What Can You Dream Up?

Anything is Possible

The Sky’s our Limit – That’s the motto of the new AIR Program (Arts Incubator of the Rockies) which is being developed by Beet Street, a local Fort Collins non-profit organization which exists as a catalyst to develop Fort Collins into a nationally recognized arts and culture center and destination by distinguishing ourselves as an intellectually vital community that fosters, celebrates, and inspires human creativity.

I first heard about the AIR Program in Nov. when Beet Street Executive Director Beth Flowers gave a presentation about the vision and status of this program during one of the monthly Arts and Drafts nights that Beet Street sponsors at various arts locations around town.

I knew from that first introduction to the program concept that this is going to be a VERY cool program with the potential to create a paradigm shift for artists and communities in the Inter mountain west region (IMWR).  I wanted to get involved in helping make this vision a reality.

WHY I wanted to get involved

1. I love the vision and mission of this program: The focus is to build a self-sustaining arts economy and arts culture in the small towns and communities of the 10 state region of the IMW (this includes CO, WY, NE, MT, ND, SD, ID, UT, NV, NM), by offering programs to both “Creatives” (artists of all persuasions) and the Community to help develop both supply and demand for ART in our region and embed ARTs in our culture.

While the focus is on serving the small communities and artists in remote locales of the IMWR, the reality is that once the curriculum offerings are set up and made available via various distance learning/internet-based methods, the target audience of this program could really become broad, even worldwide.  From the AIR program website:

2. This is a first of its kind effort and its entirely do-able: There are other ARTs incubators out there, but this is the first one that goes beyond a single state or entity focus, intending to reach a target audience of +280,000 creatives across a 10 state region.  Beet Street and the City of Fort Collins have developed such a great vision for this program that they won a large NEA grant this past year to help fund the program development.

3. Giving Back, Connecting, and Building Relationships: As I wrote in my last post, I want to contribute to my community, get involved in efforts where I can help build the economic Arts engine and value of Art in our culture, and I am focusing more this year on Connecting with my tribe. Getting involved in this program is a great way for me to use my graphic recording and facilitation skills, working with like-minded Creatives on a topic area I am passionate about.

Taking Action

I applied and was selected in early Jan 2012 to participate as a volunteer curriculum advisory committee member, to work with ~30 others over the next several months to define the “what, why, and how” of the AIR core curriculum offerings.  Our “WHAT” committee has been meeting weekly since late January, defining the overall mission and brainstorming objectives and activities to achieve our intended goals.

We have a great group of people working together on 3 committees to define the program goals, objectives and target audience, to meet with businesses in the community and discuss how Creatives can help improve business outcomes (developing the “demand” side of the supply/demand equation), and to research the many delivery channels we might use to deliver our program to the target audiences.

Recording the AIR mission and top objectives as output from the first Mega Committee Meeting.

This past week we had a Mega Committee Meeting with all 3 of the committees together, along with the Beet Street Board members, to present our progress updates, and to align as a large group on our mission, our top objectives, and our target audience.  I helped design and facilitate the Mega meeting and graphically recorded the meeting as well.

We achieved our meeting objectives – got updates from each committee, and came away aligned as a group on our mission, top objective areas, and target audience.

Next Steps

Next, we’ll continue to work through the details of identifying curriculum specifics that will achieve the objectives (WHAT committee), further explore developing the ARTs connections to Community and Business (WHY committee), and how we’ll deliver this program to the target audiences (HOW committee).

Graphic Recording of the Mega Committee Meeting output

Our planned timeline is to wrap up the advisory committee work at end of April and have the initial curriculum being developed by the curriculum writers this summer and be able to do some pilot programs this fall, with a broad-based full program curriculum launch in 2013, including a first Regional AIR program Summit meeting in Fort Collins, with participants from all 10 states.

With every succeeding meeting, I get more and more excited about making this dream a reality.  It is very real, we can make it happen – it is up to US to take the actions necessary to see it to fruition.

Interested in getting involved or learning more about the AIR program?  Visit the AIR website for more details and progress updates.   If you’re interested in ARTs in the Rockies, I think you’ll want to get connected in with this program in whatever way works best for you!