With two years now under their belts, organizers of the successful Passport to the Arts program are looking to keep things fresh.
The second season of this collaborative effort to put a spotlight on the arts in Northeast Michigan concluded earlier this fall and saw a spike over last year in the number of organizations participating, activities offered and people utilizing the passports.
"Overall I think the whole project was clearly a greater success than it was last year," said Tim Kuehnlein of Michigan Arts and Culture Northeast, the non-profit group formed to oversee Passport to the Arts. "The numbers were all higher. We had 188 events as opposed to 133. In terms of organizations participating, I think we had 33 last year and 42 this year."
"We had close to 750 people who got passports," added Mary Ellen Jones, president of MACNE. "They were even more excited than last year. There were a lot more diverse events, lots more artist shows and individual artists receptions."
During the last two years, MACNE kicked off the passport season with a gala progressive party, followed by a full summer calendar of arts and cultural activities that stretched throughout the region. Now organizers are exploring the possibility of instead of hosting the kick-off progressive party, doing an ArtPrize project similar to the highly touted ArtPrize held in Grand Rapids.
That project, which took place Sept. 22-Oct. 10, saturated a 3-square mile radius in downtown Grand Rapids with more than 1,200 pieces of art and galvanized public conversation around the arts. Held as a competition open to artists anywhere, the public was invited to cast their votes for the top 10 pieces. A total of $449,000 in prize money was awarded.
MACNE is now considering a similar type of project, though on a smaller scale.
"The idea is to change it up and introduce a new angle on the Passport to the Arts so it's not going to get stale," Kuehnlein said. "We want to keep it vibrant. We could just see a format like that whole event in Grand Rapids that brought in million of dollars to the town just by giving people the opportunity to exhibit their art for free."
Karen Bennett, another key Passport to the Arts organizer, attended the ArtPrize event and came away impressed with the experience that she said clearly elevated the aesthetic vibe of the community. She would like to see that same vibe infused into Alpena.
"I'm really excited about the concept," Bennett said. "I thought it would be a great thing to bring something like that to Alpena and have it be the kick-off to the passport season. It would be totally open, no jurying, matching the artists with a venue. It's a pretty replicable thing to do on a smaller scale."
Jones likes that ArtPrize seemed to get all of downtown Grand Rapids involved and that there was sense of excitement everywhere that translated to huge numbers of people coming into the city.
"It just seemed like there was so much pride in a business having art in their establishment," Jones said. "There were posters in all the downtown businesses and there was just an excitement among all the volunteers. If we would do something like that instead of displaying art just in galleries, putting it out in the open and downtown it would really get people excited for coming into town."
All three agree that an event similar to ArtPrize could have a significant positive impact on Northeast Michigan.
"It would create this strong sense of a vibrant community," Kuehnlein said. "It also would highlight our artists and our regional art. Hopefully, a by-product would be the economic development in that with the physical things present in our community, it would help to define who we are."
MACNE expects to begin meeting in earnest in January 2011 to finalize plans for the next Passport to the Arts season.
"There was a lot enthusiasm in the group for the idea when we discussed it. Now we need to translate it into action," Bennett said.