About WAB's Current Plan and Planning Process:
Every three years, the Wisconsin Arts Board engages people around the state in strategically planning for the agency's future activities and programs.
In Autumn, 2021, the WAB once again embarked upon a broad-based, inclusive planning process to create a 3-year plan that reflects the diversity of Wisconsin, identifies opportunities and challenges, and invests resources in Wisconsin's arts and creative sectors as they continue to serve their communities while still experiencing strong reverberations from the pandemic. These investments deepen capacity, recognize emerging arts initiatives, and inspire participation in and appreciation of WI's arts and creative sectors.
The WAB gathered input and information using various types of assessment tools: an internal data review, key leader interviews, an advisory committee, on-line constituent surveys, Town Meetings held via Zoom, and issue-based forums. From the analysis of the input gathered, WAB developed a plan that includes long-range strategic directions encapsulated in goals and strategies.
How we define “Under-served":
An under-served community is a community, defined by its geography, ethnicity or shared interest/reality, that has not been directly served by more than one WAB grant program or service within the past two years, or has limited access to the arts experiences that exist within or outside of the community/constituency. A significant number of WI's rural communities, central-city neighborhoods, and many of our ethnic and recent refugee/ immigrant communities fall into this category, as do veterans, people with disabilities, people of the global majority, at-risk youth, older adults, and people who are living at/below the poverty line. The WAB has long made it a priority to identify and provide our underserved communities with significant access to funding and technical assistance resources for arts programs. This includes rural areas suffering high loss of youth and weak economies (85% of our cities have populations under 10,000); the inner-city urban communities in Madison, Green Bay, Beloit/Janesville, and the seven-county region surrounding and including Milwaukee; ethnic Euro-American communities; communities of color in all settings; and refugee groups (Hmong, Somali and Kosovar) and their growing communities. Communities of color make up 16% of WI's population of 5.8 million.