[Publib] RE: Working with Arts and Cultural Organization

[Michael Golrick]

Hi Barbara-

I currently serve as the President of Artforce which includes the major
cultural institutions in Bridgeport. Artforce was founded to do some
cooperative marketing of the city. While there once was some funding,
that has dried up in recent years and the impetus for continuing is
dwindling, but it is still good to have a forum to meet and share
information.

We talked about this idea a number of years ago. The problems we
stumbled on were: where would this person be housed, how would they be
paid, and when push comes to shove where would allegiance lie? Recently
two of the performing arts venues (The Klein Memorial Auditorium and the
Playhouse on the Green) merged some of their operations to form
Artsport, but even that had issues.

Funders like the idea because, theoretically they can get out from
individual grant requests. So far, my experience has been that the
funders "win" from giving out less money, and the organizations and the
public loose because there are fewer cultural events.

Just one opinion!

Michael 

Michael A. Golrick              mgolrick at bridgeportpubliclibrary.org
City Librarian                  http://www.bridgeportpubliclibrary.org
Bridgeport Public Library

ALA Councilor-at-Large


-----Original Message-----
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:00:18 -0400
From: "Barbara McDade" <bmcdade at bpl.lib.me.us>
Subject: [Publib] Working with Arts and Cultural Organization
To: <publib at webjunction.org>
Message-ID: <DEEBKNHNFJKGDDOLHCIKEEEGDPAA.bmcdade at bpl.lib.me.us>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

     Our Library meets once a month with the other arts and cultural
organizations in town (the symphony, museums, ballet, etc.).  At today's
meeting we talked about hiring one person or firm to be the development
director for all of us:  look for funding opportunities out of state,
give
advise on each organizations annual campaigns, find grant opportunities,
etc.  Growing out of that idea was one for doing marketing campaigns for
all
of our organizations.
    Do any of you on the list do this already--work with other
arts/cultural
organizations for development or marketing?  How has it worked out?
What
were the advantageous and what should we look out for?
     Thanks,

Barbara A. McDade
Director
Bangor Public Library
145 Harlow Street
Bangor, ME 04401
947-8336
www.bpl.lib.me.us