professional membership
Featured Member
| Project: | Arts Incubator of the Rockies |
| Organization: | Beet Street |
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The Arts Incubator of the Rockies (AIR) is a revolutionary partnership between Beet Street, the City of Fort Collins Cultural Services Department, and the Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Advocacy, and Performance Institute for the Arts (LEAP) at Colorado State University (CSU).
There are thousands of extraordinary artists, arts organizations, and creative business people in the Intermountain West region (Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota). AIR serves these 10 states and more than 280,000 creatives who want to shift the paradigms about art, money, value, and community.
In 2010, Beet Street, an arts nonprofit, joined together with the City of Fort Collins Cultural Services Department and LEAP to find solutions to the problems facing the arts community in our small city in Northern Colorado. We researched professional development programs, arts and business incubators across the country, and explored new distance learning and social networking technologies. We also reviewed the challenges facing the arts communities in other states in the Intermountain West region and discovered that we had common problems to solve.
In the spirit of shared prosperity, we realized that our local assets could be leveraged to cultivate the arts in a much larger area. Economies of scale and technological advancements could enable our local investment in curriculum, distance learning classrooms, expert speakers, and networking opportunities to serve the entire region.
AIR will provide education, resources, and support to elevate our region’s artists and arts organizations. AIR will also offer administrative services, professional resources, and gallery and performance spaces to students and professionals to assist them in creating, redefining, and sustaining their creative careers in the new economy.
AIR will use new and emerging technologies to provide high-quality professional development classes, entrepreneurial and business training, and coaching opportunities to artists in Northern Colorado and rural communities in the Intermountain West. In addition, AIR will provide social networking opportunities that will strengthen the arts throughout the region.
Core programs will include:
- Workshops and classes offered on-site at the Carnegie Library Building in distance-learning classrooms, so content can be streamed throughout the Intermountain West
- A website portal for access to educational resources including distance learning classes, collaborative projects, and social networking
- Networking opportunities both on-line and in person
- Coaching and mentoring opportunities for artists to learn and grow from experts
- Regional outreach opportunities, providing facilitators throughout the region to complement on-line content
- A comprehensive internship program that will create connections between students and working professional artists
The AIR curriculum and programs use an innovative approach designed to encourage, model, and ensure systemic change in how our communities and society value the arts, artists, creatives, and creativity. The AIR curriculum infuses creatives and creativity into local businesses, governments, and schools as collaborative partners who can help grow revenues, solve local community problems, and better prepare our children for the future.
We have made incredible strides already in 2012. We have completed the design of our curriculum, are on schedule with our website development, and will begin piloting our programs in July. The AIR website will launch in August and our internship program with CSU LEAP Institute will be offered for the fall 2012 semester.
For more information on the Arts Incubator of the Rockies, please visit www. airartsincubtor.org or e-mail Beth Flowers at bflowers@beetstreet.org.
| Organization Contact: | Beth Flowers, Executive Director |