City Commission candidates join us for TAPpy Hour

Have you voted in the Metro yet? If you haven’t, I invite you to join us today at 3:44 to talk with the candidates for West Fargo’s City Commission and at 4:44 with the candidates for Fargo’s City Commission. And if you have voted, join us and learn more about these candidates, particularly as they relate to the arts, anyway, since it’s good for us all to have as whole a picture of our Commissioners as possible.

This is a pivotal time for the arts in the Metro because:

• Covid-19 has imposed serious challenges on us as a sector
• There have been multiple conversations and working groups about a Performing Arts Center
• A number of capital campaigns have or are about to launch
• The arts have been threatened on at least one University campus
• CampusFM, a program developed by The Arts Partnership in collaboration with the GFMEDC, is working on a tactical plan to use the arts as part of a plan to attract and retain college-aged students to specifically feed into our business sector. This initial phase has been funded by the Fueling Our Future board, and we are excited to  really dig into this challenge.

I hope you’ll join us for one or both of these conversations. One of the great values the arts provide is that they are borderless. Citizens from across the Metro enjoy and participate in the arts in all three communities, and the successes of the sector lift the entire region’s economy, creative sense of place and cultural footprint.

We will also open these forums up to questions from the audience, too, so come ready to engage and learn more. Remember, voting is a civic duty and privilege: don’t let the opportunity to make your voice heard pass you by!