Community Culture

Let your voice be heard

The Arts Alliance is overseeing a countywide project to envision ways that arts & culture can help create stronger, more economically stable communities in Washtenaw County.  Click here to make sure your voice is heard!  Our survey is entirely confidential and will just take a few minutes of your time - but the results will really help us make recommendations that are in synch with the needs and interests of our community. 

Community & Culture: Creating a Plan for Washtenaw County is a major initiative to build stronger communities by creating a plan in which arts and culture are integral elements in achieving goals we all share, such as preparing our youth for jobs in the 21st century, creating and maintaining vibrant downtowns, and preserving our high quality of life.  The fruit of this effort will be a five-year plan for cultural development in Washtenaw County along with the opportunity for participating communities to customize the county’s plan to their own needs, should they so desire.
 
The project includes 3 main components: 1) gathering data about our county’s cultural assets and resident attitudes/interests in arts and culture; 2) identifying countywide cultural goals based on the data and then writing action steps to achieve these goals; and 3) finalizing the countywide cultural plan and assisting participating communities customize the plan, if they wish.

Key components of the project include:

• Kick-off breakfast on Oct. 16, 2007 featuring Becky Anderson of HandMade in America
• Ca. 25 community forums held throughout the county with representatives of targeted sectors, such as education, arts & culture, business, and civic leadership
• Online survey to gather public input
• Mid-project public update announcing findings to date
• Establishment of task forces to recommend action steps that will form the basis of the countywide cultural plan
• Presentation of the county cultural plan to the project’s Leadership and Steering Committees
• Assistance to participating communities to customize the county’s cultural plan to their own specific needs, if desired

The project is coordinated by the Arts Alliance, a countywide service organization that works to create an environment in which culture and creativity can flourish and cultural programs are accessible to all.  Communities participating in the project include Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Dexter, Manchester, Milan, Saline, and Ypsilanti.  Robert Guenzel, Washtenaw County Administrator, and William Miller, Superintendent of the Washtenaw Intermediate School District, co-chair the project’s Leadership Committee, with Debra Polich, President and CEO of Artrain USA, and Philip D’Anieri, Program Director of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, co-chairing the initiative’s Steering Committee.
 
Community & Culture is supported by many investors, among them the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, Pfizer Global Research and Development, MASCO Foundation, Washtenaw County, ETCS/A Michigan Works! & Community Action Agency, Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, Eastern Michigan University and more than 15 Washtenaw County-based cultural organizations. 

For more information about Community & Culture, contact Tamara Real, Director, The Arts Alliance, 734-214-0112, artsalliance@annarborchamber.org