Let the Ideas Fly!

What does the next year—or the next three years—hold for Wisconsin’s communities? How will the arts influence, affect and assist our communities? How will our communities influence, affect and assist the arts? How can the Wisconsin Arts Board help strengthen our communities and our arts together?

These are the questions behind the Wisconsin Arts Board’s (WAB) move to pull voices together from around the state. In order to decide where to focus the WAB’s service and grant resources for the next three years, the state agency responsible for supporting the state’s arts community is pulling together a series of focus groups and town meetings throughout Wisconsin.

Artists, arts groups, public officials (local, state, tribal and federal), convention and visitors bureaus/chambers of commerce, school administrators, teachers, parents, students, philanthropists, business supporters, community foundations, libraries and arts community members will be invited to participate in various focus groups during the fall/winter of 2003/2004.

Interested Wisconsinites, including members of each of the aforementioned groups, will also be invited to ten town meetings held across the state—from Marinette to Monroe—where these and other questions will also be discussed during spring 2004. (Read the 2004 schedule of town meetings/focus groups.)

So that all interested voices can be heard, the WAB is partnering with Portalwisconsin.org to make this the most accessible series of town meetings yet! From January to April 2004, the portal Web site will feature a virtual town meeting. Anyone at any time during this period can go onto the site and discuss their thoughts, questions and ideas.

The plan for the Wisconsin Arts Board’s work that emerges from these real and virtual gatherings will be released in the fall of 2004.

 

Contact: Karen Goeschko, 608-267-2026
Date Posted: 11/11/03