Tourism, education, development are all included in Macon Arts Alliance cultural plan

The Macon Arts Alliance released the 2020 Macon Cultural Plan Thursday after more than a year working on the project.

The plan was funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and led by community partners including Bibb County School District, Community Foundation of Central Georgia, Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce, Macon-Bibb County, Mercer University, the Museum of Arts and Sciences and Visit Macon, according to a news release.

“Macon’s ethnic, cultural and creative diversity is key to ensuring equity and economic prosperity for all,” reads the vision of the five-year plan.

Julie Wilkerson, executive director of the Macon Arts Alliance, said at a press conference that the plan was developed through a large amount of community input including a steering committee with more than 50 arts, cultural, and community organizations in Macon.

The plan features five priorities: tourism, education, creative industries, neighborhood development and audience cultivation. The plan has four to five strategies to help solve each priority.

For example, the goal of the tourism priority is to brand Macon as a “vibrant, innovative and creative destination,” according to the plan. The first strategy in the plan to achieve this goal is to stabilize and strengthen key tourism assets, such as upgrading the Edgar H. Wilson Convention Center and continuing to grow the Christmas Lights Extravaganza project.

“The most exciting thing about this plan is that vision bubbled up over a year ago before a lot of what has happened lately,” Wilkerson said. “We know what Macon’s problems are, and what we want to do is take a cultural lens at solving those problems because we know that art can be unifying and we know art can be used to solve those problems by being embedded in all of those sectors.”