelphia) and found it incredibly inspiring. I will post my takeaways and big ideas here when I return. In the meantime, here is a blurb from the incredibly moving 22nd Annual Nancy Hanks lecture on American Arts and Public Policy delivered by Wynton Marsalis at the Kennedy Center in March. If you have a few minutes, please watch this video at the Americans for the Arts website.

This is entitled “The Ballad of American Arts.” Before we sang, we spoke. Before we danced, we walked. Before we wrote, we told stories. Before we told stories, we lived. Those songs, dances, writings allow us to speak to one another across generations.
They gave us an understanding of our commonality long before that DNA told us we are all part of one glorious procession. At any point on the timeline of human history, there are tales to be told of love and loss; glory and shame; profundity and even profound stupidity; tales that deserve retelling, embellishing, and if need be, inventing from whole cloth. This is our story. This is our song. If well sung, it tells us who we are and where we belong.

Robert Lynch in Colorado Springs

Robert Lynch, head of Americans for the Arts, was in town yesterday to give a speech at the 30th annual Arts, Business, Education Consortium luncheon. He stopped by COPPeR in the morning to tell a group of us how Americans for the Arts develops broad-based arts advocacy nationwide.