Economic Development

Beet Street’s vision is to create an environment where arts and culture groups, artists, performers, and the creative class can grow and thrive organically. Local arts leaders are hungry for advocacy, shared marketing and calendars, long-term funding strategies, and business coaching. Beet Street is well positioned to provide leadership that will help arts groups, artists, and the industry develop and thrive.

Beet Street will provide opportunities for growing healthy, high quality programming partners in the local arts community, and will be a champion for arts and culture in Fort Collins by:

• Providing leadership to help arts groups, artists, and the arts, culture, and creative economy develop
• Contributing to the creation of basic support, stability, and long-term funding for the industry, and
• Measuring and communicating the economic impact of Beet Street and the  broader arts community

Beet Street’s Economic Development activities for 2010 includes:

Lead development of vision and long-term funding strategy for the arts community:

• Convene local arts and culture professionals
• Work closely with stakeholders and City staff to identify funding options and strategize preferences and  timelines for implementation, and
• Develop and promote a specific long-term strategy for dedicated funding that works in conjunction with City needs and goals

Centralized Marketing: Implement and market a centralized calendar

• Develop Beet Street website calendar as a comprehensive source for arts and culture events
• Work with arts groups to provide calendar module for their websites, and
• Market new Beet Street calendar as arts and culture portal

Lead in the creation of professional development program for existing and emerging local arts organizations and artists that provides incentives for success:

• Work with arts groups, donors, educational resources, and the business community to identify professional  development needs and easy-to-implement educational opportunities, and
• Work with educational resources to develop a program and classes tailored specifically to the arts and culture community and identified needs
• Develop Beet Street virtual incubator to enable and accelerate the economic health and success of existing non-profit arts organizations

Measure the economic impact of Beet Street and the arts, culture, and creative economy in general, and communicate our story to the broader community:

• Organize participation in national studies, including Americans for the Arts – Arts and Economic Prosperity, and Western States Arts Federation – Creative Vitality Index
• Undertake additional data collection and analysis to measure the impact of individual events, series and organizations, and
• Pull together all data sources and develop a report to the community that illustrates the economic impact of the arts, key trends, and the impact of the broader creative economy

Beet Street will work to help develop a strong arts industry where artists can make a living wage, can stay in Fort Collins, or even choose to relocate to Fort Collins. Arts groups and artists can move beyond, “Am I going to survive?” and operate from a mentality of, “How am I going to thrive?” Their financial future is secure, they operate at a professional level, and they’re encouraged to improve not only their art or craft, but their operations and strategy.