Nurture What’s Next
We invest time, care, and energy into the people, ideas, and opportunities that will shape the Roanoke of tomorrow.
Policy Approach
A creative career gets built in stages, and a city decides how many of those stages are available inside it. Exposure as a child. Instruction that continues past childhood. Contact with somebody who actually does the work. Affordable footing in the early years. A way to earn a living from it. Where one stage is missing, the ones before it lead nowhere.
One respondent set out the whole problem: “The pipeline is broken in too many places. Quality K-12 arts education, accessible higher education in the arts, affordable post-graduation pathways, and sustainable career infrastructure. Every one of those links needs attention.”
Sixteen people, writing separately and without being asked, named the same fix. Young people need to meet working artists. Not a visiting artist. Not a class. Somebody from here who pays rent doing it.
Roanoke will treat this sequence as one system rather than as a set of separate programs, and will attend first to the links most likely to break. The people who finish that path are the same people who come back to teach, to mentor, and to run the organizations this plan depends on.
Priority 1: Learning the craft, at every age
Connect young people with working artists as mentors.
- Place working artists in sustained mentoring relationships with young people
- Give youth access to real studios and live performance, not only classrooms
- Recruit mentors from the communities the young people come from
Kids need to see that being an artist is a real career. Bring working artists into schools and show them what that looks like.
Fund arts education equitably across Roanoke City Public Schools.
- Ensure every student receives regular arts and music instruction
- Equalize arts funding and access across schools
- Fund sustained programs rather than one-off residencies
- Consider a jointly funded arts education position with Roanoke City Public Schools
Fund arts in all schools equally. Kids in northwest deserve the same as kids anywhere else.
Provide arts learning for adults, older residents, and mixed-age groups.
- Expand adult arts classes beyond children’s programming
- Support intergenerational programs pairing youth and elders around history and storytelling
- Bring arts programming into senior living communities
I’d love art classes, actual art—not just kids camps. Abstract painting and drawing, photography, clay
Priority 2: The path from school to career
Build pathways from arts education into creative careers.
- Show young people that creative work is a viable career
- Create paid internships and apprenticeships in creative trades
- Connect youth to local creatives working in the fields they’re interested in
- Include design, architecture, and fabrication as creative career paths
- Explore a regional Governor’s School for the arts with Roanoke City Public Schools and neighboring divisions
exposure to professional arts and design fields as actual career paths. a lot of kids here dont know those are real jobs
Support film, screen, and digital media arts as a working discipline in Roanoke.
- Fund youth filmmaking and media education
- Support film festivals and screening events
- Include gaming and digital art in arts programming and grants
- Identify and pursue the incentives that would make Roanoke competitive for film production
Film, podcasting, social media content creation — these are legitimate art forms. Youth need mentors and equipment to explore them.
Priority 3: Working artists can make a living here
Support artists in earning a living through their practice.
- Provide business, tax, and career training for working artists
- Help local artists promote and tour work outside Roanoke
- Retain young creative talent rather than exporting it
- Publicize how residents can support local artists directly
- Advocate at the state level for legal and tax structures that let artists earn a living, including an artist corporation entity
The arts plan needs a business development component. Help artists and cultural workers become sustainable entrepreneurs.
Establish artist residencies and embed artists in City work.
- Create a residency program for early-career artists from or educated in Roanoke
- Embed a paid artist in residence within a City department
- Support artist exchanges with peer cities
- Commission a local artist to design Roanoke’s voting stickers
I would love to see an artist residency program specifically for early-career artists who are from Roanoke or went to school here.
Provide direct financial support to individual artists.
- Continue and grow the individual artist grant program
- Fund a wider range of art forms and genres
- Consider fewer, larger grants alongside small ones
I’ve appreciated the different grants for individual artists, and hope that these opportunities continue.
Reform public art commissioning so local artists can compete and win.
- Weight public art commissioning toward local and regional artists
- Require community collaboration where the work depicts a community’s story
- Diversify the styles of work commissioned, favoring artistic work over promotional imagery
I think the local community would be more active if projects weren’t going to out of state artists