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Artist Trust Matching Grant: Methow Valley Web Savvy by Barbara Courtney Over the past five years, Artist Trust has been experimenting with new ways to support underserved artists in various regions across the State. This experimentation has taken place on Orcas Island, in Ellensburg and in the Methow Valley. With each of these three pilot projects, Artist Trust has put forth an investment of $5,000 with the stipulation that the money must be matched with the same amount from local sources, and that it be used to directly benefit individual artists in the area. For each project, an Artist Trust Board member from the region convened an advisory committee of artists, arts administrators and volunteers to determine the best use of the Artist Trust grant and matching funds. Journal readers may recall reading about the Orcas and Ellensburg projects. The Orcas group conducted a “census” of Island artists and developed a comprehensive artist directory that is used by Island residents, tourists, building contractors, and others. In Ellensburg, the funds were used to expand both the volume and circulation of First Friday, an arts monthly of the Ellensburg Arts Commission, in order to include a greater number of artist events and promote these events more widely in the Central Washington area. The third and final pilot of this community matching experiment has recently been realized in the Methow Valley. Spearheaded by Artist Trust Board member Carol Mitchell and Kate Jones, Director of Methow Arts, the advisory committee determined that a strategic marketing tool for the Valley’s artists was needed. Thus, they sought and received significant in-kind support from a local web development company, Earth & Sky Studios, and designed and launched www.methowvalleyarts.org, Connecting Artists with Audiences. Both artists and arts organizations can join (artists receive a significant discount), and artists can be easily found in the database alphabetically or by their medium. Each artist is provided a page in the database that they create and update at anytime with easy self-serve webpage development tools accessed at home computers. According to Jones, about 15 artists immediately developed their pages on the site, using these tools, and a digital camera that was purchased to loan through a matching grant. Roughly 17 artists more reluctant to use the computer have recently begun to work with Methow Arts staff to develop their pages which will be launched this month. Congratulations to the Methow Valley artist community for a wonderful new resource! Artist Trust will continue to work in partnership with arts communities in various geographic areas in order to directly benefit artists in those communities. :: |