Waupaca wins state Arts in Community Award
The Waupaca Cultural Plan will receive a 2019 Arts in the Community Award later this month.
The awards honor civic leaders as champions and communities in Wisconsin focused on creativity as integral to economic, educational and community vitality.
Arts Wisconsin is presenting the 11th annual awards in partnership with the League of Wisconsin Municipalities.
This is taking place on Thursday, Oct. 24, during the league’s annual conference in Green Bay.
The Waupaca Cultural Plan is a community-based public-private partnership.
In 2016, Waupaca Mayor Brian Smith, former City Administrator Henry Veleker, the Waupaca Area Chamber of Commerce and the Waupaca Community Arts Board presented an Arts Summit that began a cultural planning process.
It focused on historic and heritage celebration and preservation, collaboration and connections through the arts and community, creativity and vision for the city’s future and improving quality of life through the arts, culture and creativity.
The summit led to a cultural planning process, made possible with investments of time and funding by the city, involvement and ideas of community members and facilitation by Arts Wisconsin.
The process resulted in the plan.
Since the common council unanimously approved the plan in 2017, its goals, objectives and strategies have guided a proactive and growing network of community activists with a shared vision and purpose.
Arts groups and leaders have come together to form the Waupaca Area Arts and Culture Network (WAACN), a coalition meant to collaborate, share marketing strategies and reference the goals in the plan.
In just a year since the network’s inception, Waupaca has seen a sharp increase in the amount of engagement by all groups, with additional groups forming.
Waupaca’s arts sector now works collaboratively and continually asks, “Who else should be at the table?”