Rochester Arts and Culture Collaborative January 2015

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:

1. 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.
2. 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
3. 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!
4. 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.

Rochester Arts and Culture Collaborative December 2014

It's been a busy fall for the various communities within RACC and much exciting work is going on. 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!

Supporting Systems Team  - co-leads Anne Black-Sinak and Dave Beal

• Nate Langworthy is working on the Creative Directory on ReVerb.MN website with the goal of including all area “creatives”  - artists and arts organizations (so be sure to check it out!)

• Dave noted that the city budget just voted on does include funding for the arts but with still a shortfall, he is not sure what that funding will entail completely

• Next meeting is Thursday, 12/18

Spaces Team - co-leads Stephen Troutman and Debi Neville

• The team has had two meetings and set an initial goal of completing a complete needs survey (as far as spaces go) of arts and arts orgs.  There is some good representation there, but they are hoping to get better representation of cultural  groups as well.

• Debi Neville is heading up the sub-team working on developing a proposal for the Armory/Senior Center. She has toured the Armory herself and with a group of 6 other team members and has been researching the finances and current uses of the building. Debi has widely distributed a needs survey as a Word document, and has received almost 2 dozen reponses. The survey will also be created in Survey Monkey form for even wider dissemination. 

• There are other entities who may be interested in the space so it is important that a unified arts and culture voice is presented to the public.  Stephen Troutman is working on putting together a Spaces vision document that can be used when team members speak to City Council and other policy makers and influencers. The hope is that these conversations can begin soon

• The Spaces team will meet again after the first of the year.

Programming and Public Art Team - co-leads Mary Ellen Landwehr, Jon Allen, Tom Erickson

• The committee has been meeting regularly and has come up with rough draft of a public art experience. This would be a 3-4 month sculpture tour/exhibit spread out along all of Rochester’s bike trails so that trail users of all types can encounter art any- and every-where along the trail. To highlight the tour and give exposure to the various locations, the team hopes to program different performance experiences around the sculptures, including some one-day multi-media “spectacles”. Jon has begun talking with the Parks and Rec department and the initial response was positive.        

• The team is focusing now on the timeline for having the event in place by summer of 2016, contacting potential collaborators, and lining up funding sources, whether corporate sponsorship or grants through SEMAC and the Legacy funding. They are looking at developing a mobile app that could accompany the tour, and Anthony Rostvold is designing a graphic element that would be the brand or identifier of the event.

• They plan to keep meeting about every other week and welcome any interested parties to be a part of the team.

Finance Team - co-leads Marv Mitchell and Bobby Marines

• This team's emphasis from a financial perspective is that teams need to always be ready to tell potential partners and funders what value their project will add – economically, especially, but also in terms of attracting more people, more interest, more activity.

RACC Steering Committee updates - co-leads Audrey Betcher and Annie Henderson; Elaine Case, facilitator

• Elaine Case, Audrey Betcher and Annie Henderson will be developing a plan of communication/cooperation with the Greater Rochester Arts and Cultural Trust board. Ellen Huston, a member of the Spaces team as well as a Trust board member, has agreed to be liaison between the two organizations.

•  Audrey Betcher has been meeting with city/county planners about the city Master Plan, which will soon be shared with the community in ways they can offer feedback to the city planners. She was asked to tweak the Arts category of feedback, so she’ll be bringing a recommendation that the two Arts bullet points for their process be  a) build arts/cultural spaces and b) invest in public art.

•  As the DMC master plan is now public, team members  and all interested arts and culture advocates are requested to look at it carefully and report any red flags to Audrey so she can make that a part of her feedback.