Operating Support Grant

One of the OACC's Board's greatest strengths is its focus on quality and outcomes. Every Board meeting includes a rigorous discussion of what we are hearing from our constituents and how that informs our success indicators, theory of change and logic model, and evaluation metrics. One of the best tools we've found is from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education's Project Zero. Their 2007 report 'Understanding Excellence in Arts Education' helps us define what we mean by high quality art, how to set initial markers of excellence,, and how to observe the way day-to-day decisions affect artistic quality. Though our interests are broader than arts education, we embrace the study's thesis: continuous reflection about what constitutes artistic quality and how to achieve is both a catalyst and an indicator. Talking about it, worrying about it, continually revisiting ideas about its characteristics and its metrics ? is essential to achieving it. As noted earlier, OACC's current quantitative and qualitative measures (Artistic, Business and Community Vitality Indicators) consider constituent satisfaction and organizational impact. As we move into creative community development, we have begun working with UMD's Bureau of Business and Economic Research and Extension Economists to design an assessment of the current economic impact of arts and culture and a forecast of its future impact when creative placemaking is successfully integrated into our region's planning efforts. The Improve Group advises us on theory of change, logic model and outcome measures. Economic change: increased investment in the regional economy, increased job creation and workforce participation, improved average hourly wages and median household income, increased in-migration of new residents, increased tourism. Social change: improvements in health and education outcomes, more diverse leadership of civic groups, increased numbers of artists and culture bearers in creative placemaking. Physical change: improved appearance of public spaces, streetscapes, parks, byways, heritage sites; inclusion of arts in new construction and redevelopment. System Change: increased embeddedness of arts and culture in community development efforts, increased input from diverse residents, improved County and Reservation policies and practices to support cross-sector creative placemaking partnerships, strengthened limits on housing displacement. Two success indicators speak to OACC's commitment to offering approachable programs for broad public audiences: OPENNESS is constituents feeling welcomed and willing to consider new and sometimes contradictory perspectives. DIVERSITY means seeking out, recognizing, and leveraging the shared and different values of diverse cultures. OACC is committed to concrete actions in support of broad access to the arts for local residents and fair compensation for creatives. At our front door is a large 'All Are Welcome Here' sign developed by a group of Minnesota creatives 'to support an inclusive and positive environment for All.' In 2017, Cookin' at the O jazz dinners began with every sold-out event providing fair compensation for musicians and comped tickets for people who could not afford to attend. We launched the Holiday Market in 2017 with artists paying a modest entry fee to support organizing and marketing the event. The response to offering locally made and grown artisan gifts was so big that in 2019 OACC partnered with corporate sponsors, the Chamber, Lions Club, twelve local venues and forty local creatives to welcome about 800 attendees. Each venue had local musicians and actors presenting scenes from recent productions. Creatives started new partnerships and found many new constituents. In February 2018, OACC started Magnolia Salons, bringing together about 25 people from diverse backgrounds each week for an exploration of creative flow with artists and culture bearers. A nominal suggested donation provided a stipend for presenter