50 years later, the Arts Center of the Ozarks begins a new road, reorganizes board

Earlier this year the drama patrons of the Arts Center of the Ozarks in Springdale would expect to find on its stage looked like it might be playing out within the institution itself.

Following the long-planned retirement of 40-year ACO staff directors Harry and Kathi Blundell, the center was staffed by board members and volunteers. A summer musical went on as planned but there was no announcement of a new fall season of theatrical productions. The ACO had run a financial deficit in recent years and some people in the community worried about its future.

The curtain will rise again. There’s a new executive director on the job, the board of directors has reformed itself, some money has been raised, partnerships are being formed and stage productions are being planned. Short-term goals are being set with an eye toward long-range planning. The organization is also in the process of rolling out a new website.

Jenni Taylor Swain, the new director, said her job is “to begin to build the staff up with new programming and new systems to build the arts center into this vision that was adopted: to be an organization that meets the needs of Springdale and be more of a participant in Northwest Arkansas.” Swain, whose appointment as executive director was announced last week by the ACO, recently retired after 26 years at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, most recently as vice president of programming.

Swain’s goals for the ACO tie into a new vision developed by its board and also into the drive to revitalize downtown Springdale. Development of the vision began in May when the board reviewed the financial situation at the ACO, which turns 50 years old this season.

“The board went in and looked at what they could do and they did pare back,” Swain said. “They kept a limited staff on. The board became a real working board. A transition committee was created. That committee divvied out different jobs that needed to be done.”

The board decided to proceed with the summer musical as a revenue-raising opportunity. Swain said the board knew it was also important that the ACO doors stay open, especially at a time of increased community investment in downtown Springdale.

“The board did not want to contribute to stopping any of that momentum,” she said.

The board also conducted fund raising and came up with enough money to see it through the immediate future and to hire consultants to help plan further ahead. That’s when the board brought on Swain as a consultant through her Potluck Arts company and also retained Kathleen Trotter, who runs Lowell-based Krysalis Consulting, which specializes in board development and staff management. Trotter led a strategic planning process while Swain assessed programming.

During its strategic planning, the board explored ACO’s role both within Springdale and in the larger Northwest Arkansas arts scene. It reviewed a report released last year that WolfBrown, a national consulting agency in arts and culture, prepared for the Walton Family Foundation.

“That report showed where there were gaps in the region and where there were opportunities and some of the challenges,” Swain said.

ACO BOARD REORGANIZATION
That provided the ACO board a blueprint for determining where its strategic planning committee should look in determining the opportunities it should pursue. The strategic planners weren’t limited to ACO board members but included civic leaders from throughout the region: representatives from downtown Springdale, the Jones Center, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Walton Arts Center and area businesses participated.

When its work was done, the strategic planners recommended the ACO board should take a look at itself. They recommended that the 33-member board reduce itself to 15 members and make itself a more diverse representation of the community.

“We have it down to 16 and of those we have new membership,” Swain said. “There are four or five that are continuing. We have some familiar names. Everybody was identified for what resources they would bring.”

The new, smaller board then acted on recommendations from another committee to contract with Swain’s Potluck Arts company for her to serve as ACO executive director and to continue contracting with Trotter for board services.

“We do have a very culturally diverse board,” Swain said. “It’s a new working board so the board felt it was important to have someone like Kathleen come on because they are learning and they want to set things right from the get-go.”

The board is looking at short-term goals to get ACO through each quarter. Its fund-raising activity this summer was intended to enable it to be positioned for future growth and to establish a sustainable organizational model.

“We do have some small programmatic grants out to get us through this first year but the plan is to create stabilization and sone long-term funding that would grow this organization,” she said.

Swain and Eve Smith, who works at the ACO in visual arts and program development, are the only full-time staff employees so far. The ACO relies on part-tme and volunteer labor for other tasks. Swain called the ACO’s growth plan a process that will take months.

SPOTLIGHT ON THE STAGE
Swain recalled Trotter mentioning that the ACO is a 50-year-old organization but that it’s also starting from the beginning. So it did something few 50-year-old institutions would do and met with personnel at Startup Junkie, a Fayetteville consulting service for startup businesses, to learn more about how startup organizations work.

“We’ve been trying to look at ourselves as a startup and an opportunity to create some policies and procedures that reflect that,” Swain said “At the same time there’s this really amazing history that we want to take advantage of and that we want to honor and celebrate. There are ways to do that with programming.”

The ACO board views community theater as a way to support the economic growth of downtown Springdale, Swain said. She recommended to the board that it continue doing traditional classic plays. Her approach is “trying to bring in a diversity of directors that represent different communities or perspectives.”

The first production is “Barefoot in the Park,” set for Nov. 11-12 and Nov. 18-19 and directed by Jacob Christiansen. Swain said the play hasn’t been performed at the ACO since the first decade of its existence.

“We wanted a piece that did homage to what had been done in the past,” she said. The website’s information about the production will include a biographical profile of Christiansen, who moved to Northwest Arkansas in January. “I want to position the role of the director as an artist just like you might in an exhibit,” Swain said.

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
More details about ACO’s subsequent productions will be announced later, but Swain offered the following information about what to expect.
• Ken Ludwig’s “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” a children’s play that will be presented in December and directed by Ashley Edwards, a theater director at Northwest Arkansas Community College.

• A small musical in the spring to be directed by Lydia Corbel, a former Walton Arts Center employee who holds a musical theater degree from the University of Oklahoma.

• A spring production of “Gillian in Her 37th Year” directed by Evan Crawford, who is familiar to ACO audiences and who learned her directing skills from Harry Blundell.

• A summer musical directed by someone whom Swain can’t yet reveal.

ACO will also partner with other arts organizations in the area in the coming year. Swain said it has contracted with Trike Theater of Bentonville, a company of actors that performs for audiences of children age 2 to 6, to present its season. A spring musical by Fayetteville-based Arts Live will also be presented at ACO.

ACO has also partnered with the recently formed Latin Arts Organization of Arkansas, which teaches folkloric dance and music and that emphasizes traditional arts and crafts from Mexico.

“We just confirmed that we’re going to start a new tradition here to celebrate the Day of the Dead on Nov. 1-2,” Swain said. “We’re going to teach the community about that holiday with an exhibition and open house.”