Let the art conversations begin
As the executive director of The Arts Partnership, a nonprofit that serves as the primary communicator of the arts in our community, I’m excited to announce a new partnership with The Forum.
Even before my time with The Arts Partnership, there was a desire to find a way to collaborate with The Forum to establish a mutually beneficial relationship that would serve our organization and the public.
If you follow the arts in the Fargo-Moorhead community, you may have been a reader of our bi-monthly publication ARTSpulse, which was produced by The Arts Partnership until March, when we transitioned to an all-digital, multimedia communications platform, ARTSpulse.
As a small nonprofit, we simply have not had the resources to invest in a more timely newspaper. Our ability to reach a broad audience has always been limited by budget, staff and readership.
We worked hard to help our partners write more human-interest pieces to engage readers in upcoming events. We assigned articles to area writers and provided a small stipend. We used professional photographers when possible to increase the visual impact of the paper. We had an excellent publications committee dedicated to making each issue compelling.
But even with all that effort, there was no way to work around the fact that at any given moment, half the articles in The ARTSpulse paper were about events that already happened or not happening for quite a long time. How could we share the work of area artists and arts organizations in a more timely way and to a significantly larger audience?
Enter The Forum.
This spring we began talks to get content from The Arts Partnership in The Forum’s Variety section on a weekly basis.
I’ll write a monthly column various art topics, issues or initiatives, and our digital media producer, Kris Kerzman, will provide content about artists and arts events happening in the area.
We hope this will serve multiple purposes. First by bringing our very focused coverage of the arts to the greater community. At the same time, we also want to raise the profile of our over 100 Primary Artist partners.
But we want to do more than communicate about the arts; we want to have conversations with the greater community about the arts.
We encourage you to attend arts events and get to know local artists. We will introduce you to the ways that the arts are doing amazing work in and around this community and beyond.
All thriving communities have a strong mix of economic diversity, athletics and healthy living initiatives, arts and culture and education.
Each piece is integral to the success of the community, and we are so pleased to be a voice in the dialogue around the arts and culture in our thriving community.
Dayna Del Val is executive director of the Arts Partnership and writes a monthly column for The Forum. Readers can reach her at dayna@theartspartnership.net.
This column appeared in the June 24, 2013, Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
