Louisville, KY (September 28, 2016) – More than 220 people participated in an Arts Summit on Tuesday hosted by the Steering Committee of the Greater Louisville Master Plan for the Arts. The goal of the event, which was held at the Muhammad Ali Center, was to engage participants in energizing dialogue that would lead to the development of strategies for the plan. To accomplish this, attendees broke into five groups to brainstorm about strategies that would address the priorities that have already been identified by the community engagement phase of the planning process. Those priorities include: access, cultivation, diversity & social inclusion, education, and promotion.
The Arts Summit also included presentations by community leaders including Mayor Greg Fischer, Kris Kimel, Theo Edmonds, Ben Reno-Weber, Kim Baker, and featured speaker Victoria Rogers from the Knight Foundation, who addressed the current state of the arts, model programs from across the country, what future trends might look like, and how the arts are vital to our community, cultural tourism, economic development and talent attraction.
In order to arrive at the priorities that were discussed at the Arts Summit, facilitators of the Greater Louisville Master Plan for the Arts recently completed extensive community outreach through various public surveys and in-person conversations. The widespread outreach, which adequately reflects the appropriate diversity of the demographic composition of the 12-county area of our community, produced not only the public priorities, but also some key findings. For example, the primary reason for respondents to participate in arts and cultural events is to socialize with friends and family. In addition, most respondents thought the overall quality of arts and cultural offerings in Greater Louisville was high. Downtown Louisville was also reported as a primary place of arts participation, with strong interest in local-neighborhood activities.
Next steps for facilitators in the planning process include hosting development charrettes and creating the implementation plan.
The Master Plan and implementation strategy is expected to be finalized by the end of 2016 and will articulate a common platform of goals and strategies aimed at building alignment, leveraging resources, and positioning the Louisville region’s arts and cultural sector to lead and support the community’s overall vision for the future.
For more information or to sign up to receive project news and updates, visit GreaterLouisvilleArts.com, email GreaterLouisvilleArts@gmail.com or call (502) 693-5566. Also, you can follow along at Facebook.com/LouisvilleArtsPlan or on Twitter at @LouArtsPlan.
