Operating Support Grant - Renewal

Our primary goal for the 2022 calendar year is to restore the Festival to health by (1) including more artists and sculptures in the Snow Sculpture Symposium; (2) including more arts events in Festival; and (3) bringing the number of audience members back to pre-COVID levels. In addition, EWF's evaluation plan seeks to answer these questions: ? To what extent does the Ely Winter Festival strengthen the Ely community? ? How do the arts components affect the artists' ? To what extent do the arts components affect the audience? The evaluation plan allows us to compare results with past years and identify trends over time. We also collect data to show trends in the number of carvers and sculptures. These are the measurable outcomes for the year of the grant: 1) The Ely business community is strengthened by increasing tourist and resident activity during the Ely Winter Festival. 2) Audience members will be exposed to art in several forms and will engage with the arts and artists. Primary tools for measuring the above outcomes are a face-to-face survey of Ely businesses, and interviews of audience members viewing the snow sculptures in Whiteside Park. We will consider the Festival a success if we receive positive feedback from the business survey and audience interviews. We will consider our recovery of the health of the Festival to be achieved when the numbers of snow carvers, snow sculptures, arts events, and audience members returns to the level of the 2020 Festival, the last to take place before COVID. We expect recovery of the Festival's health to take two years.