FoCo Creates: Arts and Culture Master Plan

showcase on public access tv

Did you know FC has a public access TV station in the Carnegie building? - use it to showcase your art -have your non-profit partner for informative videos

On the Carnegie Center: Great opportunity to have a black box performance space within a building that can serve the local makers and Foco.

It can serve as: performance space, education center for grants etc, research and collaboration within the science and artistic community, a place for ideas to percolate and grow, ability to house residencies and so many other things.

Love the focus on equity and inclusion not only as a goal, throughout document.

Ethnic festivals/Street fairs

Literally, in the streets of different neighborhoods with music, dancing, food, etc.

Tagline Ideas

To help jump-start our brainstorming for taglines, here are some rough ideas: One Town, Many Voices. / Living Together, Working Together, Creating Together. / Where Culture Has Lease. / Collectively Creating The Future. / Creating The Future Together. / A Tapestry Of Possibilities. / A Tapestry Of Purpose. / Living Art. / The United States Of Creativity. / The United States Of Artistry. / The United States Of Possibility. / Evolve. Emerge. Expand. / Becoming. /

Neighborhood Art Hubs

Each neighborhood area utilizes a local park/space for pop-up art festivities: performance: street theatre, music, open mic, craft fair, poetry slam, etc.

Nothing controversial!

Nothing controversial! Because it divides! Do something that EVERYONE will enjoy!

Provide support for attending arts and culture conferences

Our artists and cultural entrepreneurs need to have access to the latest ideas and developments in order to play their full part in contributing to a thriving arts and culture scene in Fort Collins. Yet few can afford to cover the necessary travel, accommodation and fees. Fort Collins should launch a travel fund that can expand city-wide access to the trends and business practices that are equal to improving the health and fuel the growth of our sector.

Accessible and Affordable Studio Space.

The city owns many buildings that are unused because of future plans or buildings with extra office space or atrium space. Allow that space in those buildings, to be used as studio space for local artists. This does several things. It increases visibility. Increases accessibility of the public to artists. It also uses unused space to its capacity. (When the city owns a house or small office building, by having an artist on site curtails graffiti damage to the building). It also is a visible acknowledgement that the arts matter not just to the city but to the people in the city on a personal level. How great would it be if you were an artist and you had a space in a city building. You could impact people directly everyday. Your work would be shown, seen in a safe and encouraging environment. Impacting your neighbors. This could and should be a rotating process, moving artists in and out of these spaces. If the city were to be a leader in this program I can see it moving to the private sector. Places like Broadcom could have an unused space available for a rotating artist program.

Fund year round incubation and acceleration activities for arts, culture and creative industries.

Call it risk capital if you like... but given the returns we are getting on our existing arts investments, I think we can confidently reinvest in this way.

Large-Scale Convention Center

Fort Collins has no large-scale accessible meeting and convention space. Almost all existing cultural works must be hosted at The Lincoln Center (which maxes out below 5K attendees) or a local hotel, almost all of which max out below 5K attendees. As a result, Fort Collins misses out on many cultural, artistic, and economic event opportunities that typically land at The Ranch, BEC, or Embassy Suites in Loveland.

Hyper-local arts

I would love to see any further investment in the arts trickle down to our immediate local spaces such as neighborhood parks. Holding events one or two times a year with music, dance, poetry or storytelling performances, a collaborative art project, and having various vendors (a local mini farmers market would be ideal) would do so much to build community right where we live.

Incentivize arts orgs + bizs to develop their own recreator classes/activities through offering an incubator/accelerator program at CCC.