MOVING FORWARD:
Implementation Strategy

The Akron Cultural Plan is a call to action for our community, and you have an important role to play in supporting the public priorities.

Here are five elements of how you can help implement the cultural planning priorities:

1. Plan for Action

Throughout this cultural planning document, you will find specific strategies for each priority that our community can explore, implement, and promote.

Those strategies will be updated and evaluated in an annual action plan. Each year ArtsNow will support the creation of an annual action plan to define and prioritize the next steps of implementation.

2. Engage 

Your voice is as important as ever—and so is your participation. Here’s a small sample of ideas about how you can engage in the sector:

  • Attend cultural events across Akron, many of which can be found on SummitLive365.com

    • Invite your friends or neighbors

    • If you are able, take inventory of who might be missing from the room, and ask the event organizers, questions like “how can we work together to include more inclusive participation next time?”

    • Utilize cultural events as a way to honor and invest in your employees or as team-building efforts

  • Be a champion of the arts and culture in a way that fits your lifestyle. That could include:

    • Finding a farmers’ market

    • Engaging in outdoor recreation opportunities

    • Buying something from an artist, maker, or crafter

    • Telling a friend about an event, artist, or organization you love

    • Seeking out and admiring public art

    • Trying a dish at a local restaurant

    • Finding an outlet for your own creativity (joining a choir, snapping photos, writing poetry)

    • Encouraging a child in your life to explore creative outlets that interest them

  • Read about the ongoing implementation in our news and events section

  • Continue conversations about advancing Akron’s cultural identity and opportunities with your network

  • Look at how you can bring the arts and culture into your home and place of work, or bring your work to arts and culture

  • Contribute your time or resources to arts and cultural organizations

  • Take ownership in your community or neighborhood in driving forward change

3. Work Towards Specific Priorities

For Akron’s public priorities to be put into action, we need your direct partnership, too. For each public priority, organizations and individuals have already stepped up to roles like:

Resource Leaders: 
Organizations or individuals in the community who have expertise connected to a specific priority 

Key Change Makers: 
Organizations in the community who could work to implement the public priorities and strategies within their events, programs, and broad organizations

Supporters:
Individuals or organizations who have passions or missions related to each priority

If you or your organization would like to be among the partners and support this implementation, please click here.

4. Advocate

  • Join Americans for the Arts (You can also find tips and resources at americansforthearts.org/advocate)

  • Join Ohio Citizens for the Arts

  • Contact elected officials and urge them to support arts and culture in Ohio

  • Bring art into your home and business

  • Highlight successes of arts and culture within your networks

  • Follow legislation policies that will influence policies related to arts and culture, including arts education and funding for the arts

  • Ask your civic leaders about their arts and culture platform

  • Encourage others, including people and children of all ages, to join you in your advocacy efforts

  • Familiarize yourself with facts and figures that speak to the arts and cultural sector:

5. Resource

We don’t see the painter’s brush in her finished work, but without it, there’s no masterpiece. 

Funding is the paintbrush crafting our arts and cultural story. 

To put the public priorities into action, our community needs resources. You can add to the resourcing conversation or share your time, resources, or talent with the arts and cultural sector.

  • Fundraise

  • Donate

  • Volunteer

  • Elevate the resourcing conversation within your network

  • Cultural Leader? Make changes in your organization.

  • Business or Nonprofit? Consider — and budget for — arts, culture, and performances — at your events and in your office spaces