Happy new year! Here is the latest RACC team update. This is news for you and you are invited to participate and share as much or as little as you choose. If you are interested in joining a team and working with other like-minded volunteers, email raccnews@gmail.com and you will get connected.
Committee reports:
Spaces - Debi Neville and Stephen Troutman co-leads
Debi
Neville’s sub-team working on the repurposing of the Senior Center into an Arts
and Culture Community Center (or whatever the best use turns out to be) is
focusing primarily on these four steps:
- complete the space needs
inventory that’s been sent out – if you haven’t yet had the opportunity to
complete this survey, please do so! This is the surveymonkey link.
- complete the financial
picture as far as possible, both for the facility as a whole and also for
potential users – what their costs to be in the space may be
- connect by phone or
face-to-face with cultural groups and associations – find out needs and
update them on this project. Debi needs assistance with this large task,
so please contact her if you have would like to help make
these connections. There is no art
without culture!
- Develop a timeline for a
proposal, which should be contain a comprehensive vision and business
plan, although it would not be necessary to have every detail finalized.
At least one other group in town has put together quite a
comprehensive proposal that they intend to put forward to the city council and
so this is a very important next step. John Hunziker has agreed to help with
the Senior Center project, especially as we start to navigate the city’s
political process.
The other
Spaces sub-team, led by Stephen Troutman and primarily tasked with the bigger
picture on Spaces, both existing and conceptual, met with Heidi Mestad recently
to get more information about the status of the Chateau. There is no solid news
except that space has been carved out in the DMC plan “Heart of the City” for
the Chateau so we (or any group) are encouraged to bring something
forward. Similar to the Senior Center,
ideas must be brought to the city from interested parties if the Chateau is to
be preserved.
Supporting Systems - Anne Black-Sinak and Dave Beal co-leads
The
Supporting Systems team is splitting into two separate teams: Public Policy
(co-lead Dave Beal) and Communications (co-lead Anne Black-Sinak). This is a natural outcome from the first
large public forum where participants concerns fell roughly under one of those
two headings. Please contact Anne or Dave if you are interested in joining one
of these two new teams.
Public policy team
will focus on policy proposals for and from DMCC, holding the City Council
responsible for adhering to current policies and helping develop new ones, and
also will work on making connections with incoming developers, vis a vis arts
and culture policies related to their projects and the overall city and DMC
master plans.
Communication team
will focus on communication within the arts and culture community – connect
artists and orgs with each other, with projects, with information, with funding
sources, etc.
Programming and Public Art – Mary Ellen Landwehr and Tom Erickson co-leads.
At the team’s
last meeting they were joined by Jenna Bowman, Executive Director of RDA, who shared
with them information about RDA’s upcoming Sculpture Tour (of public art in the
downtown zone), starting in April. She thinks
RDA could be a potential partner for this team’s Art4Trails project (in 2016), possibly
helping with marketing. Bobby Marines
indicated that he would be very interested in tying this event into his 2016
Artz Blitz – either as a kickoff to the tour, or the finale, or in some other
way yet to be thought of.
As the team
goes deeper into their planning for their Arts4Trails project, they are researching
various ways to handle logistics: transportation, installation, and protection of
the art pieces are all major tasks with accompanying costs.
This team’s
next meeting is Feb 2, 6 pm, at the library.
Finance –Bobby Marines, co-lead
Bobby Marines
has agreed to serve as co-lead of the Finance team. He is hoping to get to all
the team meetings and learn about what their financial needs are and how the
Finance team and RACC in general can assist. For example, RACC or the Finance
team could host a session with staff from SEMAC about regional and state art grants.
RACC steering committee - Audrey Betcher and Annie Henderson, co-leads
The monthly meeting, facilitated by Elaine Case, was held on Tuesday, Jan 20, 2015 for team leads to update each other about these various projects (information then presented in this newsletter).
Minutes are also available upon request.
All
team meetings are open to any and all interested persons, so please contact raccnews@gmail.com (or a co-lead) for information on time and place. Also, find us on facebook at www.facebook.com/rochesterartsandculturecollaborative and on twitter @RACCMN Help us help others learn about RACC to get informed and involved.
