Collier on the brink of learning how much is here in the arts and what it can do

Collier County finally has begun to pack its suitcase for the destination of arts-minded community.

County commissioners last month offered matching funds up to $50,000 for a consultant to help it develop an arts and culture strategic plan. That is a first for a county full of arts, but which has primarily given it lip service. Barely a day before the United Art Council reported national survey findings that show the arts pump $44 million annually into Collier County — around $880 million over 20 years — the county approved a new hotel bed tax for a sports complex that would bring in $468 million in that same time.  

More:See what the arts survey says about Collier County

Public funds have been available only via the tourism development budget, and are slotted for marketing. The arts in Collier County have been left to independent institutions to develop in their own ways, with efforts that can seem duplicated or exclusionary.

We have lots, and lots, of art

New programs have sprung up like mushrooms. Performance arts are skewed to the tourist season, but Collier County is awash in them:

• 18 small-size music series, 17 of them professional, in churches, at the Wang Opera Center and in Artis—Naples
• Eight theater series — three professional and six amateur. That includes the student theater at Ave Maria University, with its annual Shakespearean play production.
• Five orchestras, counting professional and amateur, in both classical and American songbook or jazz formats
• Five local organizations that stage at least one annual concert, such as barbershop or choral music

Other numbers:

• 18 buildings, including two libraries and three high schools, in the county have held  indoor arts performances open to the public. Of those, only five are known to be dance-friendly, that is, offering floors that are not concrete directly underneath the flooring. 
• At least seven organizations need space for art exhibitions, festivals or a show. Of them, only the Naples Art Association, Marco Island Center for the Arts and The Baker Museum have their own indoor space. 
• At least three more performing arts venues and two performance series are in  nearby Bonita Springs, in Lee County.

"We need to quantify it," said Penny Taylor, fourth district commissioner, of local arts. "We need to study it. We need to find out how it relates and how we can continue to grow it in Collier County."

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Taylor took the ball when United Arts Council executive director Laura Burns tossed it to the county in a February presentation of the survey's findings. She, Burns and several other arts leaders began discussing the impact of the arts here and what kind of support they needed with local organizations.

"It is a community effort," Burns emphasized of the hopes for a study. "I can't say there's any one key that opened the door for this. I would say it was the study, the mood of the community and the commissioners being responsive.

"I'm so happy it's on their minds. I think there is room in Collier County for both sports and arts and culture."

United Arts Council has just added its own space to the mix in its newly opened quarters at 953 4th Ave N. in Naples. There is an expanse of walls for local arts exhibitions; first one opened June 28. There is also room for small events, and its inaugural one will be a spoken-word poetry workshop and performance Aug. 4. 

Other cities offer some ideas

Taylor said she "knocked on doors" of local organizations and came away with many suggestions and questions.

"Why is only Sarasota known for the arts? They're here," Taylor asked, echoing some of the frustrations. "We've got a lot of spaces we can use. Why don't we have a place, like a clearing house, where we could identify what different groups could use? They don't need a 400-seat theater sometimes. We've got new people coming in, and those new people might want different things."

The proposal for a strategic plan, unanimously approved June 12, could nail down specific goals and resources and bring arts agencies together.

More:Collier arts groups' aid from Legislature slashed; prospects dim after Irma

A plan has helped the cities of Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie coordinate their stops along the Zora Neale Hurston heritage trail named for the African-American writer. It guided plans for an event in Boulder, Colorado, that turned a neighborhood's driveways into artworks.

It also helps cities and counties get money.

"You can go to the National Endowment for the Arts all day long, but if you’ve got a plan you carry a lot more weight," declared Libby Woodruff, grants administrator for the city of Fort Pierce, population, 41,590 in a county of 277,789. That community finished its master plan two years ago and is now working on the 10-year strategic plan, a time-element set of goals that fits into that plan. 

In it is the renovation of a 1914 brick building, the one-time St. Anastasia school, into an an arts center. The city's plan also is creating an arts district on the former African-American commercial street where artists can both work and live, something akin to what artists have hoped for in the Bayshore Arts District of Naples.

"We have so many phenomenal amenities here. We’ve got so many historical places and so much cultural heritage. The city was just trying to make some order of it all," Woodruff said of Fort Pierce. That city is headquarters for the continuing school of Highwaymen artists; it was home to Hurston, Crayola crayons founder Edwin Binney landscape artist A.E. "Bean" Backus and the Ais Indians, who predate the better known Seminole tribes.

Collier has its own history, and it should be part of the mix, Woodruff advised.

"Cultural heritage tourism is the fastest growing tourism in world. ... It's a multi-million dollar industry in the state of Florida."

More:Naples area artists hit by Hurricane Irma suffered quietly, still recovering

Matt Chasansky was brought in to oversee a three-stage development of an updated arts and culture plan for the city of Boulder, Colorado. Chasansky is manager for the Office of Arts & Culture, which is administered through the city-operated library services. He emphasized that publicizing the plan early made it more inevitable that the community would be on board with it. 

"We did a very early sort of selling before we formulated the master plan, and we hope to see what came out as priorities in our strategic plans. Starting that conversation early, when we had time for people to talk to us, was important. We needed to hear from them long before plan was even complete," he said. Boulder arts advocates working on the plan sent letters to the editor, sought media coverage and made appearances at nonprofit organization meetings. 

More:Got arts? They brought $44 million-plus to Collier County, UAC survey says

Right now, Collier County isn't at that point. It is still seeking the other $50,000 to retain a consultant. Taylor says some organizations and a foundation have expressed interest, and she is hoping the request for qualifications will be ready to present for bids by September.

It's going to be an exciting process, she said, and one that may bring in voices yet unheard in Collier County.

"I think what's going to be very interesting is when the discussions start among the communities."