Cultural plan identifies strong, but under-resourced, arts community – Bennington Banner

By Patricia LeBoeuf, Bennington Banner

Bennington County’s cultural community buzzes with activity — but arts and culture in the county are also undervalued, under-resourced and under-utilized.

That’s the conclusion of the Bennington County Cultural Plan, released in May after nearly a year’s worth of work. The plan drew on conversations, interviews, focus groups and a public online survey that had over 500 responses. It was led by a 19-member steering committee.

The plan details a lack of understanding and acknowledgment of the economic impact of art, along with not enough investment in the arts, strained nonprofits, isolated artists, poor cultural infrastructure and a perception that the arts are only for tourists.

But the arts sector in the county is “incredibly vibrant,” said plan author Julia Dixon, a creative economy and planning consultant.

It doesn’t necessarily call for more programming — there’s just a lack of “connective tissue,” she said.

The project’s leadership team consisted of Bennington Community Development Director Shannon Barsotti, Zirwat Chowdhury, community development director for the town of Bennington until earlier this year and Pauline Moore, economic development coordinator for the town of Manchester.

The steering committee, which included Barsotti, Chowdhury and Moore, also provided oversight. The committee plans to continue to meet informally, Barsotti said.

Goals and strategies

The plan aims to strengthen the county’s creative economy and create infrastructure that connects creatives to each other and the greater community. The plan identifies four goals: building on the county’s legacy as a launchpad for groundbreaking art, leveraging the county’s resources to support creatives and the creative economy, establishing outreach programs and resources to bridge community divides and engaging leaders throughout the region to develop collaborations.

The plan also identifies key groups and organizations for implementing its six strategies, including the Bennington Area Arts Council, Bennington Area Chamber of Commerce, the Vermont Arts Exchange and the Bennington County Regional Commission.

Strategies include establishing a toolkit for local producers and one for creative consumers, and creating an internal cultural advocacy message and an external cultural tourism message.

The cultural plan is meant for “anybody, literally anybody,” Dixon said.

“I laid out this plan purposefully to be easy for anybody to use it,” she said. “I really think of this plan as a tool, and not just a document.”

To that end, she said, the plan includes worksheets for each of the 22 tactics it lists for its strategies. Tactics including expanding existing financial and business training programs, coordinating countywide open studios and finding opportunities to collaboratively promote cultural activities.

“It’s the who, what, when, where, why for whatever you want to do,” Dixon said of the worksheets. Each one has specific recommendations, along with suggestions for partners and funding and an example of such a tactic used in a similar-size community.

Barsotti said she found the planning worksheets particularly helpful.

“I personally have done a lot of community organizing, and I found it so useful,” she said. “Not everyone is going to be interested in reading a hundred-page plan.”

`Something of a road map’

Donald Campbell, chairman of the Bennington Select Board, called the plan “something of a road map.”

It provides a series of strategies, as opposed to just vague ideas, he said.

“I love the plan,” he said. “I think it’s great that we have some very specific direction for the arts in the Shires. And that’s nice because it’s not just Bennington anymore. It’s really all Bennington County they’re looking at.”

Campbell also addressed the finding that art tends to be undervalued in the county, and said that officials would love to make the arts a bigger part of the community and economy.

“These plans are always tough, because it’s one thing to plan — it’s another thing to do,” he said.

Campbell pointed to the Bennington Area Arts Council as a “very engaged group” to implement the plan.

“I’m really enthusiastic about the plan, given that we have very good partners that are going to take it and run with it,” he said. “[I’m] really looking forward to trying to find ways to support moving forward.”

Alexina Jones, president of the arts council, said the plan is already being put into action.

“The plan just provides more of a roadmap for new ideas that come along, or for existing projects to be able to come along,” she said.

She brought up the forthcoming Bennington Arts Weekend from Aug. 2-4, which is a collaboration between the arts council, the VAE, other organizations and local businesses. It will include the 41st annual Southern Vermont Art & Craft Festival and the Homebrew Festival at 4 Corners North, along with a local art pop-up tent and music shows.

“The plan itself, if you’ve looked at it — it’s a toolkit for anybody who wants to be able to build a project,” she said. “There’s all kinds of little things that are happening.”

She also brought up the Summer Sonatina’s recent “The Bennington Stomp.” That performance by four pianists and a chorus of 50 piano camp students brought a crowd of hundreds to the Four Corners in Bennington on Saturday, July 29.

Importance of advocacy

Without this plan, arts and culture would still continue to thrive in the area, Dixon said.

But, Dixon said, in her conversations with local people and through reading prior economic development plans, she learned that arts and culture had been relegated to “having this impact on quality of life.”

She said this didn’t necessarily acknowledge the arts as businesses that make money, hire people and produce products. That’s why the advocacy strategy of the cultural plan is so important, she said.

“Advocacy is a huge part of this plan, creating tools and infrastructure and graphics and just messaging that everybody in Bennington can use to talk about arts and culture and how important it is,” she said.

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Similarly, Barsotti said her takeaway from the plan has to do with the overarching nature of the arts.

“The takeaway I would have from this plan is not separating the arts into their own category,” she said. “The arts can be integrated into everything we do.”

The other five strategies listed in the plan really supplement this focus on advocacy, Dixon said.

A focus on advocacy — changing people’s thoughts about the impact of art — also has real-world benefits, as a lot of times, this kind of advocacy can make it easier for artists to get loans and go through permitting processes, she said.

“Advocacy is an educational tool,” she said. “It educates people on why arts is important and what it means. That in turn opens up resources for people in the sector. People see arts businesses as worth investing in.”

A 2014 economic impact study commissioned by the Vermont Arts Council revealed that four specific arts businesses (artists, arts promoters and agents, museums and historic sites and performing arts companies) generated over $551 million in economic activity statewide and produced $14.7 million in state and local taxes.

In 2018, the National Center for Arts Research named Bennington County the seventh-most arts vibrant small community in America. In 2017, it was ranked third in its category.

Overarching issues

Along with goals, strategies and tactics, the plan also identifies five overarching issues related to arts in the county.

These challenges are outlined as: divisions in geography, class, culture, and politics, along with an aging and declining population, lack of affordable, market-rate housing across the country, financial resources not available to or not accessed by the creative community and the economic development climate, which under-appreciates the creative economy and its scope, needs and multi-faceted impact, according to the plan.

“What stuck out to me is — I think sometimes Bennington in general isn’t great at celebrating what we do have,” Barsotti said.”There’s sort of an issue of self-esteem. Something like this could be a point of pride.”

The challenges listed in the plan ring true, she said, and are true across the board in Vermont, not just in Bennington.

One thing that struck her, she said, is the perception that the arts aren’t for residents of the county.

“It’s something that we can hopefully change,” she said. And organizations like the VAE are doing that by providing events that show art-making is for everyone, she said.

“One of the things going forward that’s really valuable is to have people communicating, particularly across the whole county,” Barsotti said. Even convening the steering committee for the plan was itself “a good step forward” in that regard, she said.

The road to the plan

The area has been working toward a cultural plan for years. The effort has roots in Bennington’s participation in a Community Visit Program in 2012, which identified a goal of making downtown Bennington a destination. In 2013, the Better Bennington Corporation also partnered with the Bennington County Regional Commission to host three cultural summits, two of which focused on creating a cultural plan for the town.

The 2015 Bennington County Regional Plan recognized the importance of collaboration in arts-driven economic development and recommended the development of something akin to a cultural plan. Similarly, the 2016 Northshire Economic Development Strategy Report acknowledged the creative economy as a vital industry in the region and called for collaboration, joint marketing and asset mapping to support it.

In 2017, Bennington and Manchester jointly applied for a Municipal Planning Grant through the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development to formally develop a countywide cultural plan.

The cultural plan project was made possible by the Municipal Planning Grant Program administered by the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, as well as a staff match provided by the BCRC.

Once efforts began in earnest in April 2018, it took a little over a year to complete the plan.

The project’s five phases included research and review, data collection, information synthesis, drafting and feedback, and refinement and publication.

Public engagement response

The research process in Phase I involved a comprehensive analysis of the geography, cultural community and economic development climate of Bennington County, utilizing over 40 reports, studies and supporting documents, along with tours of communities and meetings. During data collection, individual interviews, focus groups and a public survey were utilized, and their data compiled into an analysis identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges for the county’s creative community, according to the plan.

The most-often identified strengths were an enthusiastic arts community, extensive cultural history, seeing events as important and strong arts education.

Commonly identified weaknesses for arts in the community were: capacity limitations, elitism; socioeconomic or generational art and a need to collaborate more.

A desire to collaborate more was also found under identified opportunities, along with relationships to neighboring communities, hospitality and arts/culture and farming/agriculture and arts/culture.

Respondents also identified the divide between the north and south of the county as a key threat, including competition for audience/donors.

Of the 540 public survey respondents, responses were evenly split between three age groups: 31 percent between 30 and 49, 33 percent between 50 and 64 and 30 percent 65 years old or older. Survey responses varied by county, with 12 percent from the Northshire and 74 percent from the Southshire.

The greatest portion — 58 percent — were audience members, while 48 percent were cultural enthusiasts, 35 percent artists or creators and 21 percent supporters. Educators, volunteers, public officials, board members of cultural non-profits, owners of creative businesses and other respondents were also represented.

Overall, 86 percent of respondents supported the idea of a Bennington County Cultural Plan, and overall engagement with arts and culture in the county is “very high.”

Music was the number one activity respondents felt is missing from the county. Fifty-eight percent of respondents also mentioned missing five specific types of performing arts: music, dance, film, theater and comedy. Survey respondents most commonly said “time” was their biggest barrier to participation in the arts — either limited personal time or conflicted timing of scheduled activities.

Survey results also differed markedly between north and south in some areas.

In public survey responses, 21 percent of Southshire respondents and 11 percent of Northshire respondents disagreed that the county had wide variety of creative activities.

Only 38 percent of respondents from the Southshire felt that arts and culture are important to civic engagement, while 80 percent of respondents from the Northshire felt that way.

Patricia LeBoeuf can be reached at pleboeuf@benningtonbanner.com, at @BAN_pleboeuf on Twitter and 802-447-7567, ext. 118.

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