Art & Soul Civic Engagement Meetings Inspire New Ideas

For Immediate Release

The meetings were an opportunity for individuals to ask questions and learn about art and civic engagement from examples across the country. They also told Foundation staff about the challenges facing Addison County communities and the types of opportunities citizens see for linking the arts, citizen engagement, and land use planning. “It’s interesting just hearing what communities are talking about, and the different ways that they can use the arts to find common ground, address difficult issues and draw new folks into conversations about the town’s future in creative, new ways,” said Betsy Rosenbluth, the Foundation’s Director of Northeast Projects.

Citizens seemed to agree, as they brought up a string of challenges and opportunities specific to their hometowns. Several communities saw the Art & Soul program as a way to create a community vision for the revitalization of historic buildings and neighborhoods. At the meeting in Shoreham, townspeople pointed to a quilt on the wall depicting town buildings and discussed possibilities for revitalizing one in particular – the old Newton Academy, which the Town now owns. A group of Ferrisburgh residents, discussing possibilities for the first time, focused on how they might integrate the Town’s newly renovated Grange Hall with the local school. Groups of people from several communities attended the meeting together to discuss ideas they already had in mind, while in other cases neighbors met for the first time at the meeting and lingered afterward to share ideas on how they might work together to initiate a project.

The Art & Soul Civic Engagement program stems from a unique partnership between the Orton Family Foundation and the Vermont Land Trust, with additional assistance from the Vermont Arts Council and the national non-profit, Americans for the Arts. All four organizations see the project as a chance to explore new strategies for citizen engagement and the protection of community character using arts as a catalyst for describing the particular assets and values of a town. Organizers and citizens recognize the potential of this project to increase participation, resolve differences, and influence community decision-making. To summarize the words of one citizen, it is hard to have a conflict with someone in town after you have danced together.

Community applications for the Art & Soul Civic Engagement project are due June 30, 2008. The Foundation and the Vermont Arts Council will issue a separate Call for Artists and announce the selected community later in the summer. For the full program description and application form, visit www.orton.org/art&soul.

The Orton Family Foundation seeks to help small cities and towns identify and describe their heart and soul attributes, and to build on those qualities in planning toward desired futures. The Foundation believes that if a community deeply explores and agrees on its unique physical, economic, social and cultural attributes and then uses this knowledge to steer change and guide decisions, it will ensure a vibrant and sustainable future through periods of economic expansion and contraction. The Foundation serves cities and towns under 50,000 in population in the Northeast and Rocky Mountain regions, and has an office in Denver, Colorado. Lyman Orton, owner of the Vermont Country Store, created the Foundation in 1995.

For more information contact:

John Barstow, Director of Communications
The Orton Family Foundation
802/388-8612, ext. 202
jbarstow@orton.org
www.orton.org