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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017 MAC Annual report MERIDIAN ARTS COMMISSION 2017 ANNUAL REPORT  PAGE 1 2017 ANNUAL REPORT It was another good year for the Meridian Arts Commission! The Commission is comprised of nine volunteer commissioners: Stephanie Barnes, Gina Lyon, Mary Jensen, Leslie Mauldin, Randy-B Funk, Bonnie Zahn Griffith, Gretchen Caserotti, Ellen DeAngelis, Claudia Weathermon-Tester, and an ex-officio City Council member, Genesis Milam. MAC’s mission is to develop, advance and nurture all facets of the arts to enhance the quality of life for Meridian residents and its visitors. MAC’s achievements in 2017 included:  Great people coming and going on the Arts Commission! MAC lost Michelle Glaze as an official commissioner early in the year. We were very fortunate that Michelle wanted to stay involved with Meridian Art Week. She was a champion for this campaign and was able to get a lot of local businesses on board. Michelle’s seat was filled by Gina Lyon, who jumped right in to also help Art Week as a member of the committee. Gina is helping MAC develop as a commission by applying her knowledge from serving on a number of other boards in the past. Our 2017 youth commissioner, Taylor Farmer was replaced by Randy-B Funk in the Fall. Randy-B has already been very involved in gallery change outs and is interested in bringing a “Big Draw” to Meridian in 2018.  Another year of shows in Initial Point Gallery featuring the work of Treasure Valley artists! Our volunteers make this gallery work. We are so grateful for their expertise and for the time that they devote to IPG. Our gallery volunteers have put in over 100 hours towards maintaining Initial Point Gallery in 2017. Together with volunteers, commissioners, and Hillary (and some other staff every-once-in-awhile) we managed to fill the gallery for another year.  Bonnie Griffith managed to source out 3D artists to utilize the display cases every month, which allowed us to leave the cases in place in the gallery rather than having to ask John Sweeney to haul them from the gallery to storage in the basement.  One consideration for next year, however, is that we will select a group of months in the summer to intentionally NOT host 3D works. This change was suggested just in case there is ever a Concerts on Broadway performance moved indoors.  The credenza that A.J. Scales (DBA Old Town Woodworking) built for us as storage is working out very well. We’ve received numerous compliments on the piece and hope that having this credenza in City Hall has helped highlight A.J.’s talents.  FY17 Revenue through IPG: $542; Net investment (City): $700  Young Musicians’ and Young Artists’ awards! MAC partnered with the Meridian Symphony Orchestra to award a combined $300 to young musicians to celebrate their achievements and participation in MSO’s Rising Stars. MAC also maintained their $150 partnership with the Meridian School District to select three young artists whose work was MERIDIAN ARTS COMMISSION 2017 ANNUAL REPORT  PAGE 2 awarded monetary prizes ($25 for the elementary school winner, $50 for the middle school winner, and $75 for the high school winner).  Net investment in FY17: $450  Dairy Days Art Show! The Meridian Dairy Board and Stock Show and MAC partnered again to bring the Dairy Days Art Show back this. MAC hosted the event on the Saturday of Dairy Days. We had about thirty artists participate again. This year, to help mitigate risk and provide stronger uniformity, MAC charged a booth fee and rented canopies through Event Rent. Event Rent Staff delivered and set up the canopies on Friday so that the artists would be able to move right in and set up shop in the morning. Many artists really appreciated this added feature, since many of the artists arrive and staff their booths independently, it was one less concern. MAC also purchased ad space in the Meridian Press which featured the names of the participating artists and boosted posts through Facebook. MAC approached community members to sponsor these additional expenses. Support came from The Meridian Dairy Board and Stock Show, Meridian Arts Foundation, Josh Evarts, Circle S. Meridian, and Yong-In Master Lees Taekwondo. The biggest thing that would help the development of the Dairy Days Art Show is the ability to highlight the artists who are participating and promote the show more in addition to the promotion that the Dairy Board does for the rest of the events surrounding Dairy Days.  Revenues in FY17: $2,170; Net investment: $70  Another excellent year of Concerts on Broadway! This year’s free outdoor concert series featured Smooth Avenue Band, the “All New” High Street Party Band, Erin and her Cello, and Geoffrey Castle and his Celtic Night Band featuring Dan Connolly. Opening acts included youth musicians, college students, young performers from Treasure Valley Children’s Theater, and a local adult fiddler. We were able to have a food vendor at all four concerts. As people become more used to food trucks being available at the concerts we hope that the vendors see an increase in sales and willingness to set up shop at Concerts on Broadway. MAC continued our partnership with WineGlass Arts Development for their production management and technical services to make this year’s concerts a success! Without WineGlass Arts Development there would be no Concerts on Broadway.  Net investment: $9,000  Meridian Art Week! MAC, again, partnered with West Ada School District and the Meridian Downtown Business Association to host Meridian’s second annual Art Week. Michelle Glaze recruited most of the businesses who participated this year. We had a total of 22 organizations/artists who participated in events for Art Week this year, not including the individual schools and student teams who came out for the chalk art competition. We had 12 student teams from 7 local high schools participate in our chalk art competition. One additional young artist (a middle schooler) also came out to draw.  Expenses for Meridian Art Week cost: $1,139.27 (~ 33% for advertising for the event). The Meridian Downtown Business Association supported the awards for student artists: $225  Public Art at Heroes Park! MAC committed Meridian Arts in Public Spaces (MAPS) funds to installing a major public artwork in Heroes Park. We used the Park Identities Public Art Roster artists to prepare proposals for this concept. The proposal selected, ‘Journey of MERIDIAN ARTS COMMISSION 2017 ANNUAL REPORT  PAGE 3 Heroes,’ was prepared by Ken McCall. Installation for ‘Journey of Heroes’ was originally slated for installation in September, but that installation was delayed to allow Ken McCall to work on projects for other Meridian parks. The artwork was installed in late December.  Net investment: $72,000  Park Identities Public Art Roster in Use! The Parks Department has continued to work with the artists selected for the park identities public art roster to help plan for signage and developing the identity of new parks – including Keith Bird Legacy Park. We see some great success in this roster for the Parks Department so they can streamline their process of working with these creative vendors.  Installation of more Traffic Box Art! MAC call for new submissions for the digital traffic box repository and established a new roster to select for traffic box wraps. The Meridian Development Corp. sponsored wraps for small boxes in the URA, but these boxes weren’t able to be wrapped by our current vendor. MAC determined that the artwork selected by MDC would be applied to large traffic boxes outside of the URA, since we had completed agreements with the artists already. MAC absorbed the cost of these wraps. Twelve boxes total were wrapped in 2017. The total number of completed wraps throughout the City is now up to 41. About half of these wraps have been paid for through MAC’s budget, the other half have been paid for by sponsors like MDC, Alaska National Insurance, Mayor Tammy and State of the City Sponsors, and more.  Donations totaled $300; Net Investment: $8,702  Public Art Digital Map! We now have a digital map of traffic box wraps and public art. IT helped develop this tool for us and they continue to help us add updates upon request. You can access this through the menu on our www.meridiancity.org/mac page. Tour all of the art in Meridian and learn more about the artists or how that art came to be.  Children’s theater partnership with Treasure Valley Youth Theater! Partnering with a local youth theater is a key component in MAC’s strategic plan. While we normally report on this partnership, this year we wanted to bring Autumn Kersey, TVCT Founder and Executive Director, in as well to speak to the programs led by TVCT. The following information is from Autumn: Of the programs that MAC sponsored The Lion King, Jr.  60 participants including a drumming core and teen mentors  1200 attendees between 4 shows, 2 in Meridian and 2 in Nampa  Tour to SLC with 30 to see TLK and talk back with performers Harriet the Spy  20 participants  400 attendees HONK! Jr.  25 participants  400 attendees 8 in 48 Idaho  60 participants  200 attendees MERIDIAN ARTS COMMISSION 2017 ANNUAL REPORT  PAGE 4 2,375 people directly benefited due to our partnership Other milestones:  Library Tour of Character Maters went to 8 libraries and reached 1,000  Launched our first ever Fall tour of “The Lion, the Witch at the Wardrobe” which reached an estimated 5,700 students and families. In the words of one young boy, “THAT WAS EPIC”!  Despite the loss of our space at 703 N. Main St., we are on track to complete 88 educational classes, camps and workshops by the end of the year. As of Nov. 20, 1,081 students have participated in one of these programs - a 14% increase over last year.  Education, by the numbers: 17% increase in programs offered over the previous year  Theater for Young Audiences, by the numbers: 55% increase in audience reach over the previous year!  Theater for Young Performers, by the numbers: 22% increase in audience reach - not including the 7 performances of the holiday show  Net investment in FY17: $6,000  Community Champions! We’d like to take a moment to thank people from many different organizations who have developed, advanced and nurtured the arts in the City of Meridian. Thank you to Autumn and her team at the Treasure Valley Children’s Theater, to Cara Stone and her team with WineGlass Arts Development, to the Meridian Development Corporation, to the Meridian Dairy Board, to the Meridian Library District staff who help make the arts accessible to people throughout our city, to the wonderful art teachers in the West Ada School District, to our local businesses who display the original work of local artists and support the arts, to the Meridian Arts Foundation, Josh Evarts, Martin Schindler, Lindsey Bowshier, and many more. Thank you!  Budget summary: $13,612 received in donations; $80,702 spent on public art; $30,609.50 spent on programming. Net City investment $97,699.50 THANK YOU MAYOR DE WEERD, COUNCILWOMAN MILAM, AND THE REST OF CITY COUNCIL FOR YOUR SUPPORT OF THE MERIDIAN ARTS COMMISSION!