GOSHEN — Support for the arts in downtown Goshen got a big boost Tuesday during a meeting of the Goshen Redevelopment Commission.
A new grant agreement between the commission and the Elkhart County Convention and Visitors Bureau was signed Tuesday which promises $150,000 in grant funds for use in the development of a three-year “Creative Arts Initiative” for downtown Goshen. The grant will be distributed in $50,000 increments over the course of the three-year agreement.
According to Mark Brinson, community development director for the city, the commission was recently approached by the ECCVB about participating in a new grant program through the ECCVB and the Community Foundation of Elkhart County coined the Live. Work. Play. Capacity Grant Program. The goal of the new grant program is to provide funding for projects and activities that will enhance the vitality of downtowns in Elkhart County.
Tasked with finding a project that could benefit from such grant funding, Brinson began exploring the city’s recently updated Downtown Goshen Action Agenda, now known as the Downtown Plan 2015. The overarching goal of the plan is to refine the vision of and develop new goals and objectives for the downtown to reflect the changes over the last decade.
A key component of that agenda is increased promotion of Goshen’s downtown arts community, and out of that focus was formed the Planning Theme 2.0, a comprehensive outline for how best to grow arts and culture in downtown Goshen. Goals highlighted within that outline include: promoting downtown Goshen as a destination for the arts and culture; enhancing connections among existing artist networks in downtown Goshen and the greater community; encouraging the development of artist spaces in downtown Goshen; and developing new and expanding existing arts oriented events in the downtown, including studio/visual arts and the performing arts.
With the city pursuing a $13.7 million renovation of the historic Goshen Theater, coupled with the need to fund the plans highlighted in the Planning Theme 2.0 initiative, Brinson said he decided to put together a grant proposal that included a bit of funding for both, the result of which is the commission’s three-year Creative Arts Initiative.
“The first year would be dedicated toward funding for the Goshen Theater, primarily helping them with funding the feasibility study for their fundraising campaign,” Brinson said of the first $50,000 increment. “They’ve already kind of launched that and are trying to identify what the capacity is in Goshen and Elkhart County to help support their Goshen Theater project.”
Grant funding for years two and three of the agreement will then be used to help fund staffing dedicated to implementation of the Planning Theme 2.0 initiative, a key component of which would be hiring a new creative arts coordinator for the city and establishing a Creative Arts Council.
“What we have suggested is that we create an advisory council of local artists, people who support the arts, that would help guide a process of developing some of those programs, and looking at how we use arts as a way to build on the successes we’re already seeing in the downtown,” Brinson said. “We’re already seeing that arts is becoming kind of a major component of revitalization in Goshen. We just had the Arts on the Millrace festival last weekend, and we have the Hawks live/work project which is a multi-million dollar investment downtown. So we have momentum, and there are certainly ways we can build on that momentum. This would give us the capacity to kind of look for new projects and programs that will enhance Goshen’s support of the arts.”
The commission agreed, and the grant agreement was approved unanimously.
With the agreement approved, Brinson said the plan now is to have the creative arts coordinator hired and the council established before the end of the year.