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| Folk artist Lucy Tokheim runs a pottery studio with her husband on a remote country road near Montevideo, one of the Minnesota communities named as "bright stars" by the McKnight Foundation. (MPR file photo) |
St. Paul, Minn. — The town of Bigfork, Minnesota, is home to 469 people. It's also home to a brand new $2.3 million Edge Center for the Arts. When the Guthrie Theater brings a touring show to town, the actors can perform on a stage instead of in the school cafeteria.
Patricia Feld, the center's board president, admits that Bigfork has its share of people who are "disinclined" to participate in the arts. But she says her arts organization has an advantage over its big city counterparts.
"We know one another. We know who is interested in going to plays and who'll take a play but won't go to a musical," Feld says. "So our disinclined is a group that is very easy to meet on the sidewalk and say, 'So is this going to be the one you're going to come to the show for?' 'Oh yeah, I suppose I'll come to this one, Patty.'"
Bigfork is one of eight Minnesota communities profiled in the McKnight Foundation's latest publication, "Bright Stars." McKnight wanted to call attention to communities that have used the arts to change their identities.
The "bright stars" range from Minnesota arts meccas such as Grand Marais and New York Mills, to the lesser known Harmony and Montevideo. The McKnight Foundation's Neal Cuthbert says a key aim of the study was to highlight the leadership of people like Patricia Feld.
"People are doing some really hard work on the part of their communities. They're not doing it to get rich, they're doing it because they see a different future that's possible, or they just feel moved to do it," says Cuthbert. "In my mind those people doing that work are some of our greatest assets and our great resources. So trying to help them do that work better is real important."
The McKnight report says the effort to nourish the arts paid off in the eight communities surveyed. The arts brought out natural leadership, helped stimulate the economy, facilitated a new sense of community identity, and created new opportunities for social engagement.
As a former New Yorker, author Carlo Cuesta says he was particularly impressed by the extent to which a single theater production can engage a small community.
"Someone said one-third of our town came out and saw this play. Imagine if one-third of the population of the Twin Cities went out and saw the same play, and the dialogue that would create in the community because everyone shared the same arts experience," Cuesta says.
In several of the communities studied, one of the most obvious benefits of the arts is tourism. Neal Cuthbert says there's a less obvious benefit -- the arts attract workers who bring their own jobs with them, whether they're artists or telecommuters.
"These towns, rather than thinking about getting a new turkey processing plant -- which can have 200 jobs, and those are good jobs for the community -- they can think about adding different kinds of amenities and have 200 people move to that town who all have their own jobs," says Cuthbert.
Cuthbert admits the arts are no silver bullet. For each success story, McKnight could have found another about a town theater closing or a festival shutting down. Cuthbert is not promising that the arts will stop kids from moving away once they've finished high school.
"But it certainly makes the town a more interesting place to move back to, or, 'OK, I want to settle down and have a family and I want to do it back home,'" says Cuthbert. "The notion that you can do it back home is really important."
Cuthbert says McKnight will now try to get the Bright Stars report out to as many small town leaders as possible. He says he hopes they'll be inspired by what they read to think more creatively about their own town's future.
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