annual community campaign
Dancers Surprise and Delight Passengers at CVG
Passengers at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport on Thursday, April 21 were surprised by dancing in the middle of Concourse B. We collaborated with CVG officials to bring dancers from Cincinnati Ballet to the airport.
This surprise event is one of several we've organized throughout our annual community campaign, showing how the arts make our community a place where people want to live, work, play, and stay.
"We love showing everyone who is visiting and returning home some of the fun and great art that makes our community special and exciting, and surprise dancing is a great way to do that!" said Margy Waller, Vice President of ArtsWave.
Earlier in the year, we invited CVG officials to a meeting with arts representatives to discuss possible events at the airport. We are excited to facilitate arts - music, dance, theatre, and more - for travelers. We look forward to working with CVG in the near future to organize more events like this as part of the airport's Friends of CVG initiative.
Our 2011 community campaign for the arts continues through April 27th. Last year, almost 40,000 people contributed $11 million to ArtsWave to support more than 150 large and small arts organizations throughout the region. We're hoping for many new donors this year - and every bit helps. If you haven't had a chance to give yet - please consider a donation of ANY size right now.
We're Trying Something New!
Hey Friends -
We're trying out some new ways to build the broadest possible support for the arts -- our music, dance, theatre, museums, galleries, and more.
Translation: We're exploring different ways for you to donate online -- safe, quick, and easy methods for gifts large and small -- every dollar counts! Try it out.
Margy Waller, Vice President, Strategic Communications and
Lisa Wolter, Vice President, Development and Campaign
The Cool Things
We love the way that our arts make this region exciting - and a place where people want to live + work + play + stay. ArtsWave is creating community through the arts -- with our Ta Da events, like Paint the Street, Splash Dance, and our holiday Ta Da.
Something else we do -- and did for a long time when we were the Fine Arts Fund -- is organize an annual community campaign, mostly by connecting with employees in workplaces across the region.
The Way We Build Support
We collaborate with local partners like P&G, GE Aviation, Fifth Third, Macy's, Kroger, Frisch's, the City of Cincinnati, United Way, and many more businesses of all sizes. People who work at these places get a chance to pledge their support to the arts every year - because we ASK.
Not every city has a campaign like this - and we have one of the best in the nation. It's this kind of funding that supports more than 150 arts organizations of all sizes across greater Cincinnati.
The New Stuff We Want to Try
Now we are exploring ways for people outside of these companies to give. The places and ways people work are changing, with more working at home or changing employers often -- so, it's even more important for ArtsWave to do a better job of making it easy for everyone to give. In fact, with the changes we're seeing, we have to find new ways for people to give or we're going to see a big decline in support.
Online and digital tools get better all the time. And like lots of nonprofits, we're riding into the wild-wild-west of online and social media giving.
We're writing today to share our plans to check out some new gadgets and tools. And we hope you'll play with us.*
The Stuff You Can Do
If you haven't given to the 2011 community campaign for the arts - this is our chance to ask you.
Or, what the heck - help us out with the test by giving again - every dollar counts. And you can even invite your friends!
Help us test - give today.
Got ideas for us? Send an email.
Or you can tweet us at @ArtsWave and find our wall on Facebook.
The Things You Get
We'll let you know what we learn from this test. Watch our blog and Facebook page for updates.
Plus, arts make places cool. When you donate to the annual campaign, you help to create community through the arts - and make this a place where more people will choose to live, stay, work, invest, and more.
Thank you!
Margy and Lisa
*The Details: We're testing people's reactions to two different "short" forms (fewer fields) for online donations. In the past, we've asked for more information, slowing things down for donors. The test is invisible - you'll be randomly directed to one of two options and we'll see the number of donations on each. This will help us choose one option for future use.
ArtsWave Live
Our 2011 community campaign for the arts started almost a month ago and there are a lot of fun celebrations, all across the region! People are wildly creative with music, dance, theatre, and more -- and we have captured some of this fun on video!
Possible Worldwide |
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Macy's |
Surprises Celebrate Annual Community Campaign for the Arts
The 2011 Community Campaign launches NOW with new activities that highlight our mission, vision, and new name. The annual community campaign runs for twelve weeks, concluding on April 27, 2011. 
“We’re very committed to our goal of engaging even more residents in this campaign for our community’s arts,” said Edgar L. Smith, CEO of World Pac Paper, LLC and ArtsWaveCampaign Chair. “For the first time ever, we’ve asked our volunteers to set their sights on increasing the number of donors. At the same time, we are aiming to get people to enjoy the diverse arts experiences in the region, in order to build our base for the long-term.”
For 2011, we are planning a number of new initiatives and some surprises for the campaign – building on our history of taking up new ideas and surprising area residents in recent years. In 2010, we conceived and organized one of the first-ever flash mob surprise dances in the nation with Splash Dance and last February, we kicked off the campaign with surprise art on public transit and in public spaces. And this fall, we amazed residents when 1500 people came together to create a six-block long, football field sized painting.
This month, we are taking a more virtual approach with plans to launch a new digital game that offers people all over the region a fun way to share the art all around. To get information about the game when it launches, sign up here.
Last year, people contributed $11 million to ArtsWave to support grants to the community’s arts organizations. In 2010, we changed our name from the Fine Arts Fund to ArtsWave to reflect our new and expanded mission to create community through the arts.
With this year’s campaign we hope to secure contributions at least equal to last year’s goal, while also increasing the number of people who participate in the campaign. This approach will in turn increase the number of people who choose to participate in and support the arts – local music, dance, theaters, museums, art centers, and more.
Also this year, the campaign’s annual Sampler Weekend, sponsored by Macy’s, will expand to six days over six weekends during the 12-week campaign for the arts from mid-February through April. The new Sampler days will provide many more options for families and friends to experience the region’s arts without making the tough choices of past years when all events took place in one weekend.
We are offering a new online scheduling tool to area residents who want to plan ahead for the free arts event weekends.
Campaign leaders are excited about sharing our expanded mission and new name. “One of our most important accomplishments for this year will be spreading the word about our expanded mission with as many people as possible," said Mary McCullough-Hudson, CEO & President of ArtsWave. “We’re already hearing that our volunteers believe more people are getting involved in the campaign now that we are clearly sharing our goal of building community through the arts. And I am thrilled to announce a grant of $100,000 from The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation to match contributions from new donors to the campaign.”
We encourage everyone to stay tuned for more surprises in coming weeks, including the Friends For the Arts first-ever Surprise Party on Friday, March 4th from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the Contemporary Arts Center. And for our first surprise, check out the video of Paint the Street, a time-lapse film of the event with special expanded footage and local music.
ArtsWave 2011 Community Campaign Video from ArtsWave on Vimeo.
Sharing Ideas for Street Painting
Blog post by Liz Glaser, a Creative Team Intern and Xavier student
People from all over shared their ideas about things they love and reasons they stay in the Cincinnati area at the Fine Arts Fund Street Painting Design Meeting this week. The Fine Arts Fund hosted the meeting at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and invited neighbors and business owners from across the region to offer ideas for the design of the 12th Street painting that will take place this September. (Read more and sign up to be a citizen painter here.)
Facilitated by UC’s DAAP professor Michaele Pride, the discussion lasted nearly two hours and brought together people from various neighborhoods, including Goshen, Anderson, Florence, Newport, Price Hill, Covington, Over-the-Rhine, and Norwood. The evening concluded with the guests drawing their ideas on butcher paper at the tables. The five artists who will be designing the painting, Pam Kravetz, Carla Lamb, Karen Saunders, Matthew Dayler, and Danny Babcock, encouraged the particpants and elaborated on their ideas.
The painting will stretch from Main Street to Central Parkway across one of Cincinnati’s unofficial arts districts, where numerous local “do-it-yourself” collaboratives exist, along with more established theaters, galleries, and businesses.
“We are painting a downtown, commercial street in the middle of a thriving business district. We don't know of any other place in this country where this has happened. We want to bring people from across the region together in this creative endeavor…and we need a big community to pull it off,” Fine Arts Fund Vice President Margy Waller said.
Pride in the shared community was largely evident throughout the meeting. Cincinnati was characterized as a city of surprises, where people and places catch a person off guard with their ability to break from stereotypes.
Participants commented that in recent years, Over-the-Rhine has become a neighborhood of choice. It is a place where people want to live, work, shop, and dine. As one guest said, “There is room for all of us [in OTR], for all the different voices.”
Another participant noted, "We have diversity and opportunity and can take those opportunities and expand them into something great, into neighborhoods of choice where people are not only neighbors because they live near each other, but neighbors because they participate in and shape their community into one where they want to be."
These are the ideas that will be represented in the 12th Street painting, the vibrancy and excitement and bonds of such a great neighborhood and city.
As one guest stated, “The more I saw in other cities, the more I saw and appreciated that we have all that and more in Cincinnati. And we can build it to be even better, together. This is where I’m connected to, this is home.”
Another commented, "Cincinnati is really affordable, but the arts all around us are priceless."
Pride, as facilitator, elicited these ideas and many more asking participants what they like about their neighborhoods, what they appreciate, and also what they would like to change.
Now the five artists will develop these ideas and their own into a design that hundreds of citizen painters are expected to paint on the street pavement in September.