April 30 Transcrip.d… · Web viewthat, actually, public dialogue grew. What we’re going to talk about is the initiatives and changes that local attractions need to make to continue

SB2 Panel Discussion and Q&A Transcript2013-14 Series in Regional Collaboration—Produced by SRQ Media Group

“Arts & Culture As Economic Drivers”Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 (5:30-7pm)

Moderator: Wes Roberts

Opening Presenter: Elliot Falcione, Executive Director of the Bradenton Area Convention & Visitors Bureau

Panelists: Jim Shirley, Executive Director of Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota CountyDenise Kowal, Founder and President of Sarasota Chalk Festival

Johnette Isham, Founding Director of Realize BradentonMark Rodgers, Curator of DaVinci Exhibits

Wes Roberts: I guess I should say first, I’m Wes Roberts, I’m the publisher with SRQ Magazine. I’m also a Sarasota-native. My wife and I founded SRQ 16 years ago and at that time we chose SRQ as the name of the magazine and the name of our company, specifically, because it covered both counties. As many in this room know, the history of the connection and cooperation between the two counties has not always been as successful as it is today. I think, and hopefully that’s something we’ll talk about, there’s been this tremendous shift from almost a status quo of not working together towards a status quo of working together which is really tremendous and something that, again, my wife and I have both been happy to see and to help make happen through our company. Good morning, welcome to…good morning, it says (laughter.) Part of the good news of SB2’s that are here for at IMG, are evening or lunch, as opposed to getting up at the crack of dawn. This topic today is Arts and Culture as Economic Drivers and I know you all already know that, I hope everyone also entered the raffle. The panelists today are regional leaders, they’re able to speak to how arts and culture attract tourism and stimulate economic activity. Most importantly, a big personal thank you to Elliot Falcione and Christ Chaccio and Jason Puckett of IMG is here. The launch of this expansion of the SB2 dialogues would not be possible without the support of IMG, without the support of Elliot in particular, in fact Elliot was on a panel discussion when he called me out and said, “Stop saying Manatee, you need to say Bradenton, we’ve decided that’s are branding.” And I said, “Well, you know, I think you need to help us have a northern country SB2 event.” From that, actually, public dialogue grew. What we’re going to talk about is the initiatives and changes

TRANSCRIPT: SB2 EVENT PRODUCED BY SRQ MEDIA GROUP: 4/30/2014: ©Copyright SRQ Media Group.

that local attractions need to make to continue the opportunities we have and perhaps more importantly how we can collaboratively increase our opportunities. As I said the host sponsors are the Bradenton Area Convention and Business Bureau and our champion sponsors are IMG academy, so put your hands together for those two organizations. We have a guest speaker today of incredible accomplishments, she is not listed on the invite, I’m going to say a few words about her so that she can introduce and incredible program that really is pertinent to the topic today-the Honorable Catherine Harris is hard to introduce because her accomplishments are so impressive and diverse that my introduction would run longer than the time that she has allotted to share. A forth generation Floridian who has served as an United States Representative, a Congresswomen, a State Senator, an Elected Secretary of State, with professional expertise as a IBM Executive and a VP of a commercial real-estate firm. The newest chapter in her distinguished career of public service has been championing the efforts of the showcase Sarasota/Bradenton as the host of four major modern Quadrathlon events including the 2014 Modern Quadrathlon world cup finals. Please join me in welcoming the Honorable Catherine Harris.

[Catherine Harris]: Thank you, and it’s such an honor to be here before you and I could almost go around the room to the person and thank each one of you because so many of you are behind making this happen and if you’re not then you will be, I’m sure. This is where it takes a whole community to make this happen and if it were not for the two counties coming together I don’t think we would’ve won the bid for this World Cup Finals. Quadrathlon is an Olympic sport, so just by virtue of getting to have the Olympic rings, that’s a multi-billion dollar logo and we are opting and really competing one day to hopefully host and have the opportunity to continue to keep those rings here permanently. But the World Cup final, and because it is a Olympic sport, will come here, is the most elegant of all the Olympic sports and the final is the most prestigious of all the world cups. Quadrathlon is based on a 19th century French soldier who finds himself behind enemy lines and must necessarily get his message to the general so he has to swim across the river. It’s really, really exciting. We’ll host it in the morning at Selby Aquatic Center with the 200-meter swim and the fencing round-robin. Then, in the afternoon, that’s when most people will come, will be the finals of the fencing, the horse hunt or jump and then running and shooting. The first event is June 5th.

Wes Roberts: Now the next person that we’re going to introduce is our opening presenter, it is Elliot Falcione, Executive Director of the Bradenton Area Convention and Investors Bureau, Elliot and the bureau is also to be thanked for our venue today. A native of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Elliot spent the first 6 years of his work career as the assistant director of operations with the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club. His 20 years with the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau have


seen him repeatedly chosen for greater and greater responsibilities until reaching his current role as Executive Director. One of Elliot’s favorite quotes is, “You can become a leader in your industry by being better more prolific and more helpful than everyone else in your industry.” With this help me welcome Elliot.

[Elliot Falcione]: I’ve never sat behind a lecture at a setting like this. Welcome, just to touch upon Catherine Harris’ Bradenton Quadtrathon, we believe in that event, Sarasota believes in that event. Really bring the Olympic greatness to Sarasota/Bradenton in 2015 is something special. It creates impressions in the marketplace of our area, because remember, we’re competing for business and we need that market share to be able to compete in good times and in bad times. That’s what sets us apart more than anything else, it’s the Olympic games coming here. So, whatever we all can do to support that, it’s going to be a great thing. Just to touch upon this beautiful estate we’re at right now, 16.5 acres, all bayfront, by Manatee County government, you’re sitting in an 11,500 sq-ft mansion with 21 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. You’re looking at about 4 million dollars in renovations since 1994 and without the support of the board of county commissioners, the state of florida, former senator John Mcaab, got us ¾ of a million dollars to help renovate this place and Crosby foundation, we wouldn’t be sitting here enjoying this beautiful venue. It’s ours forever, it’s a joll, I chuckle when it’s a Sarasota, FL address because it’s the best of both worlds. It’s something special. We facilitate about 160 private events a year here, a lot of them destination weddings which means millions of dollars to our county area we also do theater here as well and other types of arts and cultures. To introduce a few people, Dave with the chair of our foundation. Dave will be offering tours after the event. We all know the adage that you’re only as good as the people around you and I wouldn’t be any good without the support of the staff. Just quickly, they said they’d give me ten minutes, I needed an hour, so, we cut a deal that we would sponsor this even at the beginning of the hour. Sarasota/Bradenton, I think we’ve all acknowledged that sometimes Sarasota is different compared to Bradenton, I think that’s a good thing, that there’s contrast there, that there’s ways to compliment the two cities. We all know that visitors come in can care less that there’s a Manatee County or a Sarasota County, they could care less if there’s a Sarasota or a Bradenton; they don’t say, “Honey, can you turn around? We’re getting ready to go into the occupied zone.” But we all know, and I’m not afraid to acknowledge this, that Bradenton was kind of asleep at the wheel for a lot of years and up until that mayor right there, Wayne Posten, took the seat, that the leadership of his city council, Bradenton is on its way and it’s a renaissance that is just exciting to watch. And when we get opportunities to bring in large events, and Jeanette, who you’ll talk about a little bit later, in a positive way, there are so many neat things happening in Bradenton


which really makes us excited to showcase the Bradenton area-key word: area, a geographical locator and that’s why we got away from Manatee because you can’t find Manatee on a map, geographical locator. Or we promoted Ana Marie Island, Longboat Key, Lakewood Ranch, Palmetto, absolutely the key word-area. We don’t want to compete like two different brands, like Pepsi and Coke, let’s compliment each other. I was driving down here and I thought, “What is going to get us to continue to grow these communities?” You drive up and down this, I call it depressed Tamiami Trail, because to a certain extent it’s still kind of depressed, but you have this asset, the beautiful University of South Florida, all the way to the Ritz Carlton. How do we continue to work together to redevelop the area that really is a future educational arts and culture corridor and really to build the arts and all the arts right along the bay and Sarasota is the bookend. You need stake-holders, like you all, to get involved. The elected officials can only do so much. You all vote the elected officials in, so let’s get involved and there’s one example I thought of because I have a lot of family from Alabama. Look it up, google the name of someone named Dr. David Broner, and he has worked for the Florida retirement system of Alabama that was one of the poorest retirement systems in the state of Alabama and downtown Montgomery was devastating—you had racial issues, no business could go in there, and David came up with an idea of building buildings, coming up with a master plan, and driving new business and arts and culture was a big part of that.

[Johnette Isham]: My name is Johnette Isham, I am the executive director of Realize Bradenton and new arts has always been a powerful force in my life and I think it started in 5 th grade when I won the “Best Bulletin Board” competition, I did, but that was followed by, when I was a freshmen in fine arts, my calligraphy teacher, who was nationally known, Dr. Huchikuba, and he had us do traditional calligraphy with paintbrushes and pens but the best thing is we did calligraphy with industrial mops on sheets collaboratively and the horrible part of that class was after each assignment Dr. Huchikuba had us rip up our best work and that was terrifying as a young 18 year old. What that really taught me is that the arts are collaborative, the arts are a process, they shouldn’t be malicious, and really that led to my journey to go from fine arts to design and really I define the arts very broadly as arts and design because design is interactive process, a cyclical process, analyzing, researching, prototyping, and trying it, changing it and I’m old enough now, almost old as Shirley, and so, you know, to get to that point in your life when you kind of look back and sew that thread using art and design for community benefit started after I worked as a designer for polaroid in Cambridge, and I got about two-million dollars from the national endowment and other resources to get young preschool kids engaged in exploring document and doing community service through the arts. And that shortly followed up when I was hired by Ringling School and using a creative and collaborative process with the facility and those in higher-end, like Denise,


know that at times like herding cats but you really can get people to work together with a guiding vision and a real process and the school went from a college to a developed liberal arts program under Dr. Christ Janer, in technology and the digital arts and that same process of using design thinking and creative arts helped us use art and healing at that amazing center for building hope in Lakewood Ranch and I’m so fortunate and I’ll say after living a quarter of a century in the museum district in Sarasota, 5 months ago I moved to downtown Bradenton as the founding director for Realize Bradenton so, two-months out here we get to Bradenton every day but it’s again, using the arts for cultural tourism or art to activate public spaces, public arts and education and festivals. There are so many partners, so from tearing up my best and favorite work using industrial mops with a group of kids, you know, what really led to where I’m at now; collaboration, creativity, get it done for greater community benefit.

[Mark Rodgers] My name is Mark Rodgers and I am director of the DaVinci machines exhibition at the Museum of Leonardo DaVinci in Florence Italy, thank you so much. My company we are the north American producers of the DaVinci machines exhibition from the Museum of Leonardo DaVinci in Florence Italy but they actually have four exhibits that they are bringing to the world, actually, they have the machines exhibition, they have the one called the Julius Ceasar and they have another DaVinci one called (something) of Robotics, they only made one of those, they made three of the ones we have in Bradenton, they made one for Europe, one for Asia and one for North America which is this one but also, the fourth exhibit they made was DaVinci (something) of Robotics, they only made one of those and it’s actually over in Asia right now and they know when they send it to me they’re never going to get it back so that’s why they haven’t yet. So as producers it’s our jobs to find different things in the country and to move them around the country and get them set up and operated and so forth. And it’s time for us to be associated with these gentlemen. Ear-brush in a life, you know how kids are, when I was a young guy I was in grade school, my mother came up to us one day, my brother and I, and said, “I got tickets for this play and I really want you to come.” This is how kids are, I go, “Yeah, mom, I’ll go if I have to.” Well, she hauled my brother and I down to the American Theater in St. Louis to see Jose Ferrer, the lead in (something) and if that didn’t put you on a different path nothing in life ever would. So, that just started our love affair with the theater and the spoken word and so all the time, a young man up until now, I’ve really just formed a basis of what it means to, what arts and what theater and what the spoken word and how it can move and change lives and so on. And that’s everything we do, we tried to do our exhibit up there. When you come into our exhibit up there it’s totally different. There’s no way you can come out of our exhibit and not be changed in a way and that’s what we try to do every day. And I told the staff up there, everyday, that we are not running an exhibit everyday we are putting


on an eight-hour television show. Everyone that comes in there, every day, every minute of the day, has to get the same experience, they get the same thing, we have to bring to life and make it important to their life. I express that to my mother it all came down to when I saw (something) at the American Theater.

[Jim Shirley] I’m Jim Shirley the Executive Director of Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County and I feel like a true fish out of water with all you folks. I grew up as a jock in Arkansas and we were to talk about a place with real culture and arts and whole lot of things that did not promote that, that would probably be the place. But I’ll tell you right now, the thing that changed my life, I was fortunate that when I was in 11th grade, I had an English teacher who decided that we were, by golly, going to learn about cultural literature and hope and I thought she was a woman from mars. What I found in that time with that woman was the power of the written and spoken word. The way that it could move my heart and soul, which was totally oriented towards sports and other activities in ways I wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t know and I didn’t understand, and then I read a book by a guy that was at that time the Mayor of San Francisco, it was about the semantic parboil and how words can form not only relationships and plots and concepts they can move governments. So mine was not the visual arts it was not performance arts we just simply didn’t have that but as I moved beyond that phase, I begun to get exposed to and I knew from that moment on that there was something in my life that had been missing, a power there that was greater than I understood and I’m looking to find out a way to understand it, so I became a salesman, and I was very successful but I always went back to those roots and understanding the power of words, the power of thought, the power of literature or people that weren’t afraid to step out and do something different—different than me which was very easy to do if you were in the arts and it’s never left me. So, when I came here full time several years ago, and I looked at the Sarasota/Bradenton area and I looked into the communities that live here and I said, “What makes this community different?” We have wonderful beaches, we have wonderful weather but most of all we were a community of the arts. People came here because they were drawn here, they were driven here, they just happened to show up and not know what was here and they decided to stay. We have the powerful human thing. So, what brought me to the arts? What is that power? What makes it happen to all of us? That’s what happened here today because It is truly, without question, one of the greatest treasures to the world be, it is not my opinion it’s just a fact, because the arts are here, it’s because we’re here, because we want to be here and I’m just excited that we have opportunities and that’s what brought me here.

Wes Roberts: Thank you, Jim. Um, Jim Shirley, I didn’t see you on the invite so I’m not even sure how you got at the table, actually. Is that hand written? As a late arrival I’m going to throw you the first question, to challenge you a little bit. It actually feeds into exactly what you were just talking about. As a native of Sarasota, growing up here, one of the key brands that we always hear was “Arts Capital,” which is that Sarasota was described as the arts capital of the Southeast. Is that true? Does that mean something?


[Jim Shirley] Yes, it’s true and yes, it means something. And I think if we look at realism there are many wonderful beach communities in the state of Florida, but if you look at communities whether it’s Fort Lauderdale or Miami and Miami is a wonderful community, but if you look at the amount of art and culture diversity found in these two county area, for a community of its size to have a symphony, an opera house, a ballet and several museums, these qualities, you just do not find these types of amenities in normal communities around the country, whether you’re in…you can pick your place, I can give you a general idea of what we had in Santa Fey: Wonderful, wonderful community. If you look at it, Santa Fey is a community of visual arts and it’s a wonderful place, but if you look at what we actually have here. We did a survey five years ago, I wanted to look at all of our supporters of the arts and why they came here, what brought them to this area. I thought the answer to the question was going to be, “I came here because of the arts,” and that was not the answer. When we asked these people, the real patrons of the arts here, they came here because mom and dad had a place here, because they were invited, they came here for a meeting and I found out about the arts in this area and how much I could be involved in them and how good they were and I decided to stay. So, the answer is yes, we are a community of the arts, I think we are the cultural capital of Florida and probably the southeast of the United States.

Wes Roberts: I’m going to lead off of that and take the next question to Steve. We were just hearing from the honorable Catherine Harris about the explosion of sports development in our region and I think at the Ringling clearly a museum where a room is a room, it’s got to be considered high-art in a way, people may seem at odds with sports, perhaps not with the previous answer being an ex-jock, but, do see that that’s a competition for our arts community. Are sports going to be the negative sum game here?

[Steve]: No, absolutely not. I think the investment in sports marketing right now that’s going on with the CVB Sarasota and also, the CVB in Bradenton is terrific. Sports marketing is sort of a niche market in marketing. So far, it’s been growing fairly well over the last three or four years it’s grown about 50% in expenditures and also in what they’re bringing in to the community by families staying here and visitors traveling and what they leave behind as far as funds they stem here. The arts are over three times that impact right now and also, the expenditures that people leave here, is significantly larger—they stay longer, they spend more; they tend to spend more, they stay and they tend to have a little more cash that they can leave behind and so the impact here, at least from the Sarasota CVB, to look at it over the last 2013, we had 250,000 some visitors come to Sarasota specifically to see arts. They had 90,000 people coming to Sarasota specifically to see sports. In the arts events the impact of that is significantly higher, the percentage of money spent is significantly higher. They estimate a national firm that came in and did a study here estimated the impact in 2013 was about 500 million dollars here, which is significantly higher even than the Americans For The Arts estimate about the financial impact here. Sports are less but still a very important part about 150 million dollar impact here. So, getting back to the question, I think we work together, I think we work together in a great way. I’ll tell you, I love it when the Oreoles are playing, as soon as


we have a rainy day we have all these Oreoles uniforms coming in. And so, anything that brings people into the community, they’re going to come and any trip that can get people to come here, once they come by and they explore and they check out the community, they find the arts and they find other sports activities and they, of course, find the beaches. So, we’re all working towards synergy creating this Bradenton/Sarasota community, given that creating a beautiful place to live and a beautiful place to visit. Finally, one last comment on this question is I think in sports marketing, except maybe around IMG, you don’t get a lot of people relocating here, like you don’t get a lot of Baltimoreans relocating to be close to their team, they might stay for a period of time but they don’t necessarily buy a house. But I think in the visual arts we see, and the performing arts, we see more and more people choosing to locate here because of the quality of the arts and what they can do and they’re very active when they’re here.

Wes Roberts: And so, continuing with the art connection, when you were looking at the location for the DaVinci expedition, I imagine you did a lot of research about the region where you were coming, and why you thought people here would be interested in the doodles of a long dead Italian, a very important long dead Italian.

[Mark Rodgers]: I want to tell a ten second story before I get to that, but to help emphasize what I want to say. When my brother and I got out of college, we had gotten a college degree but we were really into music, we wanted to go up to Berklee and get some musical training and we went in there because we got an apartment up there. At the time there weren’t any cellphones and we had to get our phone line hooked up and we went to our apartment. We waited all day for the phone guy to come on by, right? And he finally comes up and he gets in and he hooked up a little tome to the phone line up in the apartment and then he’d go down to the basement. So, I followed the phone guy to the bottom of the basement, so, I walk down there and he finds this phone and then out of the wall comes this huge, like, 6 inch thing that has all these wires on it. I mean, there must have been thousands of wires and I said to the phone guy, “How in the world are you going to find the one that goes up to my apartment?” And he said to me, “First of all, you got to want to. And then when you get then one by one 15 or 20 minutes later you find the one you want.” The thing that I tell this story for, fast forward now to when we got down here. That the reason I think this, and I would not being saying this if it was a bad deal I’d tell you, the reason that impressed me was the very first meeting and everybody in Bradenton and everybody in Sarasota, everyone wants this to happen. Everybody is working together. This is the 4th stop in the U.S. tour, we went to L.A. about four and half years ago, and then to St. Louis, went to Denver and then in a number of places we’d show up people and all the guys would show up and one of the major cities we were in, and I won’t say which one, the sales rep comes in from the CAV(?) and they talk us out of 1,000 dollars a month to join the CAV(?) and I wrote them checks and sent them to the person at the CAV(?) that person left and we never heard from them again. Never. Nobody came by and said, “Hey, how’s it going around here?” I mean, it’s generally the same in every one of the cities been to. Ever since we’ve been here, from the very first meeting, everybody wants to get the wants to hear the thing, The


Visitors Convention Bureau, the South Florida Museum, the, everybody, The Realize Bradenton. The one gentleman has a booth down here every Saturday morning at the farmer’s market. At our exhibit we unload these tables there we tell every one of the merchants bring your brochures, bring in your thing; the reason that it works out here and everything that you’re saying is true here is that everybody wants this to happen. And that is what makes it happen. Like what Elliot is saying if they stay one more night, if everybody stays one more night the whole thing happens. A part of the other reason that we were a little concerned when we came down to Bradenton is because in Denver we’re on the 16th street wall and we’re looking at 50,000 people walking past our exhibit, it’s a huge mall area, and it’s an interesting mall, and we came back in, we were setting up in October. And in the Bradenton auditorium, and nobody walked by. So, we were scared to death. The Bradenton Visitor Bureau saved, the other, Realize Bradenton, were all saying, “Just wait, and watch. It’s going to happen here.” This turned out to be our best stop on our North American tour. And it’s all because here everybody is working together. And you say, promote this, and I got this and it’s an entire collaborative effort. And that is the reason we are here. I’ll say one other thing, Elliot was here the very first week we were here, we met at El Greco here on Main Street, we were going to set up the exhibit the following days. We were sitting down at this little table for conversation and Elliot would look over and say, “You know Mark, you know you’re never leaving Bradenton.” I didn’t realize what he meant but I know exactly what he meant now—that is that it’s a uniqueness here. It’s drawing you here. I’m just here picking up the pieces, all the pieces are already in place and they have me come in and help make this a success, we try and make everything we do up there in honor of bigger people. So, we try to make it bright and beautiful everyday and we get families to come back to the exhibit four or five times and that’s what we try to do. I mean, the whole system is set up we just came in a reassembled it. And I tell that to everybody that I talk to.

Wes Roberts: I think I’m going to send the next question to Johnette to talk about the artistry or arts and culture. But before I actually pose the question, I guess I’m going to acknowledge the terms of time, we’re trying to squeeze five pounds of chocolate in a one pound bag, there’s way too much to cover. Time is running short, I’m going to impose on our panel as long as they let me. But if people have to leave, if you get up and go we’ll understand. I guess what I want to touch upon is this incredible enthusiasm about seeing support and seeing collaboration and then, those of us who’ve been here long enough to remember a time that was very, very different, not just cross-towning, but, to tell one quick factoid of my own, I was one of the first people to be involved with the Sarasota Film Festival, and I had this idea that I thought was a great idea and I went to one of the major art groups and I said, “I’d seen Wolf Trap, an orchestra, playing with the Battleship of Potemkin.” And I said, “Wouldn’t it be great if your arts institution played along with Battleship Potemkin.” And the marketing person looked at me and said, “The film festival will be dead in a year and a half.” And I said, “Well, that seems a bit gloomy.” And she said, “No, because we’re going to kill it. We’ve been meeting, all the arts groups have been meeting and we’re going to kill it, we don’t like to compete.” I mean, that’s a different universe. I can’t imagine someone saying that now. And obviously no reflection on representations, but that level of conflict was there and that level of


defensiveness to new ideas, that was 13 years ago. So, Johnette, may speak to how that’s been turned around and how organizations coming together help each other.

[Johnette Isham]: Well, certainly Jeff and I and my 19 year old are proud to call downtown Bradenton our home. And it’s been years of a journey it came way before the Realize Bradenton planning process, John Taffy is here from the city commission, Mayor Posten, the city council, civic leadership, so many people have been working so hard to Realize Bradenton and it came out a physical master plan that said, you know what? It’s not just about boarders it’s about bringing people together, it’s about humanity, about quality of life for economic development and that’s the master plan and people said let’s see what we can do with a cultural master plan. So, long story short, you know Bradenton truly is a friendly city and over 2,000 people collaborated on that cultural master plan, called Realize Bradenton and it’s a ten-year plan, we got a lot done and at the end they said, you know, and I’ll say that one of the strategies is collaboration and so, collaboration is in our DNA. And so, I’m really proud to say at the end of that cultural master plan, you know you need a non-profit to drive the plan. And so Realize Bradenton went from a verb to a noun and I worked with a lawyer, got that 501C3 and got Bradenton county support from the firm downtown. And the best thing is that it’s all about collaboration and I see Jeanene here from the Manatee Players and Cathy and Pheadra from the historic village. Because every month, or more, the cultural partners meet downtown and it was out of that wrangling over really how are we going to amplify and really build the quality of life, the economic element and so we’re all about co-marketing, co-producing and 26 million impressions a year because we work together through social media, online, in print, in person to support each other and I think that when we got together last week to talk about this town, and I said I’ve seen your stats go up in terms of attendance in terms of your gate sales and just because of the Realize Bradenton plan these cultural partners and 334 new outreach programs that was like 6x what had happened a few years ago in terms of attendance. So, I said all this good news what is it about? And really, they said, Jacob wrote in December in SRQ Bradenton Rising and I think the growth and support with many years coming is because the perception of Bradenton has really evolved over the last few years. EDC, CDB, the cultural assets, we love the Pittsburgh Pirates in Bradenton, they come to our cultural commerce meetings. We’re just such a unique little place.

Wes Roberts: Was there resistance in the beginning though? Or your timing came somewhat after that wave had started to turn.

[Johnette Isham]: I think there was, I mean was there? I think people want to do it and we say now we’re stronger together and we see a ripple effect in the community by working together because we’ve set a model of collaboration working with the city and on development. Really, we’ve got great business support from downtown.


[Jim Shirley]: Wes, of course I’m one of those folks that has another commitment, I have to be at Aslo in 10 minutes to make it to a cultural collective which is a group that started to make more and more younger people involved in the arts which I think is so important for our whole community efforts but I got to be there so I apologize to you upfront but what I want to say that I look, you know John and Ed and I have known each other for several years but I had to tell you if I look at the strength of an elected strong mayor to push change in a positive direction for the city we don’t have to look any further than here. I’m going to tell you the honest truth, I started coming to Sarasota 45 years ago, or so, and I’ve never thought about turning around. But, I look at what you’ve done, I look at the assets of the group—of the things you have, all of the years of what you’ve done to get involved, it’s terrific, because it’s really all about the area. We’ve been fortunate in Sarasota, we had the arts but I see this as a real opportunity for a regional economic rivalry to push it way beyond where we ever thought it could be. And I encourage us to forget that line that exists here, somewhere. Johnette and I have been talking this week, she wrote me a letter a couple days ago about the Americans of The Arts study on the economic impact of the arts and what it means and so on, it’s an expansive study, but let me tell you what it’s worth—what we found in Sarasota county is that we’re a county we’re the non-profit marginalization of probably the largest single employer in Sarasota county, over 5,000 people employed full-time in the arts , with over 200 million dollars a year been spent in supporting other small businesses and that doesn’t stop after at the Sarasota/Manatee county line, you know, it’s all of our region, it’s the thing we need to put together. So, I’m going to leave you with this thought, we are prepared, and I’m prepared to do everything we can to find a way to use the arts as a regional driver of our economy, of our tourism, a way to make this whole region of the country, and as far as I’m concerned it already is, the finest place to be, but we have to realize it and promote it. So, I’m here for you, I hate to leave but I got to go see these other people but it’s been great, Wes I applaud you.

Wes Roberts: Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Good riddance. So, I’m going to turn to Denise now and the question I have for you, is with the Chalk Festival, which was the Sarasota Chalk Festival and is now becoming the Venice Chalk Festival and then with your new organization, I may not be pronouncing it properly, Floridopia Feuropa, okay, with those organizations you’ve worked very closely with merchant groups, with city with county and clearly in the transition or the fact that you want to transition from Sarasota county to Venice, Venice offered a kind of participation that attracted you, so inherently, maybe there’s some drama or something, that’s not what the question is about. Right, that may be a fun thing to hear, but, the question is—what works?

[Denise Kowal]: Well, you know, I don’t exactly what works, like, for me, I’m a lot different than most people sitting here because what I create, you know, I do it as a volunteer; I don’t have a boss, I don’t have anybody giving me an outline on what to create or what to do, in fact, there are two people quoted me at one point and asked me, “Do you know what you’re doing?” and I said, “No.” So, I think that was the third year of the Chalk Festival became the first international street-painting festival in the whole United States. But, you know I’ve found a vision and I have strong convictions


in what I believe the arts should be celebrated as. I try not to curate, you know my artists—I try to bring really fresh and raw talents to the streets. But by doing so I certainly challenge people’s thoughts sometimes of what they feel like our community should be and what it should be packaged like and you know, I just haven’t faltered away from anything that I consider a little edgy. What most places consider mainstream, Sarasota considers very controversial at times. So, when I read an article recently where it was like, you know, in order to create a successful event you have to have these components in place and the first one was strong government backing and if you don’t have that just give up and I do believe to some extent that is something Bradenton has had an incredible success with. They really have embraced the arts and as a leadership body they’ve come up with going on. In Sarasota, it’s been challenging but exciting to be able to put on the chalk festival here as well as going through a couple programs and it’s conflicting because the community has been ridiculously supportive of the chalk festival. We won the festival three years in a row in SRQ Magazine as well as Sarasota Magazine. So, we get incredible support from businesses and merchants; and outpouring of emails that are just gushing over loving what we do, yet we constantly buy into that, you know, I don’t know if it’s more of the mainstream media or if it’s the government that likes to focus on that .00000001% of the people that have something that they don’t like about the way something is run. So, in Sarasota, it’s been a little challenging. I did not move the festival to Venice because of anything wrong with the community as much as we really need to have a strong government support system. I did not find that in Sarasota with this event.

Wes Roberts: What are specific things that, what you’d put on your checklist and say—that helps, that helps, that helps.

[Denise Kowal]: Well, the Chalk Festival, and in the chalk festival world, I’m asking the artists in this art form to come and participate for just a stipend to pay for expenses to get here, so, there waving anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 dollars to perform that they normally get performing in other festivals. So, it’s very rare to see a festival of my kind, where you see 60. 75, 100 artists in this art form in one location. To me, that is something that should be very respected by local government, I think a lot of governments do respect that and I think they should really welcome and find ways to pay these people who come to a community that don’t have a (unknown) community. They don’t have to give to us, but they do because we create an event that is worldwide recognized as the only location they can come to and meet the top artists around the world and be able to see each other once a year. So, we’ve been able to create something that, to them, is very enticing, which makes it very reasonable. We did the chalk festival when we had a budget of 1.4 million cash wise we probably only spend anywhere from 40,000 to 450,000 dollars on travel and all the expenses for these services; all of the rest is the community giving kind services and amenities to make the event happen. So, this is really an event that is 100% community driven, it has grown to be the most important contemporary festival in the world of its kind because of the Sarasota community which is just a big conflict for really how the government looks at it. You know, we bring in a big economic impact and the city makes tons of thousands of dollars from our event


and yet this year they waved 16,000 dollars of our fees and we paid them I think close to 14,000 dollars in fees. So, we have a little bit of a disconnect between the 300 volunteers, all the artists that are donating their time, all the community that is dedicating their resources to the reality of something that they could benefit. Denis, I went and looked at the location last year, I thought about the possibility of looking down there (unknown.) They heard that I had looked at the location, they invited me down, all the arts organizations met with me and their council when they were approving the festival they went, “You don’t actually wash the streets, do you?” Our council has kind of had that opinion for a long time except Johnette. I served as manager with the event they had at Arts Land and Johnette one year said, you know, you can do anything on our street, we’re not like Sarasota. So, to change that this year we worked on (unknown) this year. But at that type of welcoming, that type of attitude of embracing the arts that’s really important. So, I can say that Sarasota has been a big challenge (unknown) but we’ve had glowing support.

Wes Roberts: Thank you Denise. In terms of the priorities of an institution the business parts and ownership structure the way it’s built, I’d imagine it’s complicated and certain array of masters that need to be answered to.

Glass Breaking Muffled Audio

[] We began in 1946 and really the Asolo Theater got acquired in 1950 and really became the motivator for the arts in this community. And the offer began to be the Asolo rep, obviously began on our property. And so, in one way, the museum has always been really collaborative about bringing other groups in and trying to work together to build awareness. Right now, our international arts festival has gone 5 years under the artistic directorship of the (unknown) fund, which is fantastic. However, with that decimal was that we were really not allowed to partner that the (unknown) organization controlled everything that was going on. Performance wise, we’re now in our sixth year. We have a fantastic artistic advisor that’s based out in L.A. at the center for art performance at UCLA who’s been working with Dwight Curry, we’re now able to reach out and partner not only with other organizations in the community, most notably this year would be New College, but with also, building connections around the world, actually. As far as other types of investment, the one thing you want to think about, Jim talked about payroll, we have an 18 million dollar budget and a 9 million dollar payroll, so, all that money really stays here in the Bradenton/Sarasota communities. But we also have been doing an amazing construction project here in the last decade. By building roughly 15 to16 million dollars worth of new buildings on our campus almost all of that money impacted companies in our region. So, right now we’re in the middle of building a new Asian center, that’s a 10 million dollar contract. Local construction firm, you know, the work is all being done in the region. So, think of the cultural organizations as businesses that are utilizing the services of the communities they live in, some more larger than others and can have a bigger impact, but all of them are investing in making an impact alone in the organizations. So, I think in the American For The Art study they saw that, when they looked over


the expenditures of cultural organizations in, this is unfortunately just in Sarasota County, which I think is a problem because we always look at our community as being the Manatee County and Sarasota County area, and we do all our stats, combining those two. But, for the American For The Arts we, in Sarasota County, offered 100 million dollars in investment spent by the arts organizations in our community, which is a pretty significant impact, so I’m not…did I answer the target question?

Wes Roberts: It’s definitely in there. I’m getting the signal from the side that we are not only overtime but we are way overtime. Do we have any questions that have been written? (unknown) I know we’re running way overtime but if you have a question Phil or Jacob, here, will spot it and bring that up. And it will be marvelous. So we have one question, it’s a very important question. I’m very excited, there’s a lot of pressure. I’m actually going to throw in one final question from me to the panel and hopefully they answer as (unknown) as possible. What one core, I guess we’ll start with Mark and move on, what one core idea we leave this audience with about the way they can help our sense of collaboration and the artistic endeavors of our community.

[Mark Rodgers]: When we came down here (unknown.) Everybody sat at the table, everybody agreed about what they were going to do. (Muffled) Which is the ultimate part of a collaboration.

Wes Roberts: I’m inspired. Let’s move on to Johnette. Before they eject us.

[Johnette Isham]: I just want to leave you with this thought. Certainly we can measure the arts as an economic driver through syntax, through realestate increases, through greater all this occupancy but I’ll say more than dollars and cents it’s about the soul of the community and the Night Foundation and the Gala Organization are the keynotes. They showed that soulful attachment to a place drives the gross-domestic product and there’s three factors there, because I think you’ll have to brag about these three factors because we’ve got it in this region. The cultural and entertainment venues attach people to the area they live or play, openness, and remember I’m from the friendly city, and I know Sarasota is catching up with us. And the physical beauty and public places, those three factors, 50,000 people, three-year research project and I think we have all three of those here. We have to amplify them even more and brag about them and bring our friends here, bring our parents here, and bring the tourists here and stay here.

(Audience Question) What was the name of that study?

[Johnette Isham]: Soul of The Community, just google Soul of The Community, it focused on the Bradenton area and those three factors, out of like, 50, came to the top and they tie that to economic development.

Wes Roberts: Thank you. Steve.


[Steve]: I’ll just quickly, participate—that’s the one thing you can really do. Help support all of our organizations by attending events, help be our advocates in telling others what great resources we have here. So, please participate.

[Denise Kowal]: Well, you touched upon a lot of what I was going to say. Participation is important because it’s something that creates a memorable experience more than to have something that’s just visual and I would also say attend things that challenge your thought process because art culture and culture is defined by what we create and support and who we are and getting out and seeing things that are different and that make you look at life differently, I think, is really important. So, participate.

Wes Roberts: Thank you. And Kathy, did that sort of answer your question? Not exactly. More of Kathy’s question was how can the cultural partners in Manatee and Sarasota collaborate across county lines. You’re asking do we need an entity to provide leadership or who takes that role.

[Audience Question]: Realize Bradenton has done such a great job getting the cultural partners together in Bradenton and Manatee county, what can we do to the same thing across the boarder so that the Sarasota cultural partners and the Manatee cultural partners can work together?

Wes Roberts: I’ll say, for me, I hear individuals’ names a lot. I think that we keep hearing Johnette, as humble as she is, over and over again and Mayor Posten, we got a heck of a applause, up here from the panel they were applauding him. And I even have to say I’ve seen the mayor again and again and again at the SB2 events and I cannot tell you how few elected officials you see at any events like this where people can go and gain more information and better themselves. We do have a number that are fantastic and regular attendees but it’s the minority.

[Johnette Isham]: I’m looking at Pam, because out of the Ringling International, right, there was a festival, Festival Sartes, it was a great idea, a new concept, we worked our butts off and it was, that’s how I got to, well I knew people at the museum but I got to know the Sarasota CBV and I tell you, we worked hard for two years and it didn’t continue because we had no funding. I mean, we had the structure in place, we had people committed and then, right then, we were doing this on top of everything else, about 20 of us, and we did some fabulous stuff, but you know, sometimes money is important. We got the motivation.

Wes Roberts: So, cross-county investment? That’s got to be a challenging thing. That would be very challenging to bring in that system and manage it.


[Audience Question] If the study were done that, instead of doing the Bradenton study and the Sarasota County study, if there was one that was funded by, perhaps the community’s foundation collectively that air-marked where people go and how often they go there.Wes Roberts: Okay, I’m ordering pizza. Let’s get the team to spark growth here. Breakout sessions. Lock the doors, no one leaves before ten.

[Mark Rodgers] You know, the interesting thing is what are you tracking. It’s like the CPV tracks overnight stays, that’s just one story. And so, to be able to do a cross-county study that really looked at day-trippers, who’s coming to the community and what are they going to see.

[Audience Question] And, if you can show the flow of money you can further get the money.

Wes Roberts: Well thank you, incredible panel and incredible audience. Everybody put their hands together. (applause) I said humbled, not shy. Thank you, we have a transcript of today’s discussion on the SRQ SB2 website, within 7 days, unless you go by email when it’s posted. If you have questions that did not get answered today, or didn’t have time to write them down, email them to our editor, Jacob Ogles, and he will be able to post them to the appropriate members of the panel and then try to append those at the end of the transcript. A big thank you to our sponsors


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April 30 Transcrip.d… · Web viewthat, actually, public dialogue grew. What we’re going to talk about is the initiatives and changes that local attractions need to make to continue