When the Knight Foundation awarded $77,000 to six Macon organizations last week, the local arts community got a boost that could help grow its programs and expand its reach beyond the city limits.
“In Macon, Knight Foundation works to help create a sense of place and belonging through initiatives that promote an informed and engaged Bibb County,” Beverly Blake, local program director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, said in a news release about the grant. “Nothing engages a community like the arts.”
But is the Macon community engaged?
Those tapped into the arts scene say that while the people who support the arts are very dedicated, they are constantly looking for new faces.
“I think there are a lot of people in Macon who don’t make the effort,” said Jim Crisp, director of Theatre Macon. “I will say that those of us who are running these arts programs, we see the same people at each other’s events. We’re all sharing essentially the same audience, but we’re all consciously working toward expanding that audience.”
Pilar Wilder, owner and artistic director of Hayiya Dance Theatre, said she was guilty of joining the chorus of “there’s nothing to do in Macon,” when she moved to the area 13 years ago.
“But there’s so much to do,” she said.
One way the local arts community can grow is through diversity, she said. For example, when Wilder moved to Macon to attend Wesleyan College, she started an on-campus West African dance group, Harambee, which eventually grew into Hayiya. Today, she attributes part of her organization’s success (the dance company was awarded $6,000 from the Knight grant) to the fact that it was something different. In 1997, no one was doing West African dance in Macon, Wilder said.
“Sometimes, we (in the arts community) get in our own little bubbles,” she said. “Perhaps those who are delivering the arts should not limit ourselves. If you’re always performing the same kind of plays, you’re always going to have the same people coming.”
Aside from dance, Wilder points to education as her other passion but says the two should not be thought of separately, pointing to studies showing that children who are involved in the arts perform better in school.
Crisp said: “There are the bureaucrats and the bean counters who think of the arts as a thrill and it’s the first thing to go when budgets get cut.
“Today, we have more than 40 years of studies that prove, without question, that young people who go to schools where the arts are embedded, on average, do 100 points better on SATs. They focus better. They retain information better. They stay in school.”
But this is more than just a “warm fuzzy” quality of life issue, he continued. It’s an economic issue.
“This is big business,” he said. “The arts translate into jobs, they translate into tourism dollars.”
Official: Arts in Macon an $18 million business
The Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition conducted a statewide study with Georgia State University economist Bruce Seaman to measure the economic impact of the arts in Georgia.
In the study, economic impact is defined as “additional economic activity in a defined region that would not otherwise occur were it not for the economic activities of that organization or that event,” and in Bibb County, that number totaled more than $2 million from arts and culture organizations last year.
“This is an $18 million business in Macon that has (more than) 400 employees,” said Jim Coleman, executive director of the Macon Arts Alliance, which has been granted $10,000 from the Knight Foundation. Cultural tourists stay 1.2 days longer and spend 36 percent more money than average tourists, he continued.
Referencing data from a 2007 report by national government lobbying organization Americans for the Arts, Coleman said, “We (the arts community) pay $1.12 million dollars to the tax base in Macon. This is business.”
Seven other cities (Akron, Ohio; Charlotte, N.C.; Detroit; Miami; Philadelphia; San Jose, Calif.; and St. Paul, Minn.) also received funding as a part of the Knight Foundation’s national arts program, with Macon being the smallest of the bunch, but Blake says Macon’s size, as well as its location, can actually be used to its advantage.
A moderately sized city such as Macon can be used as a testing ground for new ideas and initiatives, she said.
“(Today) we have the largest arts community that I’ve seen (in Macon),” said Crisp, who said he has lived in the area for 28 years. “It’s thriving. It’s more diverse. It’s larger. The quality is exceptional.
“We can hold our own with Chattanooga (Tenn.), Savannah, Albany — and we can hold our own with Atlanta. They have the big names, but in terms of quality and what we offer, we hold our own quite nicely.”
And although some people may head up Interstate 75 and escape to Atlanta for their cultural fix, Blake says Macon’s proximity to larger cities such as Atlanta and Orlando, Fla., could create opportunities for the city to become a stopover destination for artists between shows in the large metropolitan areas.
Other organizations awarded money last week by the Knight Foundation are the Macon Film Festival ($20,000), Tubman African American Museum ($16,000), Macon Symphony Orchestra ($15,000) and Cox Capitol Theatre ($10,000).
But when it comes to the future of Macon’s arts scene, those involved in the community say that while funding such as the grant from the Knight Foundation is essential, support from the local community is also necessary in order for Macon to grow into an arts destination for the region and beyond.
“I would like to see the Macon arts scene as revered and vibrant as that of Atlanta,” Wilder said. “When people think of arts in the state, all minds automatically go to Atlanta, because there’s theater there, there’s dance there — but we have all of that here as well.
“I just see (Atlanta) as a place that kind of overshadows Macon, but if people in Macon don’t take notice of the things we have to offer here, we can’t expect the rest of the state to take notice.”
To contact writer Caryn Grant, call 744-4347.
