Operating Support

2: ?Regional residents experience a change in knowledge, attitude, behavior or condition due to public art, arts festivals or arts events.? As a result of funding, we hope to expand our participating artists including them in our gallery and musical events, our theatre and visual arts classes, and our teaching staff. This will effectively affect all participants by expanding our artistic reach to include more of our underserved population. 6: ?The infrastructure of arts organizations is strengthened through access to operating funds, professional development and best practices sharing.? The position the grant will fund allows more community outreach and access to experts from professional and collegiate venues that we currently do not have the staff or volunteers to coordinate. This increases our volunteer staff expertise by developing skills and professional development from leaders in the Minnesota art community. All participants will be affected. 9: ?Regional residents gain awareness and appreciation for a variety of artistic disciplines and mediums.? At present we are limited to the volunteer staff, living in and around the Jackson area, who can provide their artistic expertise in whatever areas they can. Our plan is to expand the types of art forms we can offer by expanding the skills of our local volunteers through professional and expert visiting instructors who can be located and procured through additional grant funding. This will round out our center's offering to include more participants in our underserved population, and as a result all our participants will be affected. Although we currently request information from all our participants, we will become more data conscious and collect specific information with regards to the types of artistic ventures we need to offer. It is important that all participants, with focus on our underserved population, have input into the offerings at our center. As we are a community resource, we will canvas adults and children to assure we are meeting their needs during local events such as our upcoming referendum on school improvement, the farm and home show, the county fair and our heavily attended Hot Dog Night. These events are attended by a wide cross section of the population and will give us information from all ethnicities and ages in the surrounding area. A voluntary additional survey will give us more information about the age, ethnicity and income bracket of those who choose to complete it. Expanded participation of artists, access to experts, and increased volunteer staff will be evaluated with comparison to past and future statistics, particularly focused on the underserved.