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The hours are ticking away on 2023 but 2024 promises a robust new year of creativity and cultural vibrancy across the region. I invite you to make a New Year’s resolution to check out our rich artistic landscape this winter. Whether you try something new or revisit an old favorite, there is much to explore, engage and experience.
Michigan Legacy Art Park kicks off 2024 with its First Day Hike on Jan. 1. The 30-acre sculpture park takes on a new persona with works cloaked in snow and winter’s light, as does Art Rapids’ Walk of Art in Elk Rapids. Explore our past at the historical museums, visit an art center, join a class, hear a talk, watch a performance, take a tour, share the joy. A new Network calendar of winter events, exhibitions, classes, and programs throughout the region is at www.nwmiarts.org/winter.
Looking back, looking forward
The new year is a time for the Network to look back and forward as we make our own resolutions for 2024. For the past 14 months, we’ve been implementing our new strategic plan. Rooted in our mission to support and strengthen the collective power of artists, culture bearers and the creative sector to cultivate vibrant communities, we function like a regional arts council. Our strategic priorities focus on connections, capacity building and communications — all working to support those we serve in our ten-county region.
The new calendar and its added links to self-guided tours and public art are an example of the collective work an intermediary organization like the Network did in 2023. Others are the annual Northwest Michigan Arts & Culture Summit held each May, our Michigan Arts & Culture Council minigrants bringing $53,500 to support local arts projects, training webinars, young adult artist chillouts, monthly roundtables, advocacy, and biweekly e-news.
The actual work is often invisible to the casual eye.
National nonprofit advocate Vu Le recently wrote “…intermediary organizations are like mycelium, the rootlike structure of mushrooms. Like mycelium, these orgs are vital to the nonprofit field, as they provide several critical functions, including bringing funding to other nonprofits, connecting orgs to one another, disseminating vital information, fostering communication, and mobilizing orgs for advocacy… during the pandemic, when there was chaos everywhere, these organizations became essential hubs of information, resources, and action.”
While I never saw myself as a mushroom, I agree with Le. He also notes challenges.
“Intermediaries have always had trouble with funding … (but) like mycelium, play a vital role in connecting, nourishing, and sustaining nonprofits and communities. Because they are often invisible, we frequently take them for granted. We need to ensure they have the resources they need to continue weaving the network of change that allows our sector to boldly go into the future.”
Funding is a challenge we share with many arts and cultural colleagues. We’ve watched organizations close, administrators leave, and programming scaled back. Looking to 2024, the Network will be striving to diversify revenue streams, strengthen our business plan and expand our cross-sector partnerships to assure our sustainability long term.
Our collective impact is growing with 73 arts, cultural and community organizations along with a growing roster of individual artists and culture bearers. In 2024, a new associate director will help us continue to grow capacity and impact.
We will also make the New Year’s resolution to tell our story better — to be less invisible and to better present our own case for support.
Sharing our stories
Begun in October and continuing through much of 2024, the Network is partnering with Interlochen Public Radio, Michigan Writers, and community stakeholders to raise awareness, engagement and support for arts, culture and our many creative talents.
This is part of a Michigan Arts & Culture Council Community Partners project that uses storytelling to focus on exploring the role creativity, arts and culture play in furthering our communities and how our unique, scenic corner of Northern Michigan has infused and informed the works — literary, visual, performance, cultural – that are created here. We seek to share the roots of our region’s traditional arts and stimulate discussion, showcase impact, and share the uniquely ‘up north’ stories of our creators, culture bearers, and communities.
IPR launched its Fresh Coast Creatives series with audio features that are highlighting creatives in many disciplines, backgrounds, and locales. Past recordings and recaps can be accessed online. More are slated for 2024.
The project also calls for community conversations and personal stories.
Michigan Writers and the Northwest Michigan Arts and Culture Network will be co-sponsoring a series of writing opportunities beginning with a Zoom writing workshop led by Anne-Marie Oomen slated for Jan. 27, from 10 a.m. to noon, followed by opportunities to submit pieces for publication as well as readings and convenings. The workshop, submissions, and community convenings are open to all. More information is available at www.nwmiarts.org or email [email protected].
We’re looking forward to new initiatives, new stories, and new audiences in 2024. Please join us!
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