A team of five Haines residents will spend two years focusing on arts-based economic development in a new national training program.
Brenda Josephson and Sean Maidy, representing the Haines Borough, Sylvia Heinz and Jeremy Stephens, representing Haines businesses, and Carol Tuynman, representing an arts organization, were one of seven county-based teams selected to participate. The technical assistance and training program, called the “NACo Creative Counties Placemaking Challenge,” is sponsored by the National Association of Counties, and Americans for the Arts.
Teams will learn how to integrate arts and culture into the local economy, and discuss creative placemaking at a workshop in Des Moines, Iowa in March. Teams will come away from the workshop with a tailored action plan to implement ideas.
Team leader Tuynman said creative placemaking is a way to integrate art into a community in a purposeful and meaningful way.
“We are focused on learning how to generate engagement in sectors that feel disenfranchised, and how to work with government to shape policies that will sustain our shared culture,” Tuynman said. “We believe that NACo’s technical support opportunity will allow us to gain critically-needed skills and utilize new tools that will improve community engagement and therefore deepen the public trust our projects have already achieved around the arts.”
Jeremy Stephens said counties are catching on that if people make their communities an attractive place to live, economic development will follow.
“As technology has developed, populations are starting to work where they live, instead of live where they work,” Stephens said. “Haines already has all of the pieces. We have artists, we have an involved government, we have the want to create creative places and quality spaces.”
The teams will also receive assistance for two years following the in-person training, including webinars, other workshops at NACo conferences and an online resource page.
“This two-year program provides key support to NACo’s long-term goal of building a larger community – particularly for smaller and more rural counties – that can directly support and learn from one another’s successful arts and culture-driven programs, policies and partnerships,” wrote Jenna Moran, Program Manager for Resilience on NACo’s Community Resilience & Economic Development team.
Assembly member Sean Maidy said he was thrilled to be offered training to improve the community, and supports art and creativity.
“I think that Haines is a thriving art community. It’s a big part of why people come here and want to live here, and economic development has been a hot-button issue. It’s a win-win,” Maidy said.
Haines boasts the smallest population of the counties, which are located in Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio and Utah. The second smallest county is Sullivan County, New Hampshire with a population of 43,742. Lafayette Parish, Louisiana is the largest with 240,000.
Team members will participate in a 1-hour webinar at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 12 on building an arts-driven community. The program officially starts Jan. 1.