Did you attend “The Role of the Arts in Economic Development” panel? What did you think? Do you have further questions, or answers to suggest? Please let me know in the comments. –MikeA

The regional arts community wants answers.

The questions, articulated with urgency, weren’t new. How does a community sustain the arts financially over the long term, where does the funding come from, who deserves to receive it? How do you battle the perception that arts aren’t essential? Will localities in Roanoke and the New River Valley band together to promote the arts as part of their brand, and if so how?

Wednesday morning, those question were posed to and raised by the five panelists at a roundtable discussion, part of the ongoing Executive Discussion Series co-sponsored by The Roanoke Times and Cox Business. The panel, “The Role of the Arts in Economic Development,” attracted the largest crowd in the two-year history of the series, with about 135 attending the breakfast meeting at the Sheraton Roanoke Hotel and Conference Center.

Moderator Connie Stevens of public radio station WVTF-FM noted that the audience was made up almost entirely of stakeholders: artists, representatives from nonprofits, government officials, university faculty.

The panelists were Roanoke City Manager Chris Morrill; former Taubman Museum of Art CEO and President David Mickenberg; Ruth Waalkes, executive director of the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech; Amy Moorefield, director of the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University; and Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission Executive Director Wayne Strickland. These heavy hitters didn’t have specific answers to many of the sweeping questions placed on the table, though often they brought up issues of their own.

“I hope this is the beginning of a broader conversation on why we support the arts and what it takes to support the arts,” Mickenberg said.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

This past Sunday, we published a preview of the roundtable in which the five panelists provided written answers to questions about the role of the arts in regional economic development. Click here to read those interviews.

At today’s media day, Kathleen Fort, Center in the Square’s new Volunteer Program Manager, says she still needs volunteers to help with the Grand Affair gala on Saturday, May 11 and the Family Day of Discovery event Saturday, May 18.

Volunteer for a shift and you get in free (admission to Grand Affair is $75, admission to Family Day is $15, children 3 to 17 $10.)

Call Fort at 224-1216 to learn more about what she needs for both events.

From my Inbox to you:

 

 

Philanthropists recognized with naming of performance hall within Virginia Tech’s new Center for the Arts

BLACKSBURG – Virginia Tech has named the performance hall within its Center for the Arts in honor of two couples – Nicholas and Fay Street of Bristol and William C. “Jack” and Sandra Davis of Blacksburg – in recognition of their philanthropic support of the center’s construction.

The Street and Davis Performance Hall’s approximately 84,000 square feet contain much of the newly constructed portion of the Center for the Arts (http://www.artscenter.vt.edu/index.html), a roughly $97 million project at the northeastern edge of campus. The 150,000-square-foot center also includes the former Shultz Hall, which has been extensively renovated.

“The Center for the Arts is a transformative project for our university and brings a tremendous new asset this region of Virginia,” Vice President for Development and University Relations Elizabeth “Betsy” Flanagan said. “We are extremely grateful to the Street and Davis families for their generous participation in this substantial investment in the arts, which is helping make us an even more comprehensive institution.”

“This entire project is really a collaborative effort,” added Ruth Waalkes, the university’s associate provost for the arts and the center’s executive director. “There is funding from the university and funding from the state, but the private funding that is going into this building is significant, and these gifts from the Streets and Davises have been particularly meaningful for us.”

Both of the couples for whom the performance hall has been named had extensive histories of supporting Virginia Tech as donors and volunteers even before the gifts that prompted the naming. The Streets and Davises are members of the President’s Circle within the Ut Prosim Society (http://www.givingto.vt.edu/GivingSocieties/ut-prosim-society.html), a select group of the university’s most generous donors. Read more »

From Sunday’s column:

One week prior to its grand reopening, Center in the Square in Roanoke will hold a black-tie gala from 8 p.m. to midnight on May 11 called “Grand Affair” — not unlike the Affair in the Square fundraisers held in the Campbell Avenue building in years past.

Those who buy the $75 tickets will get a preview of Center’s 5,500-gallon live coral reef aquarium, as well as three other salt water and one fresh water aquarium. Live music will play in the building and on the institution’s much-touted green roof. The History Museum of Western Virginia, the Science Museum of Western Virginia and the Harrison Museum of African American Culture will also take part.

Center has also announced that it will hold its ribbon cutting at 9:30 a.m. May 18 and then an open house event called “Family Day of Discovery” from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.

For more information, call 342-5700 or visit www.centerinthesquare.org.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

From my Inbox to you:

YOUNG ARTISTS AGAINST HUNGER TO HELP RAISE FUNDS TO FEED THE REGION’S HUNGRY

 Every general admission ticket purchased
will provide enough food for 68 meals

Feeding America Southwest Virginia is partnering with the region’s best young artists to host the first annual Young Artists Against Hunger – a performance to help feed the region’s hungry.

This unique event will be held on April 30 at the Jefferson’s Center’s Shaftman Performance Hall. Each $17 general admission ticket purchased will provide enough food for 68 meals.

“Over the past 32 years our ability to fight hunger and change lives has been funded by thousands of concerned citizens of all ages,” says Pamela Irvine, president and CEO of Feeding America Southwest Virginia. “I am very excited that we have formed a collaborative partnership with this region’s best young artists to host a memorable hunger awareness campaign.”

The mission of these young artists, including chefs, visual artists and musicians, is to help increase financial support for the Food Bank and raise awareness about the struggles of hunger that continue to plague thousands of local neighbors in need. Read more »

The roar of power tools filled the cavernous space that will become a state-of-the-art 1,260-seat theater in the forthcoming Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech.

Project Manager Jon Miller demonstrated how effective the performance hall’s acoustics are even at this incomplete stage. As he led a tour group out from the theater’s highest balcony, he pointed out how the design dramatically muffled the construction noise, leaving the outside hall relatively quiet.

The center’s executive director, Ruth Waalkes, was part of the tour group. “What Ruth and the Center for the Arts have bought with the design is a world-class acoustical performance space,” Miller said.

The theater also includes two balconies, four tiers of box seats, two orchestra pit platforms that can be lowered and raised, and enough backstage space — and trapdoor space beneath the stage — to put on a Broadway-sized production.

Nor is that all there is to the Center for the Arts. There’s upstairs and downstairs art galleries by the box office, and a four-story, 3,000-square-foot structure nicknamed “The Cube” that will serve as a black box theater and a laboratory to test projects generated by the university’s new Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology (ICAT for short).

And it’s all being built for more than $94 million in the 42,600-population town of Blacksburg, of whom only about 15,000 live there year-round. The center, at North Main and Turner streets, is on schedule to open in October 2013 with an annual budget of $5 million, making it the largest arts and cultural institution in the Roanoke and New River valleys.

Predicting how the center will fare is a challenge because there’s no precedent for an arts institution that large in the New River Valley.

“They are going to have to create a whole universe,” said Susan Mattingly, executive director of The Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg. “We’ve never had anything like this here in 24060.”

Click here to read the rest of the story.

From my Inbox to you:

Square Society Donates $40,000 To Center In The Square
Total contributions amount to more than $275,000 since 1998

The Square Society Board of Directors is proud to present the Center in the Square with a check this year for $40,000 at the Center in the Square Annual Dinner being held tonight at the Hotel Roanoke’s Crystal Ballroom. Combined with previous donations, the Square Society has now raised a total of $278,872 since their founding in 1998 for Center in the Square.

With a strong membership of active, young, and young-minded professionals dedicated to creating a foundation for future assistance to Center in the Square, The Square Society has experienced a very successful year that has included an increase in community support. The success of this year’s events have been extremely rewarding, allowing for this large donation in unrestricted funds that can be used to meet Center in the Square’s operational needs. “These donations each year are based on the success of our events, the dedication of the board members, and the increase in our membership,” explains Jenny Roberts, president of the Square Society. “With all those items are put together, the Square Society is proud to be able to present our single largest donation to Center in the Square at tonight’s Annual Dinner.”

The Square Society is equally excited about the year to come as the focus continues on raising awareness for Center in the Square and providing its members with educational and volunteer opportunities that promote the arts, culture, science, history and funds.  These are very exciting times for both Center in the Square and the Square Society.

About the Square Society
The Square Society is a non-profit organization committed to raising awareness of Center in the Square and providing its members with educational and volunteer opportunities that promote arts, culture, science and history. Visit www.squaresociety.org for more information.

To see the photo gallery that accompanies this story, click here. To download the Lime Kiln’s 2013 business plan, click here. And if you have any thoughts you want to share about the embattled theater’s campaign to make itself self-sustaining, feel free to leave them in the comments.

LEXINGTON — The sound of splintering wood made a point more emphatically than words ever could.

As Theater at Lime Kiln Executive Director Tony Russell climbed a wooden stair on the famed Lime Kiln stage, a step cracked and broke loose beneath his feet.

He kept his balance and didn’t come to harm. Nonetheless, the near fall bolstered his argument.

Russell wants to raise nearly $400,000 by the end of this year to renovate the dilapidated landmark. Without the improvements, the nonprofit that runs the famed outdoor theater won’t survive, he said.

There’s little question that Lime Kiln sorely needs a makeover. There’s been almost no upkeep done since the theater’s first production in 1984. The three-story light tower for the Kiln’s main stage sports rotting wood and holes in its roof. The wooden stage in the amphitheater used for concerts floats away when it floods. The tent over the rain stage leaks — and can flood in a heavy downpour. The restrooms have backed up during big concerts.

Russell argues that with a facilities upgrade, he could fill Lime Kiln’s season with popular musical acts and make the struggling venue self-sustaining. As it stands, the deteriorating rain shelter limits the size of the audiences Lime Kiln can handle, and a string of emergency repairs has left the theater without money to cover next season’s operating expenses.

Yet Russell’s fundraising plan, which involves raising $100,000 in donations and $200,000 in combined funds from the Lexington and Rockbridge County governments, is far from surefire.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Blacksburg art collector and patron Ruth Horton, who donated the Miles and Ruth Horton Collection to Virginia Tech, died Monday. According to a Virginia Tech Magazine article, she and her late husband Miles also donated their house and an art studio to the university, as well as the Miles C. Horton Sr. Research Center, including the Martin Observatory and Vorticella Lab, property that incorporates the top of Salt Pond Mountain near Mountain Lake in Giles County. You can read her obituary and sign her guest book here.

Update 5/22: Read the full news story here.

The University of Virginia has announced that its art museum will be named after Heywood and Cynthia Fralin, who among many other things are responsible with providing the Art Musuem of Western Virginia, now the Taubman Museum of Art, with its prized paintings by American artists. What do you think of this development?

Roanoke philanthropists Heywood and Cynthia Fralin, who provided the Taubman Museum of Art with its collection of American art, will have a museum named after them in Charlottesville.

The name of the University of Virginia Art Museum will be changed to the Fralin Museum of Art in honor of a 40-piece collection the couple will donate to the museum, the university announced today. The Fralins’ gift is the largest single gift of art in the university’s history, according to a press release from UVa.

Click here to read the rest of the story.