Today, we want to call your attention to Roanoke Arts Pop! (The exclamation point is officially a part of the name.)
The Arts Pop festival involves just about every arts organization and related nonprofit that exists in the Roanoke Valley. If you’ve not heard of it before, well, it started Friday. However! If you happen to be reading these words first thing Sunday morning in proper traditional newspaper subscriber fashion, know that you have not missed it and that admission is free.
Between 1-5 p.m. at the Taubman Museum of Art on Roanoke’s Salem Avenue, presentations will include the chance to see a film about legendary photographer O. Winston Link, whose nostalgic black and white images captured the Norfolk & Western steam engines in their prime; see more movie clips produced by the students of the Grandin Theatre Film Lab; hear the stirring spoken word poetry of Soul Sessions Roanoke and maybe share some of your own; participate in activities for children led by the staff of Kids Square, and activities for adult children courtesy of the Roanoke Pinball Museum; take time to get to know the people behind the Roanoke Arts Commission, Roanoke Valley Sister Cities and Roanoke Cultural Endowment; and more besides.
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If Roanoke Arts Pop! rings a bell, it’s because this is actually the second time the festival has taken place. The first time happened in March 2020, just days before the advent of COVID-19 shut down the country.
Then, as now, Arts Pop was conceived “as an incredible opportunity to experience something new that you’re not familiar with, enjoy a performance that’s close to your heart, see the exhibitions, be downtown, and be able to see what’s coming up for arts and culture throughout the year,” said Taubman Executive Director Cindy Petersen.
This second time around, Roanoke Arts Pop! gets to serve its intended purpose. The importance of the festival lies not just with the variety of ways it helps while away a weekend but with what it represents.
“This, to me, is like a rebirth party for not only the tourism industry, but also for place marketing, especially for our arts and cultural community,” said Landon Howard, president of Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge, the Roanoke Valley tourism bureau. As pandemic restrictions loosen, it’s fitting that this marshaling of the Roanoke Valley’s arts and culture offerings gets to be “one of the first major events that we can celebrate.”
The collaborators who founded Roanoke Arts Pop! designed it to be a winter attraction, a draw for the Star City during what’s ordinarily an off-season.
The event’s origin story goes back to 2018, when the Roanoke Cultural Endowment received a special gift from an anonymous donor.
A public-private partnership started seven years ago, the Roanoke Cultural Endowment is intended to help shore up Roanoke’s arts organizations by providing grants to assist with operating funds. That won’t begin, however, until the endowment reaches $20 million.
At present the endowment has raised $4 million, said chairman David Wine. The largest portion of that has come from contributions made by the city of Roanoke, with the rest mainly coming from smaller private donations.
The donor behind the 2018 gift wanted RCE to do something to benefit the arts right away. First, the endowment arranged for a consultant to assist the arts organizations in coming up with long-term strategic plans, not just individually but in cooperation. “That was the first time that they all really got together in a room,” Wine said.
Roanoke Arts Pop! was one of the initiatives that grew out of those sessions, suggested by and coordinated by the Taubman. Wine, a Roanoke business leader who is also the Taubman’s treasurer, called the museum “the largest, best funded organization,” and thus in an ideal position to lead this charge.
Roanoke Cultural Endowment was a primary Arts Pop sponsor in 2020, using funds from that 2018 special gift. This year, the endowment’s involvement is more novel. Making use of a $30,000 American Rescue Plan Act grant awarded by the city of Roanoke, RCA has partnered with Buzz4Good, a Roanoke-based television show that airs on Blue Ridge PBS, in which founder and host Michael Hemphill arranges for regional nonprofits to receive pro bono marketing assistance.
The first “Buzz” episode of a six-part series funded by the grant, which aired Feb. 23 and can be viewed at https://youtu.be/hEO7jN0ATrU, previewed preparations for Roanoke Arts Pop!, and the second episode has been recording live through this weekend, documenting the event.
“These episodes are specifically to raise awareness of arts and culture as being a vibrant contributor to our community in pandemic recovery,” said RCE Executive Director Shaleen Powell.
“The arts and cultural community is economic development,” Howard said.
Roanoke’s primary economic development and tourism thrust puts emphasis on outdoor activities augmented by the natural beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yet, when giving guidance to Roanoke Valley visitors, “we encourage people to be ‘trailsetters,’ but we make sure that we define ‘trailsetters’ as not just pulling out on a hiking trail or a bike trail, but making a trail for the arts, for cuisine, for railroad history, for the incredible variety that we have,” Howard said.
As he put it, even a beautiful beach destination is hard to market “if there’s nothing else there.” Roanoke actually stands up well against a bigger destination, such as, say, Anaheim, California. “They’re great places, but it may take you five hours to get from one place to the other,” Howard said. “Everything here is 15 minutes to 30 minutes away.”
This appeal goes beyond tourism. “The vibrant arts community and the cultural richness of Roanoke have been major factors in the ability of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC to attract leading medical research teams and their families to Roanoke,” Fralin Institute Founding Executive Director Michael Friedlander has said.
“There’s not too many communities our size that have the dynamic offerings that we have,” Howard said. “I think when people move here, it’s a pleasant surprise to them.”
Therefore, Roanoke Arts Pop! isn’t just previewing the year in the arts. It’s putting on a demonstration of our whole region, both for the curious who stop by and for those of us who live here, showing us what more there is to explore.