In Asheville, does art compete with food and beer?
For Karen Wells, coming to Asheville is like Christmas. The Raleigh-based executive director of Arts North Carolina, an advocacy group, said she's enamored with the active arts community here.
But she's also noticed Christmas is a little crowded.
"In Asheville, it’s really hard to shine because there are so many presents under the Christmas tree," she said.
In other words, there's so much happening in Asheville — food, beer, retail, outdoor and private attractions — that sometimes the arts get lost. In less crowded places, communities sometimes focus more on the arts, Wells said.
"Let’s take Burnsville, for example," she said. "They don’t have the beer industry. They don’t have the food. … Boy oh boy they can really shine when it comes to considering the arts as an economic development engine."
Evidence of the strength of the arts in Burnsville: The Toe River Arts Council, which represents roughly 33,000 people in Mitchell and Yancey counties, raised 35 percent more in contributions, gifts and grants in 2014 than the Asheville Area Arts Council, which represents about 250,000 people.
As Asheville grows, is it possible that its many cultural assets will begin to compete with each other? Since the average tourist spends just 1.18 days in Asheville, according to a September 2015 study, will the arts lose customers to breweries and restaurants? And will certain assets drain public funding and private donations?
“There’s a lot of competition for the dollar and the time of people," Wells said. "I don’t think it’s insurmountable. I just think it’s something to think about."
Keeping art top of mind
When Wells came to Asheville in early November, arts professionals and city leaders gathered to hear her discuss advocacy tactics. When Wells suggested that Asheville's variety of cultural assets creates competition for the arts, the audience erupted into grumblings, mostly directed at the beer industry.
Ceramic artist Robert Milnes was at the meeting, and although he said he wasn't among the grumblers, he understands their frustration, he said.
“I have no aspersions against the breweries — I think they’re fabulous creative activities — but drinking beer will only get you so far in life," he said. “I think the arts are a bigger draw and could be capitalized upon more. ... The most important thing is an environment that makes it possible for the art to exist and that makes it possible for the people making it to live."
Asheville's brewery boom has coincided with unprecedented growth for Asheville. The city’s increasing popularity with tourists and transplants has brought rising rents and a higher cost of living, two factors that have a profound impact on artists.
Milnes said city leaders, especially those who work with economic development and tourism, have a responsibility to consider and support the arts. He spoke with the Citizen-Times from Paduca, Kentucky, which the local Convention & Visitors Bureau has branded "City of Crafts & Folk Art."
He also admired Paducah's global reputation. The City of Paducah became a UNESCO Creative City in 2013, an international designation that proclaims "creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development" and affords it worldwide networking opportunities.
Stephanie Brown of the Asheville Convention & Visitors Bureau said her group is unlikely to single out any one cultural asset for promotion, whether art or beer. We won't see art in Asheville's tagline anytime soon.
"It would be a disservice to the depth of the Asheville experience to have a singular focus in our tagline," Brown said. "Our goal ... is to create an emotional connection to Asheville as a place, to hook interest on the quality and variety of destination assets, and to provide information to plan a great visit and connect visitors to businesses."
On its website, the CVB promotes music, art, nature, heritage and food. Restaurants have their own brand, Foodtopia, and receive free print listings in the CVB's annual tourism guide. Other businesses pay for those listings, although the CVB is re-evaluating its fee structure for the 2017 guide.
Lauren Patton, who owns ZaPow Gallery downtown, said this leadership preference for restaurants is one of the things that frustrates her. She also worries about equal dispersion of public funds, especially money derived from the hotel occupancy tax, which is distributed annually by the Tourism Development Authority in the form of grants.
“There needs to be direct action towards claiming some of that hotel tax for us," she said. “If you want money to go to the artists, it needs to be actual marketing materials promoting the artists – marketing and selling art is how you get money to artists.”
Since 2012, about 3 percent of the grant money has gone to arts projects including the Hazel Robinson Amphitheater and Riverglass, a forthcoming glass education center.
Putting more public money toward art marketing would acknowledge the contribution artists, performers and musicians make to the vibrancy of the city, she explained.
“Even though the arts are drawing all these people to Asheville, they don’t do anything to help the art galleries and artists," she said.
Patton dismisses complaints about competition between cultural assets, such as art and beer. ZaPow has collaborated with several local breweries, including French Broad, Oskar Blues and Asheville Brewing, to host art openings and design beer labels.
“Some people like to grumble," she said. "There’s so many ways (any) artwork could tie into the beer industry. … Regardless of media, we as creative individuals and creative professionals are problem solvers, so I feel like it doesn’t have to be negative competition.”
Here come the cannibals
Most people are used to thinking about competition within a sector, but when time becomes a limiting factor, businesses in different sectors begin to compete. In a tourist town like Asheville, this phenomenon is called cannibalization.
“It happens all the time, and it happens in every destination," said Alan Fyall, a professor of tourism marketing at the University of Central Florida who has written about the economic phenomenon. "Yes, numbers can grow in a destination, but just because the numbers grow doesn’t mean they’re going to be evenly spread among the attractions.”
In his market, Orlando, the theme parks are the dominant attractions. Instead of sucking the life out of the rest of the city, as some people might expect, the parks provide a way for the city to organize itself.
"The best forms of collaboration are when you’ve got a dominant competitor," he said. "So in Edinburgh it was the castle. Here it’s Disney. … If they’ve got a clear focus, that bonds people together.”
But if the dominant competitor isn't obvious, the dynamic changes. Thematic groups have to band together to represent themselves, he said.
Asheville has these groups. For example, the River Arts District Artists represent about 200 professionals, and the Asheville Brewers Association provides services for that industry. But the success of those groups depends on the strength of their leadership, Fyall said.
"It comes down to somebody who has that unique gluing-together-of-the bits-personality, and that’s when it works," he said. It’s soft skills of networking, ambassadorial stuff, jelling people together. That’s the skill set that you need.”
Wells, the arts advocate from Raleigh, said that in Asheville's art sector, that leader is missing.
"(Asheville's arts professionals) are doing amazing work without anybody looking after the overall," she said. “If there was an organized advocacy agenda and strategy in place, boy, you all could pull some people.”
So how does Asheville find that person?
“They tend to be all sorts, but they’re people that understand the business, that understand the politics, but they have those personalities ... warm, inclusive, come-with-me-you’re-on-a-journey type people," Fyall said. "People think of politicians, but oh dear, please no. Politicians are very good at doing politics, but it’s not necessarily the same thing.”