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Chamber grant to fund live music
By Justin Goble
Thanks to a recent grant, the Chamber of Commerce will be able to bring more live music events to Jackson County.
The Chamber recently received a Southern Appalachian Music and Arts Grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission. Totaling more than $33,000, the one-year grant will help to establish a “music and arts initiative” using the existing spaces and hosts in the Sylva-Dillsboro area.
According to Chamber of Commerce Director Julie Spiro, the grant may be the largest that the organization has received.
“Of the few I’ve written or helped write, it’s by far the largest one I’ve seen,” she said. “Granted, the Chamber has been around a long time and there might have been large grants we received in the past. But in our recent history, nothing really comes close to this.”
Initially, Chamber officials wanted to find grant money to help fund work at the old Courthouse, which will be part of a new library complex with construction set to begin next year. When Spiro got this grant application, she said the Chamber made a concerted effort to see if any of the money could be used for the Courthouse.
However, grant stipulations kept the Chamber from seeking funds for the Courthouse. Instead of passing on applying for the grant, Spiro said it was decided to go for it and use the money to promote arts and music in Sylva and Dillsboro in hopes of drawing more people into the area. Former Chamber employee Emily Elders wrote the grant application.
“We all sat down and talked about our ideas for the grant,” Spiro said. “Emily wrote it up, and we sent it off. I wasn’t really sure if we would get it. But lo and behold we did.”
Under the grant, Chamber employee Mary Kelley will be promoted to special events coordinator. Spiro said the Chamber decided to create that position to allow someone to oversee how the grant money would be spent.
“She’s been with us for the past 17 months and has been handling member relations,” Spiro said. “Now she’ll be handling the day in and day out things for the grant, and we’ll divide her old duties among our existing staff members.”
The grant will run from November of this year to November 2009. One of the main things the Chamber will do once the grant funding is in place is purchase a stage and sound equipment to use for live events.
“That will be a great asset for us,” Spiro said. “We’ve been having to rent a stage from Western Carolina University for things like Greening Up the Mountains. That’s been a cost we’ve incurred over and over. So we’ll be saving a lot of money on that, which will help sustain those events. It will also make putting on those events a lot easier.”
Not only will the Chamber be using it for events it takes part in, they will be able to loan it out for other events as well. Spiro said that can allow existing events in the county to expand.
“For things like Dillsboro’s Pottery Festival, which is coming up soon, we can try to make it a two-day event so people will spend more time in the county,” Spiro said. “We can offer music on Friday night, which would encourage people to come in then and spend the night before the festival on Saturday. We’re hoping to do things like that and use this to make an economic impact on the county.”
“That’s something we came across with ‘Tour de Tuck,’ the bicycle race we sponsor every year,” Kelley said. “A lot of people would come in the night before and stay, since they had to pick their packets up the day before and the race would start early. But if we had live music and special events the Saturday night after the race, that might give people coming into town an incentive to bring their families and stay an extra night.”
Another benefit would be that the Chamber could offer more live music events. Kelley said that with their own stage and less overhead costs, the Chamber could focus on planning more events.
“It’s one less obstacle we have to deal with,” she said. “When you have your own equipment like that, it removes a big hurdle in putting on live music events. One thing we’ve been discussing is something we’re calling ‘Concerts at the Creek,’ which we could hold at the Bridge Park. We’re planning for that to be a weekly concert series where we can showcase our local musicians.”
“Things like that I don’t see really starting until the spring,” Spiro said. “With winter coming up, I don’t think it’s the best time to try and set up outdoor events. So we’re taking a lot of this time to get the equipment and plan things out. But once it gets warmer we expect to have a lot of outdoor concerts.”
Also included in the grant is money for the Chamber to set aside to help merchants pay for bands and artists to play in their shops during special events. Spiro said $4,000 will be used for that, with assistance limited to $150 per merchant per year.
The Chamber and the Travel and Tourism Authority will create a five-member committee to oversee that fund.
“We’re planning to offer that over the course of two years,” Spiro said. “That will allow us to give money to 26 businesses. The committee is deciding how to spend that money, and we’re hoping to get a variety of music in lots of places.”
“With things like ‘Friday Night Live,’ a lot of the local businesses would love to get a band and have live music,” Kelley said. “A lot of them may not have the money to pay a band, though. This would help with that.”
With the ability for both the Chamber and local merchants to host more events, Kelley said another issue being tackled is how to get shop owners in touch with musicians and artists. The Chamber is working with Catch the Spirit of Appalachia on its “artist directory,” which she said will be a big help.
“That will give musicians a way to find gigs and give shop owners a way to contact musicians,” she said. “We have a lot of restaurants call us at the Chamber and say ‘We want live music, but we don’t know where to get it.’ Before, we couldn’t really tell them anything because musicians aren’t chamber members. A lot of them have regular jobs and play music on the side.”
“We’re even playing off that idea by coming up with our own ‘Event Manual,’ ” Spiro said. “That will have information about how people can obtain services for their events. A lot of these are things that people don’t even think about, like porta-johns and street sweepers and things like that. This manual will be helpful with that. It will also have ideas on how to see if an event is working. What we do every year with the ‘Tour de Tuck’ is get feedback to find out what went right and what didn’t go right. That helps us see if the event is costing us more than we’re making, which lets us know if it’s something we need to continue doing.”
Though the grant only runs for one year, Spiro said the Chamber is looking at ways to sustain the project. While owning a stage and sound equipment will cut a lot of the Chamber’s costs for putting on events, she said there are other ways to help defray out-of-pocket expenses.
“There’s a lot of little things we’re looking at,” Spiro said. “One idea we had is during a live event, when the band takes a break, we could do a cakewalk. That’s something a lot of people love to do and proceeds could go to helping pay for someone to look after the equipment. We might even ‘pass the hat’ to see if people wanted to donate money. There’s other stuff we’re considering too. We hope that once these things get started, they’ll be there for a while. This grant may only last a year, but we have the mentality that ‘the show must go on.’ ”
Both Spiro and Kelley said that with an increased number of live music events, more people will patronize the shops in Sylva and Dillsboro.
“Music is a big draw for people,” Spiro said. “It’s something I think we can definitely do more of in the county. Hopefully with some of the events we’re planning, we can encourage people to come out and eat, take a walk around town, listen to some music and visit some shops.”
“We hope this will have an economic impact,” Kelley said. “I think it will get people into the county while bringing out the people who live here. And for the Chamber, we hope it bolsters the members we have while attracting some new ones.”
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