Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam, on Tuesday, announced plans to form an “Office of Arts, Culture and Entertainment,” using around $400,000 in federal COVID-relief funds as seed money.
Adding permit fees and a portion of ticket sales from the summertime Capital Groove Music Festival into the funding mix, Arulampalam estimates the office could have at least $1 million at its disposal over five years. That would fuel an office dedicated to promoting, marketing and organizing cultural and artistic events and venues in the city, Arulampalam said.
“We are going to continue to build an art scene in which creatives who come of age in the city, stay in the city,” Arulampalam said. “They don’t move to New York or L.A., that they want to live here, that they see a world-class arts scene here in the city.”
Tyler Grill, co-owner of the Infinity Music Hall Hartford on Front Street, said he is happy to dedicate a portion of the Capital Groove proceeds to the effort.
“We will continue to partner in support of the local arts and the community,” Grill said. His company, Goodworks Entertainment Group, bought Infinity Music halls in Hartford and Norfolk just ahead of the pandemic.
Arulampalam said the city will explore additional funding sources to bolster the office, ensuring a funding stream for the long term.
“There’s real dollars, economic activity, that comes from arts and culture growing in our city,” Arulampalam said. “And we have made the decision to dedicate that right back into growing the arts and culture scene.”
Arulampalam expects to launch a job search for a director for the new office within two weeks. He’s not quite certain when the new office, which will be located in City Hall, will launch. Also uncertain is the office’s staffing level and budget. That will be sorted after a director is hired, Arulampalam said.
The new office was the No. 1 recommendation to come out of a report from an Arts & Culture Transition Committee Arulampalam pulled together at the outset of his administration. Many of the roughly 50 artists, patrons and community leaders who took part in the committee attended Arulampaalm’s announcement Tuesday in the downtown TheaterWorks City Arts on Pearl building.
Among them, Floyd W. Green III, a retired Aetna executive and patron of the arts, said the city’s arts community has tried to lobby for similar action in the past, only to meet with disappointment. So Tuesday’s announcement is tremendously encouraging.
“Initially it was like: ‘Oh, here we go again. I’ve been on this committee. I’ve done this committee,’” Green said. “But there was something about this that made folks believe something could happen. It’s not unprecedented but it’s really exciting. Bringing together all the sectors of the community – fans, fellows, community leaders and organizations – empowered folks today.”
Arulampalam’s announcement comes about 10 months after former Mayor Luke Bronin announced plans to spend $300,000 on a marketing campaign supporting the city’s arts, cultures and sports offerings.
That campaign never got off the ground.
Arulampalam, on Tuesday, acknowledged no money had been spent on the marketing campaign announced late last December.
Instead, Arulampalam said, he plans to pool that funding with other marketing initiatives in a coordinated campaign whose results can be quantified.