Every year ArtSpeak is asked to present to the Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This year Mike Teixeira walked them through all the exciting activities going on.
14. COMMUNITY ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Opening our doors!
- 3S Artspace
What are you
most proud of?
We had big name acts, but also were
able to offer an average of more than one live
performance per week under $30 to maintain our
commitment to accessibility.
- The Music Hall
15. COMMUNITY ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Opening our doors!
- 3S Artspace
What are you
most proud of?
We had big name acts, but also were
able to offer an average of more than one live
performance per week under $30 to maintain our
commitment to accessibility.
- The Music Hall
Launching and selling out
Let's Dance! was pretty incredible,
seeing our choreography on The Music Hall
stage at V-DAY, performing at TEDx and
curating a show featuring Seacoast-based
choreographers (because yes, there are
more than one)!
-Neoteric Dance Collaborative
25. ARTspeak as RESOURCE
• PACA Organization & Tools
• Charette Involvement
• Sawtelle Painting
• Processes
• Process of Public Art RFPs refined
• Policies regarding public art & donated art
Thank you Mayor Lister and members of the council
My name is Mike Teixeira and I am the current president of Art Speak the city’s cultural commission
First I’d like to thank the current board for their dedication and participation this year (stand and acknowledge)…without this stellar team I would never have gotten up to speed as quickly as I have and none of what you see in the following report would have been possible without their experience and dedication.
I’d also like to thank Nancy Carmer for being such a strong and effective liaison.
The purpose of today’s presentation is to update the city on the state of the arts and cultural community in Portsmouth
As you’ll see there is a lot to be proud of and our little city is becoming more and more a destination of choice as people zip across our many bridges to experience everything we have to offer.
So let’s start with the exciting stuff, this past year has been one of admirable accomplishments
3S - How can any conversation about the A&C in Portsmouth begin without mentioning 3S?! After years of dreaming, planning and fundraising their doors opened this year and I dare say the community has flocked to this new cultural epicenter.
Puddle Duck Pond - What a perfect and bold idea for Strawberry Banke. An idea that has paid off in spades by attracting over 16,000 skaters in it’s first season.
African Burial Ground - Such a defining moment for our city. It was inspiring to watch how the city dealt with a sad discovery, worked together and thoughtfully created a fitting public space and memorial to honor the deceased. We look forward to the multi-day commemoration this month.
TEDx - An event that embraces our global participation in thought leadership. This year the talks asked that we consider our IMPACT on our society and was a stellar success.
P.A.C.A Piscataqua Arts & Cultural Alliance - Launched last year by ArtSpeak and members of various arts, historical and cultural community organizations to help strengthen area a&c organizations. Since that launch it has been busy this year, they have elected a governing body, determined objectives, created an internal website, forum, and calendar to help facilitate organization and communications among it’s partner organizations.
ArtWalk - Also launched last year by ArtSpeak, we’ve watched as hundreds of people have visited and used our mobile map and hundreds more have taken paper versions to the street to explore Portsmouth’s public art pieces.
ArtSpeak Restructured Site - This year A.S. took the opportunity to restructure our site and organize it based on our audiences, resulting in a more intuitive experience for visitors, as well as making it more mobile accessible and adding in features like a blog, calendar, and Instagram feed to help relay information, show each other’s work, and engage with the community in a more robust way.
Giving Tuesday - PACA and ArtSpeak were honored to be part of Mayor Lister declaration that the Tuesday after every Thanksgiving would now be known as “Giving Tuesday”, an opportunity for Portsmouth to think about supporting the non-profits in our community.
Keep Portsmouth Loud - Lastly I want to say that even though KPL was born out of a somewhat contentious situation, I think it was ultimately an inspiration to ArtSpeak and to other A&C organizations like ours. By reminding us of what civic action looks like and reminding us that banned together we are stronger than individuals. Lessons that we as an organization have taken to heart.
But don’t take our words for it, we reached out to the community and here is what some of them wanted you to know their biggest accomplishments were:
3S
The Music Hall
Neoteric - So cute even sent us a video, such a great reflection of the energy happening on the ground level in our city.
But all of this is ONLY a small portion of what is going on…
Took this picture at a local business
Plus look at our instagram feed and you can see that the State of the Arts in Portsmouth is STRONG.
but the icing on the cake for us as an organization is that, in so many ways, more and more groups are looking for our participation and assistance, really using this commission as a resource.
PACA - We help them with administration and building things like their website.
The Charettes - We’ve sent reps to each of these and have been happy to participate in the discussions about public art and look forward to helping with the A&C section of the revised city Master Plan. As a matter of fact, our very own Robin Albert is already participating in the Master Plan Study Circles through Portsmouth Listens.
Sawtelle - This winter, the beneficiaries of the Jean E. Sawtelle Revocable Trust looked to donate the Carleton Theodore Chapman painting The Bonhomme Richard Capturing the Serapis, the city asked our advice on how to organize the transfer and well…it was nice to be needed :)
Processes - With the opportunity to finally flex Portsmouth’s Percent for Art ordinance at the Middle School and the newly bonded parking garage, we’ve been fine tuning our game-plan for the public art RFP process and can’t wait to get started, we hope to be utilized as a resource even more!
So what’s next for ArtSpeak?
Forums - Well remember the Public Art RFPs I just mentioned, the first step in that process is having some public forums to start the discussion….As luck would have it we’re kicking off our yearly public forum series with just this topic…hope to see you there!
Top Secret - We’ve also been working on a little A&C campaign we hope to unveil this summer.
Think Out - In the late Summer/Fall ArtSpeak will be conducting it’s first ThinkOut event…it promises to be a new type of event here in Portsmouth that brings the A&C community together to inspire and challenge them in a way that we hope will help set the discussion for the upcoming year.
AFTA Survey - The American for the Arts survey is a survey that measures the local and national economic impact of Nonprofits Arts & Culture. The last one was done by Art Speak here in Portsmouth 5 years ago and we’re very excited to be kicking it off again this year and data collection will begin in 2016…we’ll be looking for volunteers :)
Why is this study important?
Last time around it showed that in Portsmouth alone, A&C nonprofits were responsible for $41.5 million in revenues to the local economy, that’s not dollars to the non-profits…that’s money that happened as a result of their activity….so with this much activity going on in our city, with the growth we’ve seen, can you imagine what that number will be this time?!
That’s why we’re excited and we hope you are too, because we know arts & culture are more than just fun things to do and experience, but they are vital to the growth of our city.
So, thank you Mayor Listor and members of the council. We appreciate your time tonight and we hope you’ll consider extending our agreement with the city.
We at ArtSpeak want to keep helping the arts & cultural community grow, organize, and contribute to Portsmouth.
Special thanks to P.C.
