The Arts and Culture Alliance of Chatham County’s vision is to provide a diverse, vibrant, prosperous, and sustainable arts and culture industry in Chatham County.
September 7 Coffee Hour Recap

September 7 Coffee Hour Recap

There was a fantastic turnout to the coffee hour, and I believe there was full representation from the arts and culture industry. We had a great conversation to get things moving along to real action. 

The takeaways, however, were that the industry needs to leverage itself and convince our elected officials, at all levels, that arts and culture is indeed good business. SEDA, Chamber of Commerce, and other pro-business associations also need to be convinced of this too and resources allocated to the same. This is going to require a lot of education and the correcting of perceptions, but it can be done. It will just take some time. 

The other major takeaway was the unification of the industry and knocking down the silos for the greater good, i.e. cross-collaboration, cross-promotion, and promotion of the entire industry in and outside of the county.

Finally, from the survey cards left behind, funding levels, workshop opportunities to help with capacity building, marketing, revenue diversification were of interest, as well as more educational opportunities for youth, and an industry-wide showcase festival.