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Remember MAACC?
They’ve actually been working hard and have a plan.  Bill Nigut, the group’s executive director, talked to the membership of the Atlanta Coalition of Performing Arts and gave a rundown.  Here’s the general direction their going.
MAACC sees itself as the link between the arts community and the business/civic community.  Their job is to champion the importance of the arts in the life of a successful city. To that end, they have some programs going. 
First, they’ve started an Arts Leadership program similar to Leadership Atlanta.  Classes contain Arts leaders, business executives, and government officials who all work together in a 4 day format to understand issues, solve problems and build bridges.  The first class has already graduated and they’re preparing for the second class.
They’re also building a database of arts patrons.  That way, the folks who are interested in the arts can be given opportunities to mobilize or to get unique opportunities for special arts programs. 
They do have a website up which provides another portal for listing events.  They are trying to use this to partner with local media companies to garner further exposure for the arts scene.
One interesting item that Nigut discussed was the perception that big ticket cultural institutions, such as the Woodruff Arts Center, Georgia Aquarium, and NASCAR museum will draw funding away from the smaller cultural institutions that really need it.  Nigut urged people to think about this as a chance to get business and government aware of the power of cultural institutions improve the attractiveness of the city and they leverage that awareness toward greater funding.  Whether that can actually be accomplished is another story. 
Still, it’s good to know that MAACC is working and generally working toward progress in the right directions. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 16th, 2005 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Looking Toward the Future. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.