Measuring Cultural Vitality in Our Community

Last year the Foundation commissioned a nationally recognized arts management consulting firm to conduct a comprehensive assessment of our region's arts and culture community. The Final Report of the 2007 Community Arts and Culture Assessment is available online. Please click on the links to the right to download the comprehensive Final Report and the handy Summary Report, which highlights key findings and recommendations from the assessment.

Now Presenting: Act II

The Foundation and the Sarasota County Arts Council are inviting interested community members to help prioritize and plan action based on the recommendations in the recent arts and culture assessment. From October through November 2007, we will host a series of meetings focusing on each of five opportunity areas identified in the report:

• Increasing Attendance
• Organization Collaboration
• Planning for the Future
• Supporting Local Artists
• The Arts in Education

To learn more and to register for community meetings on any or all of these topics, please click on the links to the right.

Background on the Arts and Culture Assessment

Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice envisions a continuing ability to address emerging issues in our region. To accomplish that goal, the Foundation regularly assesses all of its program areas: arts and culture, education, health and human services, civic affairs, and the environment.

In 2006, the Foundation commissioned AMS Planning and Research to conduct a comprehensive arts and culture assessment of our region. AMS is the nation’s most experienced arts management consulting firm, having provided counsel, planning, and research services to hundreds of arts and cultural organizations worldwide for nearly 20 years.

This assessment was designed to provide local arts and cultural organizations with high-quality information to bolster their planning efforts as well as to help inform grantmaking priorities for the Foundation. The goals of the assessment were to:

• understand residents’ interests in the arts and culture;
• inventory current arts and cultural offerings and future plans;
• evaluate facilities that house arts and cultural programming;
• explore projected changes in the community;
• and identify gaps between interests, program offerings, and capacity of existing facilities to meet current and future needs.

AMS presented its findings to the community on April 11, 2007, and a summary report was released by the Foundation at this event. On June 1, 2007, the Final Report from AMS was made available on the Foundation's Web site.