Message from the Board President

Greetings friends, colleagues, and art lovers.

We’ve faced some great difficulties in the last couple years but the New Year brings renewed optimism for 2011. The phrase “creative business” has probably been overused lately, but I feel this is the direction the Fresno Arts Council is striving towards. Who better to take on that responsibility than those who use creative thinking in their everyday lives? With this direction I’m proud to announce the outcomes of your Art Council's hard work and dedication to you and your work. I’d also like to take this opportunity to show you how you can make your arts council work for you.

A unified arts community is a healthy, powerful and prosperous one. The unification of any diverse community takes guidance. Five years ago the FAC adopted the Cultural Arts Plan as a tool to guide long term projects that require a high level of maintenance, documentation, and response to the funding arms. The plan is a tool to delineate the diversity of the arts community within Fresno County. It’s a living document with many completed and ongoing projects that we would like to use to demonstrate the state of Arts in Fresno County to our larger State and Federal partners. As a purveyor of the CEP Grant we’ve felt honored to give almost $1,000,000.00 to local art organizations over the last ten years. It is our greatest desire to continue to support the education in, and enjoyment of the arts in Fresno County. The accuracy of the Cultural Arts Plan will have great benefits to Fresno Art Council’s ability to continue to strive toward these goals.

Last year, the Fresno Arts Council embarked on the first update of the plan. We believe that a collaborative effort will be necessary to fully detail all of the projects and plans. Therefore, we will be calling upon you in the next few months to shed clarity on your projects and their outcomes. In an effort to improve the value of representation to all, we are working to update our outdated website. A unified community can only exist through communication and collaboration. We envision our website as a central link for the arts in Fresno County. We would like this site to work for everyone, and will provide spaces for you to share your stories and successes.

Our good friend and board member Victor Ramayrat from Socient has spent a lot of time and effort developing this site for our arts community to use. Please bookmark our new website for all your arts-related needs.

We also invite you to support the arts and the work we do by becoming a member. The benefits of membership will be long-lived as we strive to make lasting changes in our community.

Julie Linxweiler

2011 Board President