upstArt  Art

by Patty Beutler

You don’t need to be handy with paint and canvas or pastel and paper to appreciate the Lincoln Arts Council as a community binder. You just have to recognize the value of the arts in creating a full-figured community that includes the margins and the center.

Now more than 50 years old, the nonprofit organization known as Lincoln Arts keeps expanding its role to assist artistic creatives and initiate the untutored onlookers to note the beauty around them and the potential within them.

“We were technically named as the city’s arts agency by mayoral proclamation, so you know that really does put us in that place of an umbrella arts organization for the city,” says Troy Gagner, executive director.

The group does many things to provide arts access, particularly to under-resourced populations of the city. Whether it’s the annual summer arts festival held in the Haymarket District or the fall Mayor’s Arts Awards honoring those who work behind the scenes as well as those who exhibit front and center or the efforts to certify a creative arts district downtown, expected to come in 2024, the council remains an active supporter and promoter of keeping the arts alive.

Every five years or so, the group does an arts and economic prosperity study with Americans for the Arts, based in Washington, D.C. The data collected shows communities that the arts can be a driving economic force, not just the icing on the cake.

In addition, the group does advocacy work on behalf of the city’s arts community to get some additional funding and focus on the arts, says Gagner.

When Gagner talks about arts access, most of that is done through upstArt, a program that began with a different name over a decade ago. In 2023, that included 105 projects around the city, including 68 in Lincoln Public Schools. Many are part of the community learning centers; others are schoolwide projects, such as specialty music mentoring programs.

New to the lineup is a world music tour led by South American Daniel Martinez, which involves workshops to teach kids about indigenous and foreign music, the making of some instruments, and the culmination of a performance on stage with a band. Gagner praises the project for making many young, newly-minted Americans comfortable with the process and readily draws them in.

Then there’s visual and music arts programming in the Lancaster County Youth Detention Center that brings teaching artists into the facility to work with the teens there, another example of focusing on the under-resourced in the arts.

This year, the council is adding the Lincoln Calling music festival to its roster of events. It will be held May 3 and 4 on 14th Street downtown and include some additional interactive arts events, says Gagner.

Also new is a partnership with Mid-America Arts Alliance to bring in Artist INC, an eight-week professional development course to help artists become more entrepreneurial. “Not many artists use spreadsheets, so it’s sometimes as simple as helping them take care of the accounting that goes along with the business of art,” says Gagner.

The organization does all this with a full-time staff of five, two part-timers, and a budget of about $1.1 million, which includes an annual allocation from the city and grants from the Nebraska Arts Council and others, as well as donations.

“I really do see us as a community development organization that uses arts as a tool,” Gagner says. “It really is about building community, and, you know, we just use the arts to do it.”