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"The arts bring money to the community," says Joy Walls of Lycoming Arts.
The organization has spent the last few months meeting with Williamsport City Council, Lycoming County's commissioners and the Williamsport-Lycoming Chamber of Commerce to tout the economic impact of our region's arts scene and how it dove-tails with outdoors recreation-related tourism and other facets of tourism and to ask for grants or other revenue streams to bolster the group's work.
In addition to city council, the commissioners and chamber's leadership, Lycoming Arts hopes to share its presentation with the region's state legislators.
"We're economic development at this point," Judy Olinsky of Lycoming Arts told the Sun-Gazette Monday. "We want the community to see this opportunity."
Olinsky and Walls noted the impact of the Central Susquehanna Valley Thruway project, which is near completion, and the ongoing work on Interstate 99 from the New York state line down to Centre County and the potential the upgrades have for drawing visitors and their money into the region.
"That's going to make an amazing difference. This is a moment in time for us," Olinsky said. "We have to ratchet up how we manage and promote" arts and culture.
Olinsky, Walls and the other volunteers with Lycoming Arts would like to see the community seize the opportunity both by funding paid staff for the organization and by increasing its numbers of volunteers.
"We need people to help with First Friday," Walls said. "We do need volunteers. We do need a paid administrator."
First Fridays, perhaps the hallmark of the organization's work in promoting arts and culture, has grown. The event drew "an older crowd" when it started, Walls said, but in recent years First Fridays are seeing families and younger community members participate.
"A wave of creative people are moving here," Walls said.
Olinsky noted that the burgeoning arts scene gives small-business entrepreneurs and people from more modest backgrounds opportunities to pursue careers and livelihoods in arts-related businesses and fields -- a way to flourish in the face of decades of globalization and the loss of more traditional employment.
The arts contribute $1.7 billion to Pennsylvania's economy and $4.2 million to the Northern Tier's economy. According to the data compiled by Lycoming Arts, art event audiences spend over $1 billion a year. Lycoming Arts provided a list of developers and businesses whose efforts can be directly traced to the city's branding as an arts destination. Olinsky and Walls also noted that arts tourism converges with other tourism, including outdoors recreation supported by the Pennsylvania Wilds program and increased funding for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the region's status as host of the Little League World Series.
Paid staff "would ensure sustainability and an increase in the value arts can bring to the community," according to the presentation. A paid administrator could "increase focus on a cultural district and cultural trails," the presentation said.
Other projects at which paid staff could be at the forefront include designing trolley routes for tourists, conference attendees and others to visit arts and cultural sites, marketing and promoting the region's arts and cultural heritage and collaborating with the Susquehanna Greenways Partnership and with state tourism initiatives.