Make Space for Everyone

Priority 1: Cost is not the reason someone stays home

Provide free and low-cost arts instruction for young people in every part of the city.

• Fund free and low-cost youth arts classes across income levels
• Support free after-school arts programs and creative spaces
• Deliver youth arts through libraries and community centers
• Extend programming into digital media, gaming, and forms young people already use

Free or low cost experiences that meet them where they are.

Create low-barrier opportunities for residents who do not consider themselves artists to make things.

• Fund affordable hands-on classes for all ages, not only children
• Build participatory art-making into community events
• Provide free creative space and materials, including art supplies borrowable from libraries
• Staff events with artists who invite people in rather than perform at them

classes for beginners, dance, theatre music, I often see only art

Reduce the cost of attending arts and cultural experiences, and expand free admission.

• Review City funding for institutions to free access days and reduced admission for lower-income residents
• Program more free outdoor events with no ticket required
• Offer last-minute reduced-price tickets for unsold seats at City-supported performances
• Create a citywide arts pass giving access across participating institutions
• Run a youth museum and gallery passport that rewards repeat visits

Priority 2: People know what’s happening

I grew up in this area and didn’t know half of what was available until I got to college. That information gap is a real barrier.

Promote arts opportunities where people already are, rather than only where the arts community already reaches.

• Publicize City-funded arts events to a consistent minimum standard
• Put listings in neighborhood newsletters, congregations, libraries, and community centers
• Translate event information into the languages spoken in Roanoke’s neighborhoods
• Use radio, public television, and newspapers alongside the social channels people actually use
• Offer email and text alerts for residents who want them
• Grow and actively promote the City’s arts newsletter
• Extend opening days and hours at City-supported venues to fit residents’ schedules

Better promotion of events in neighborhoods that don’t typically have access like flyers at barber shops, churches, and community centers.

Schedule and announce events far enough in advance, and at varied enough times, to fit residents’ work and family schedules.

• Require a minimum lead time for City-supported event announcements
• Program evenings and weekends, not only weekday daytime
• Coordinate scheduling among arts organizations to reduce competing dates
• Include cost, parking, and accessibility in every listing

Better advanced notice- I will often see thank you post about events after they have happened but rarely see promotions with adequate time to plan on attending.

Make the public art and cultural sites Roanoke already has easy to find and understand.

• Create a public art map and self-guided tour, in print as well as online
• Sign the routes to cultural and historic sites
• Label public artworks with the artist and the story behind them

a well designed public art map and trail program similar to what other cities have done could dramatically increase engagement with art that already exists before spending a dime on new pieces

Priority 3: Getting there, and being able to stay

Ensure arts venues and events are reachable without a car.

• Provide free or reduced parking downtown during City-supported arts events
• Secure Valley Metro service reaching arts venues at event start and end times
• Program more neighborhood events reachable on foot
• Name the best parking option in every event listing

Expensive or limited parking should be far less of a barrier.

Require physical and sensory accessibility at City-funded arts venues, events, and programs.

• Publish accessibility information before events, not on arrival
• Improve physical access at City-supported venues
• Provide seating and rest areas at outdoor and standing events
• Commission artists to design planters and public garden features
• Offer sensory-friendly performances and viewing areas

more accessible venues for people with mobility limitations. i love attending things but getting around some spaces is harder than it used to be.

Enable families with young children to attend arts events.

• Provide childcare or supervised children’s areas at City-supported events
• Program family-friendly events at times working parents can attend

Free or very cheap events. Childcare on-site so I don’t have to find a babysitter. Events on weekends when I’m not working doubles.

Maintain public spaces clean, safe, and comfortable enough that people choose to gather in them.

• Maintain the public spaces where arts programming happens
• Use art installations to activate neglected or avoided spaces
• Provide seating and shade in gathering areas

environment matters, beautiful, clean, safe and thoughtfully planned spaces create welcome and welcome allows for creativity and community

Priority 4: Everyone sees themselves

Support programming rooted in specific cultural traditions, and occasions for those traditions to be shared.

• Fund culturally specific programming across Roanoke’s communities equitably
• Support festivals rooted in particular communities, including Juneteenth, Latino, Appalachian, and Indigenous traditions
• Program cross-cultural events that bring communities into contact
• Give young people grounding in their own cultural traditions and exposure to others
• Support bilingual and multi-language programming, not only translated event information
• Reach communities the City’s programming has not previously served, and ask them what they want

exposure to cultures beyond their own. roanoke is more diverse than it used to be and i want kids here to understand that and feel it

Preserve, interpret, and invest in Black cultural heritage, legacy sites, and creative work in Roanoke.

• Tell Gainsboro’s history and Black Roanoke’s story through art and public programming
• Invest directly in young Black creatives through grants, visibility, and programming designed with them
• Program Black culture year-round rather than only in designated months
• Recognize Black-owned businesses as cultural anchors

The stories of Roanoke’s Black community — Gainsboro, the Harrison School, the Dumas Hotel — need to be told through art.

Ensure the art the City funds, commissions, and displays reflects the full range of Roanoke’s communities.

• Set representation expectations for City-funded public art and programming
• Commission artists whose backgrounds reflect the communities the work is in
• Reflect neighborhood culture and local history in the work placed there
• Make board diversity a consideration for City arts funding

kids in northwest roanoke need to see themselves in the art

Ground arts programming in Roanoke’s local and oral history.

• Record and preserve oral histories from Roanoke’s neighborhoods
• Connect youth arts programming to local history
• Pair historical narrative with contemporary creative work

Opportunities to preserve local history, by recording oral histories, creating documentaries, or developing exhibitions about Roanoke’s neighborhoods

Recognize everyday and nontraditional creative practices as art in City programs and funding.

• Include culinary, beauty, fashion, and craft traditions in arts programming and grants
• Recognize salons, barbershops, and similar spaces as cultural venues
• Reduce the barriers that keep informal practitioners out of City arts funding

Beauty supply shops and salons are cultural hubs in NW Roanoke. They don’t get recognized as such, but they are.

Expand the range of work shown in Roanoke’s museums and galleries.

• Showcase artists who live and work in the region
• Bring varied and unfamiliar work into local venues
• Make exhibition space available for media that traditional galleries don’t accommodate

What about pulling in regional artists for a ceramic show, an abstract show, a glass (blown) show? Somewhere besides the bergland center, please. Outside and walkable would be even better.

Priority 5: Art reaches where it hasn’t

Deliver arts programming in neighborhoods, not only downtown.

• Program regularly in neighborhood centers, parks, and libraries
• Take youth programming to where young people already gather
• Continue and expand neighborhood programs that already work, including Arts Connect Neighbors
• Ask neighborhoods what they want rather than arriving with a program
• Use mobile art units to bring programming to parks, libraries, and schools
• Bring museum and gallery programming out of their buildings and into neighborhoods

Come to where the people are. Stop waiting for them to come downtown.

Direct arts investment toward neighborhoods that have historically received the least.

• Shift a measurable share of arts investment from downtown to neighborhoods
• Fund community-specific work created by the residents of those neighborhoods
• Report investment by neighborhood so the shift can be seen

“What it has not always had is investment. More programming here, more public art here, more intentional support for artists who live and work here

Extend arts programming to unhoused, low-income, and service-connected residents.

• Bring programming to shelters, housing sites, and service settings
• Combine arts activity with food distribution and existing service touchpoints
• Provide transportation or deliver programming on site

Bring arts programming to people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. Art is healing and shouldn’t require a stable address.