Yadkin Cultural Arts Center

An important principle related to community engagement work is that things in your own back yard can be just as meaningful as those from exotic (or distant) locales. I won’t make a habit of touting the Piedmont area of North Carolina, but a recent article in the Winston-Salem Journal was too good to pass up. The Yadkin Arts Council in Yadkinville, NC (population 3500) has a new arts center that is celebrating its first birthday. As the result of a $2.4 million renovation of a local restaurant building, YAC has grown from an income budget of $80,000 to $200,000. The building provides office space for the Council and gallery space for artists. Classroom spaces used for arts classes double as facilities for schools, the library, and community organizations. Additionally, a courtyard and internet cafe serve as community gathering places. The current plans provide for raising funds for a Phase II to include a theater for stage and musical productions.

Despite the fact that this is very nearly in my own backyard, I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the project (yet). But I am intrigued by a number of aspects of it. First, a small North Carolina town has absorbed enough research about the economic potential of the arts to make a serious investment. Second, at least for the time being, they seem to be doing fairly well. (Although I am fully aware the internal reality of projects can be less impressive than external indications.) And third, with the emphasis on providing access to the spaces for more than “just” arts events, YAC is positioning itself as a community citizen interested in improving life there in ways that extend beyond the normal confines of arts activities. This “good neighbor” element of arts organizations’ relationships with their communities is an important and insufficiently recognized possibility for substantive engagement.  As one example (as with the YAC), those that have their own space can easily provide “third place” gathering sites to foster relationship-building in a community. . . . I guess there is something I’ll need to write about in the future.

Before I leave this example, I want to put it in a somewhat larger North Carolina context. About 20 years ago, a project was begun in the western counties of the state called Handmade in America. (There’s yet another great topic for a later post.) It is dedicated to economic development growing out of assets existing in the rural communities. The result has been a boom in local arts and crafts activities as the basis for real economic growth. Today, the number of very small towns in Western North Carolina that have to a significant degree staked their economic well-being on local arts and crafts is staggering. For several years I owned a vacation home in the mountains just outside of West Jefferson (population 1100). The historic buildings are covered with murals and there are monthly gallery crawls of the 14 (!) galleries in town as well as artist studio tours offered on a regular basis. I will never forget going on one gallery crawl and walking up some stairs to a combination art gallery and Zen mediation center. Let me repeat that. A Zen meditation center in a rural western North Carolina town with a population of about 1000. If that doesn’t raise your eyebrows, you’ve never been to my neck of the woods. [I just checked out the Ashe County Arts Council’s website and see that the Little Theatre is performing Streetcar Named Desire this fall. I’m not saying they don’t perform Neil Simon, but Streetcar at the community theatre?! Seriously cool.]

These kinds of examples serve as illustrations for me of the value of the arts in many and varied settings to many and varied people, value it is oftentimes easy to lose sight of.

Engage!

Doug

Photo from Yadkin Arts Council website.