Strengthening the Regional Creativity Economy of Anson and Stanly Counties
An Open Community Forum ~ Dennis Vineyards and Winery, Albemarle, NC
Thursday, April 14, 2011 ~ 6:30 pm until 8:45 pm
Finding new, collaborative ways to encourage and market Anson and Stanly Counties’ artist venues, grassroots festivals, and natural environment will be essential for strengthening and growing the two-county region’s shared creativity economy.
Anson and Stanly Counties also should place a high priority upon tracking their college-bound youth after high school in order to encourage them to return home and work for local employers during the summer months.
Positive experiences with summer employment—building resumes and extending their personal networks—may help persuade students to resettle back in Anson and Stanly Counties following their graduation from college. The overarching goal would be to mitigate the loss of talent and expertise, often referred to as “the brain drain,” that many rural places experience as their young people move away.
These recommendations comprise the top tier of a set of strategic priorities that emerged from
an evening of lively discussion and balloting among more than 100 Anson and Stanly County residents who gathered at Dennis Vineyards and Winery in Albemarle on Thursday, April 14.
Other important, if less highly ranked, strategies reviewed at the meeting included several closely related to local agriculture—developing “new trails to market” for local foods and local crafts; promoting multi-county community-supported agriculture (CSA) projects; and encouraging closer collaboration among local food growers, value-added producers, and groceries.
Last winter, smaller-scale public meetings held in mid-January and mid-February generated a list of 11 preliminary recommendations that had been targeted for further consideration at the larger, more broadly representative gathering at Dennis Vineyards. Even so, attendees on April 14 were quick to add their own strategies to the diverse mix of choices under review.
Meeting participants persuasively argued for a stronger emphasis upon promoting the region’s natural assets—including Morrow Mountain State Park, the Uwharrie National Forest, Badin Lake, and the Pee Dee River, including the Pee Dee Wildlife Refuge. They also pointed out related environmental features such as walkable towns and shopping districts, a new city park in Wadesboro, and the Carolina Thread Trail, which is a 15-county, two-state regional trail system.
Accordingly, the April 14 town hall-style session yielded an expanded slate of fresh ideas that now will be passed along to a new round of citizen working groups that will seek to implement them—especially those strategies which can yield early, highly visible success stories. Many of the participants at the Dennis Vineyards event also signaled their willingness to take part in those upcoming working group discussions.
The overall initiative is jointly coordinated by the North Carolina State Cooperative Extension Service and the Institute for Emerging Issues, a public policy organization also affiliated with N.C. State University in Raleigh. The overarching goal has been to involve Anson and Stanly County leaders in the decision-making for and implementation of a sustained creativity economy initiative. Regional Technology Strategies, Inc. in Carrboro has analyzed economic and workforce development trends affecting the two counties, as well as mapped the region’s creativity economy assets. The N.C. Center for Rural Economic Development is providing overall financial support for the project.
Two local NCSU county extension directors—Janine Rywak (Anson County) and Lori S. Ivey (Stanly County)—hosted the public meeting at Dennis Vineyards. In the weeks ahead, they will convene the next round of working group discussions. The project also is helping to lay the groundwork for developing a creativity economy asset-mapping tool kit and training session for other county cooperative extension personnel statewide.
Ranking the preliminary recommendations
After Janine Rywak’s presentation of 1l key recommendations forwarded by the February 15 working group and the general discussion that followed, meeting attendees had the opportunity vote for three strategies that they believed could yield positive early outcomes and build momentum for the overall creativity economy initiative.
Owing to the plethora of good ideas that arose during the public discussion, Rywak encouraged meeting participants to write in additional ideas and strategies so that those concerns, too, could be documented and sent on to the upcoming working groups.
In all, attendees filled out 62 ballots and cast a total of 182 votes. The rank and tally for each of the 11 preliminary recommendations, displayed from most favored to the least, was as follows:
Table 1: Ranking the Preliminary Recommendations
Rank | Votes | Preliminary Recommendations for Creativity Economy Strategies |
1 | 33 | Encourage visual and performing arts venues in our two counties to coordinate and combine their marketing efforts. |
2 | 28 | Develop and promote a “Taste of the Pee Dee Festival.” |
3 | 27 | Increase signage to promote roadside tourism throughout Anson and Stanly Counties (especially on Highways 74 and 52. |
4 | 25 | Offer young people a reason to stay in the community after high school or return after college. |
5 | 19 | Promote new “trails to market” for local crafts and local food. |
6 (tie) | 11 | Develop and encourage a two-county community-supported agriculture (CSA) project. |
6 (tie) | 11 | Encourage closer collaborations among local grocers and local food. |
8 | 9 | Create a tourism information kiosk (with ATM) in downtown Wadesboro. |
9 | 8 | Promote geocaching and develop a “Go Anson Stanly” mobile app that focuses on a regional wine tour. |
10 | 7 | Communicate more broadly about the Anson Stanly creativity economy initiative to different groups across the region. |
11 | 4 | Create a farm incubator that can help local people get started with agriculture. |
The meeting participants placed a premium upon better marketing and promotion, as the top three strategies all fall into that category. It can be noted, however, that two of the lower tier strategies—numbers 9 and 11—may have received lower rankings in part because discussion at the meeting revealed that significant progress already is underway for each of those strategies.
A closer look—strategy by strategy
1 Encourage visual and performing arts venues in our two counties to coordinate and combine their marketing efforts.
Much of the discussion around this strategy focused upon a perceived need for additional smaller venues appropriate for lesser-known, local performing artists, especially musicians.
The need has grown more acute since several local restaurants, which formerly showcased such performers, recently have closed. Attendees called attention to the newly renovated Ansonia Theater in downtown Wadesboro, the Alameda Theater in downtown Albemarle,
and the Old Central School, also in Albemarle, which features an auditorium that could be renovated as a performance space.
People also said that Anson and Stanly Counties would benefit from more coffee shops that feature live musical performances, as well as more “singing workshops” and dinner theaters.
One person suggested on their ballot that the two-county region could market its art galleries, cultural performances, and culinary delights to the nearby Charlotte market, perhaps as an invitation to spend “A Night on the Small Town.”
Other participants noted that better coordination and shared marketing could help boost the viability of local festivals and special events, such as equestrian competitions hosted at the Fork Farm, which already has a regional economic impact of over $3 million. One person commented that regional events can effectively be marketed, using new technologies, to the world, the state, the region, and locally. In fact, local audiences should not be overlooked.
“I encourage all of you [here tonight] to take advantage of local events,” said Chester Lowder from Stanly County. “Don’t just set and watch that TV. You can watch TV later. But too often I think we want to be that person that sets in the house and hibernates and doesn’t take advantage of going to an event that may be $10, $20, or $50—but yet it would mean a lot to our whole community as we pull together.”
2 Develop and promote a “Taste of the Pee Dee Festival.”
This recommendation was the second strongest vote-getter, even though a couple of attendees thought the proposed name for the festival could be improved. “Pee Dee is also well known in South Carolina,” one person wrote on their ballot. “Pee Dee does not make me think of Anson and Stanly Counties.”
Even so, a regional festival that showcases the best of Anson and Stanly Counties could be an important step toward establishing a favorable brand identity for the region, Janine Rywak observed. She said the earlier working group was influenced by successful marketing efforts in Arkansas that have developed and implemented a “Naturally Ozark” brand. “So the idea was,” she said, “we could brand something here. We could brand it regionally. We’ve got enough in common that it’s a possibility. [We could] have a festival to kick it off, and any types of projects or products that we could come up with could be developed and marketed.”
One audience member suggested that Anson and Stanly Counties could develop a successful blues festival, perhaps playing off the fact that legendary Piedmont-style blues guitarist Blind Boy Fuller was born in Wadesboro around 1907.
Another attendee remarked that it would be good to come up with a consistent location or a well-coordinated season of festivals that would appeal to visitors who would like to plan their vacations around attending a series of such events. “This would really promote the culture, the foods, and our geographical area,” he said.
3 Increase signage to promote roadside tourism throughout Anson and Stanly Counties (especially on Highways 74 and 52).
One of the ideas presented in an earlier meeting, Rywak reported, was to work with the N.C. Department of Transportation and its existing tourism-oriented directional signage program (TODS). Attendees agreed, noting that it also would be good also to target enhanced signage on Highways 73 and 24/27. The overall intent is to make visitors passing through Anson and Stanly Counties, especially during the heavily traveled summer months, more aware of local attractions and amenities. “We would need to work with the Convention and Visitors Bureau in Stanly County, the Tourism Development Authority in Anson County, and local sign shops to increase signage and overall exposure,” Rywak said.
One meeting participant pointed out that there currently are a lot of empty billboards that might be obtained fairly inexpensively. “It’s good to have all these ideas [about local events and attractions],” he said, “but people in other counties don’t know anything about it.” He further emphasized the need to advertise in media other than the Internet and the local paper. “A lot of people are still old-fashioned, so you got to make a lot of old-fashioned ways,” he advised. “You gotta bring in that outside traffic!”
4 Offer young people a reason to stay in the community after high school or return after college.
“Anson and Stanly Counties are losing a lot of their bright young people,” warned Rywak. “When they go off to college, they don’t come back. So we’ve got a brain drain going on.”
One strategy proposed at the meeting to counter the brain drain came from Misty Harris, the economic development director for Anson County. Harris recently has been attending a three-month N.C. Rural Leadership Institute sponsored by the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center.
As part of her project work for that program, Harris and a colleague from Siler City propose a pilot project to track high school seniors that have left the area to attend a four-year college or university. Harris hopes to establish a fund that would help bring these college students back home for summer employment—and possibly even during Christmas vacations—with local firms.
“And then, after they graduate from that four-year university, they might go off and get a master’s degree, then they are more likely to come back and make Anson County or Stanly County their home, because, number one, they have that connection with employers, they have references, and hopefully they will have a job. And number two, we’re not just letting them go after high school,” Harris said.
“There’s a place in Ohio, I think, that gives every high school senior a mailbox at their high school graduation and says, ‘We want you to come back.’ So we need to make little projects like that one that lets high school seniors know, ‘Even though you’re going away, we want you to come back.’ And we would stay connected with them.”
In the balloting that took place later in the program, one attendee wrote that it also would be important to acknowledge young people who have returned and made a commitment to live in Anson and Stanly Counties.
5 Promote new “trails to market” for local crafts and local food.
“This idea piggy-backed on the back of those earlier ideas about branding opportunities,” Rywak said. “We were talking about a farm-to-fork festival. A Taste of the Pee Dee type of festival. But it was all about culturally related crafts and local foods.”
Rywak also noted that Cooperative Extension historically has focused on agriculture, so the agency would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with local economic development agencies to produce such an event. Misty Harris agreed to explore the possibility of staging one event that would serve both counties, adding that the perfect time to hold such a festival would be January, February or March when there would not likely be a lot of other competing special events.
6 Develop and promote a two-county community supported agriculture (CSA) project.
There already has been some discussion and work on this strategy with both New Ventures Business Development at South Piedmont Community College in Anson County and with a fledgling farmers network that is developing across Anson and neighboring Union County, Rywak said. The network has been meeting monthly to discuss ideas, one of which has been to establish a food coop at New Ventures. “New Ventures is ready to bite the bullet and start selling produce locally,” she added.
“The pilot project with South Piedmont is really coming together,” agreed Dale Nelson from Anson County. “It’s been a matter of determining who can grab the football and run with it. The CSA is a thing that will develop as an offshoot of that.”
There also has been discussion about organizing local growers and value-added producers so that they can sell to schools and prisons, Rywak said. One thing to consider is that to sell to government institutions, local farmers need to be GAP-certified. “GAP is ‘good agricultural practices,’” she explained, adding that Cooperative Extension can provide the required food-safety training. “So that is another opportunity, as well.”
7 Encourage closer collaborations among local grocers and local food producers.
“Some of that is happening already in some of your smaller grocery stores,” Rywak said. “And it’s also happening in some of your larger chains as well. But the idea with our group was that everybody needs to be doing it. And anybody in the county that sells any type of food can have a locally grown, locally produced section within their enterprise.
Rywak also reported that local leaders are preparing to hold a three-county growers meeting in early May—involving farmers in Anson, Stanly, and Union Counties—that will lay the groundwork for some kind of cooperative network that can start selling produce locally as a group, as a combined effort.
“There’s been a lot of interest for a long time in Anson County and Stanly County, I’m sure, as well, about the whole bandwagon of being able to commingle your products and have a platform that you can sell from,” Rywak said. “Whether it is a website or another marketing avenue, if you can do it as a group, you have a whole lot more potential to move a whole lot more product and make a lot more money. We’ve just kind of lacked that, and as David said, somebody needs to light the fuse. Well, I think they lit the fuse yesterday!”
Rywak also said that the earlier creativity economy working group had discussed tying in Anson and Stanly County local foods projects with the state’s 10 percent campaign, which is “a statewide initiative about getting folks to enroll and agree that at 10 percent of their food purchases for themselves and their family will be local. Because that generates all kinds of money that stays local—and stays in our local economy.”
Marla Coulthard, associate director at Central Park NC, wrote on her ballot that her organization, which focuses on small business development complementary to heritage and cultural tourism in an eight-county region that includes Anson and Stanly Counties, is now working to help cultivate a regional food economy—inventorying farms, farmers markets, CSAs, restaurants, and other related resources. The results will be posted on a map on the Central Park NC website at www.centralparknc.org.
Finally, one attendee wrote simply, “Know where your food comes from. Know your Farmer!”
8 Create a tourism kiosk (with ATM) in downtown Wadesboro.
Uwharrie Capital is converting an old Cabarrus Bank building into a visitors center in Albemarle, Rywak observed, and our proposal could possibly be a sister project. “We have a lot of traffic on Highway 74, especially on Thursdays and Fridays from now until after Labor Day, and a lot of people utilize that ATM. It could provide information about area events, other tourism opportunities. They may not be able to stop this time, but if they see it, the next time they come through, they might stop.”
9 Promote geocaching and develop a “Go Anson Stanly” mobile app that would focus on a regional wine tour.
When discussion arose at earlier meetings about developing a mobile app to promote the nice wineries in Stanly County, Misty Harris knew immediately there was no better place to start than to consult with students and faculty at Anson New Technology High School (ANTHS). After all, the school is part of the nationwide New Tech network and is very focused on new technologies.
What she may not have expected, though, was the response she got from ANTHS English teacher Amy Stewart, who calmly replied, “We’re already doing that project.” Students were in the midst of developing a mobile app for the iPhone that will offer visitors a guided tour of downtown Wadesboro. Two teachers and 30 students are researching books and manuscripts as well as collecting oral histories. “They’re talking to people who have actually lived through through the history of uptown Wadesboro,” Harris said.
There also is a marketing committee, she continued. “‘Okay, once we’ve got this done, how are we going to market it to people? How are people going to know that it’s available?’ Then there is the Technology committee. They don’t want the app technician to just do it for them. They want to learn how to do it themselves.? They are putting this all together. When I went and talked about the project with them, they were excited about it. And they were very excited to work with Stanly County, too.”
The only hitch, Harris said, is that she has not yet been able to find a group in Stanly County to the research that Anson County is doing. Accordingly she asked the meeting attendees at Dennis Vineyards to let her know if they can provide any leads to students or faculty who might be interested. “And once we have this done, and they get very familiar with doing the apps, we can do a wine app [for a regional wine tour]. So it’s a wonderful project. And the students thought of it themselves!”
10 Communicate more broadly about the Anson-Stanly creativity economy initiative to different groups across the region.
At the previous two public meetings, “We all kept coming back to the same question,” said Rywak. ‘Who’s not here that needs to be here? Who needs to be involved that’s not? How do we get that invite to them? How do we get them involved?’ And part of that is because, well, this is our third get-together. We don’t want people to think that they can’t get involved now. We want them to think they can jump in whenever and be involved. But how do we go about doing that?”
In addition to a more intensive effort to invite local residents to the April 14 meeting, she and Lori S. Ivey, the two cooperative extension directors for Anson and Stanly Counties, have worked closely with Regional Technology Strategies to launch both a project blog and a Facebook page for the creativity economy initiative. Regional citizens can visit either site to stay informed about ongoing progress or to interact with other interested parties.
The webpage address for the blog is: http://www.goansonstanly.blogspot.com/
The Facebook address is: http://www.facebook.com/Creativity.in.Anson.Stanly.Counties
“Misty Harris has had a Facebook page as part of her work and has unbelievable contacts [to whom] she can get information out in a hurry,” Rywak acknowledged. “So we see the future is there. We’ve got to do it, so we’ve done it!”
11 Create a farm incubator that can help local people get started with agriculture.
Discussion has been underway in Anson County for some time about the possibility for some donated land that could be designated for a farm incubator. The conversation, Rywak said, goes back to the pilot project involving New Ventures Business Development Center and an emergent, multi-county network of local farmers.
“That group has some experienced farmers and some experienced producers,” she explained, “and it has some folks that are wanting to get into the business, that are learning. So the whole idea has been to have land available that can be subleased—and to have mentor farmers working with new farmers and getting them into business.”
At the April 14 public meeting, local resident Nancy Bryant also said she has been exploring the possibility of starting an incubator farm. “In fact, my family is going to the Cabarrus County incubator farm for a tour with Aaron Newton, local food system project coordinator for Cabarrus County, and the people there” she said. “The space where we’re talking about is down in the middle of Stanly and Anson County. If anybody has any ideas, we’re in the very beginning stages, and we’d really welcome your input, anybody!”
Building upon the two-county region’s natural assets
Some of the most passionate discussion that followed Janine Rywak’s presentation of the 11 preliminary objectives grew out of the community’s concern that perhaps not enough attention had been given to developing opportunities related to Anson and Stanly Counties’ natural assets, including mountains, rivers, lakes, and a beautiful rolling countryside dotted with walking trails, blueways, horse stables and small farms.
In addition to developing assets already mentioned, attendees emphasized that increasing public access to the region’s lakes should be a strategic priority. “When you look at the lakes near Charlotte, they’re crowded, they’re expensive,” said one participant. “I guess my point is, we tend of think of our lakes as just privately owned. We don’t have as many parks as I know we’d like to have. But I think a group could really focus on how to open our lakes up to the public.”
Another attendee said it would be important to construct facilities on the lakes to accommodate overnight stays by visitors. “When people come in and spend the evening, spend the night, their expenditures tripled, as opposed to daytrippers,” he remarked, citing a UNC-Charlotte study from 2003.
Other comments included affirmations of the beauty of the Pee Dee Wildlife Refuge, which each December attracts bird watchers from all over the country, and the need to link the area’s natural assets to the rising interest in competitive athletic activities of all sorts, including running, biking, baseball, softball, and equestrian sports like those found at The Fork Farm.
“I’ve been [to Fork Farm events] almost every year,” said one attendee. “I rode on the bus with people from New Zealand, from Australia, from Canada. My sister rents her house out, a little cabin on Lake Tillery, to people from Canada who come and bring their horses. Captain Mark Phillips, Prince Anne’s ex-husband, helped design the course, and he comes regularly. I never thought I would live to see the day that royalty would be in Norwood!”
Digital connectivity & access to data
One meeting attendee, who drove in from Salisbury, spoke eloquently about the need to ensure that the region is well equipped to handle the demands of the globally interconnected digital age.
“How are you dealing with that data deficit, to get that connectivity to the world for the innovative minds, the entrepreneurs, and the students?” he asked. “And is there a possibility of maybe developing innovation centers? Being Salisburians, we’re being taxed by Times-Warner after we put up our fiber, and I can tell you, it’s expensive and it takes a long time. But is there something that maybe can be done to put nodes of opportunity—to access that around the communities—or has that already been discussed?”
Next steps
As Janine Rywak and Lori Ivey have affirmed, none of the priorities for taking action are as yet set in stone. The results of this meeting—including both the ideas and the names of community members who volunteered to continue on with the process—will be forwarded to the next round of working group meetings, slated to take place sometime in May.
One early goal will be for community leadership to emerge that can help catalyze and coordinate the ongoing effort to build and strengthen the creativity economy of Anson and Stanly Counties. At the outset, there most likely will be a steering committee that evolves out of the ranks of the meeting attendees and dedicated volunteers who have participated thus far. This steering group will probably help coordinate individual working groups who tackle the highest priority strategies identified at the April 14 meeting.
“These things don’t come easy; they don’t happen overnight,” mused Chester Lowder. “They take a lot of work. And it takes a lot of synergy and a lot of people thinking and working together to make it happen. I think we’re onto something here. I like this project. There’s a lot of things that will really benefit our community and our efforts going forward.”
Now, then, is the right time to step forward for anyone who wishes to to take on a leadership or support role in this ongoing initiative. If you are willing to take part at any level, please contact:
Janine Rywak, Anson County Cooperative Extension director, at janine_rywak@ncsu.edu, or Lori S. Ivey, Stanly County Cooperative Extension director, at lori_ivey@ncsu.edu.
In any event, we trust you will enjoy following our continuing progress online.
The webpage address for the blog is: http://www.goansonstanly.blogspot.com/
The Facebook address is: http://www.facebook.com/Creativity.in.Anson.Stanly.Counties
Postscript—What is the creativity economy, anyway?
For any particular place or region, like Anson and Stanly Counties, the creativity economy refers to a specific subsector of related companies and workers within the larger regional economy.
The creativity economy includes all of the firms and workers that produce or distribute a particular type of goods and services. Specifically, these goods and services have value in the marketplace that comes from their ability to engage the consumer on at least one of three different levels—aesthetically, intellectually, or emotionally.
Creative workers and creative enterprises, for example, can be found in diverse fields including: visual arts and crafts, performing arts, design, film and multimedia, literary arts and publishing, culinary arts, cultural heritage, technological support, and experimental science.
It’s also worth mentioning that the creativity economy typically is allied closely with and likely overlaps at least part of several other subsectors within a regional economy. Some of those other subsectors that are closely allied with the creativity economy are:
• Agriculture and Food—like farmer’s markets and local food products
• Tourism—especially cultural and heritage tourism
• Lifestyle and Wellness—such as healing art or art exhibits at wellness clinics
• Construction—including historic preservation and landscaping
• Consumer Products—including stylish apparel and product advertising
All things considered, then, the creativity economy in Anson and Stanly Counties is made up of more than 100 different industries that employ 1,500 jobs. These jobs represent 4.1 percent of the region’s entire workforce. This total, however, only portrays those workers—creative and non-creative—who work for creative enterprises. That means there are other creative workers who work in non-creative industries that are not represented.
Jobs in the creativity economy also are important because they typically pay better and are more resilient than many other types of employment. Anson and Stanly’s creativity sector grew eight percent between 2002 and 2008. By contrast, the two-county economy as a whole experienced zero job growth during that same period.
No comments:
Post a Comment