Rural and Community Art Project

The Ely Winter Festival has a formal evaluation plan that has been followed consistently since 2019, allowing us to make year-to-year comparisons. The evaluation guides planning for the next annual event. The evaluation plan seeks to answer three questions: ? To what extent does the EWF strengthen the Ely community? ? How do the arts components of the EWF impact the artists' ? To what extend do the arts components of the EWF affect audiences' We seek to answer these questions through surveys of participating artists, Ely businesses, and people in the park viewing the snow sculptures. We track statistics that help us understand trends, such as number of artists, number of snow sculptures, etc. Consistent with the evaluation plan, for the 2025 Snow Sculpting Symposium, we will focus on measuring the following outcome: ? Snow carvers will grow as artists as a result of their participation. To measure the first outcome identified above, we will conduct a survey of snow carvers. Our assessment of success will be based on their responses. When we asked carvers about their growth as artists in 2023, these were the answers we received: ?I enjoyed learning something new and working with others.? ?It improved my grasp of the particulars of design and theory.? ?It challenged me and helped me grow as an artist.? ?I enjoyed being able to explore large-scale art.? ?I am learning to visualize how things come together.? Survey results from the 2024 Symposium are not yet available.