Thinking in the
cultural long term
BY GLORIA STRAVELLI
Staff Writer

GLORIA STRAVELLI staff Chase Jackson (l-r) attended a meeting last week during which consultant Louise Stevens gathered public input for a community cultural plan for Red Bank.

RED BANK — Planning for the future borough’s cultural life needs to be inclusive of the town’s ethnic communities, members of the public told a consultant last week.

Heritage festivals on the west side, a centralized way to disseminate information about arts programs, and multilingual arts programs were all suggestions made during a public meeting at borough hall with arts consultant Louise Stevens.

"Red Bank has to become more multilingual if it’s going to serve everybody," said Ronnie Gardstein, community arts director for the Monmouth County Arts Council.

"I like the idea of an arts corridor," said west side resident Tom Williams. "But Shrewsbury Avenue is the forgotten part of town."

"I’ve heard that a number of times today," Stevens said. "I’ve heard a desire to have heritage and community festivals and activities on Shrewsbury Avenue. This idea pulls across groups, and we need to find a solution."

ArtsMarket, the Bozeman, Mont.-based firm founded by Stevens, has been retained by the borough to help create a community cultural plan for the future. A total of $25,000 in grant funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts is being used to fund the process.

Stevens facilitated six focus groups to gather input from different sectors of the borough on the current state of the arts in Red Bank and opportunities for the future.

She met with focus groups organized around education, economic development, community organizations, parks, recreation and sports, arts groups and historic preservation groups. There was even a group for parents of students in the borough’s public schools.

"We’ve had excellent participation at the focus meetings and spirited discussion," said Gail O’Reilly, director of special projects for the borough. "This information, together with community surveys, will result in a draft of a plan that we will bring back to the community."

Yvonne Lamb Scudiery, director of educational programming for the Count Basie Theatre, echoed concerns voiced by Gardstein. She told the meeting efforts to reach out to the borough’s Hispanic community have been unsuccessful. Plans to present plays in Spanish and to offer a summer camp that would include Hispanic children have not gotten off the ground, she added.

"As an outsider, I don’t see all of Red Bank participating," Stevens observed.

"They have to know you want them to come," said Chase Jackson, co-chair of the Count Basie Centennial Committee. "You can have a festival, and they will walk by and not know. You have to invite them to serve on committees, on the board."

"There are cultural differences in the way people approach meetings," Gardstein said. "If the town wants to bring everybody together, the town must figure out the cultural language. You can’t use one model of how you communicate with people."

"There needs to be a concentrated effort to identify the proper way to communicate with groups," Stevens concurred.

According to O’Reilly, the 1994 master plan visioning process in Red Bank revealed social issues that could be addressed, in part, by the arts.

"One of the things we heard very clearly was this sense of dualities in town — of social, economic, educational conditions and separations between the two sides of town," she said. "We heard a desire to connect both sides of town."

That gave rise to the idea of Monmouth Street, which was home to a number of coffeehouses, as a bridge between the two sides of the borough, she added.

Gardstein also suggested that the community needs to maximize the use of the space available for cultural programming by instituting space sharing for single-use spaces like schools and businesses.

Wayne Peck, a member of the board of Phoenix Productions, a Red Bank-based community theater company, urged the borough to follow the lead of Long Branch and provide incentives to nonprofit arts groups to encourage them to locate facilities in Red Bank.

He also told the meeting there is a need for a centralized way to disseminate information about arts programming to the community.

According to Stevens, the process of creating a community cultural plan takes six months to a year and aims at "energizing the public about using these assets, building a sense of community among arts and cultural organizations, and having community leaders recognize the importance of arts and culture as a development opportunity."

Communities use the plans "to create infrastructure, to secure funding, to plan facilities, to establish agencies, to adapt their master plans, or to qualify for grants to support cultural development," she explained.

"The process is always open to the community," she added. "It’s a very public, very transparent process."

The cultural planning initiative has been under way in the borough for two years, O’Reilly said. The public phase is the final step before Stevens returns with a series of recommendations for the mayor and council in January.

Before that time, members of the public will get the chance to contribute to the process by filling out a brief survey that will be mailed to some residents, and will also be available at borough hall and on the borough Web site.

According to Stevens, the focus of cultural planning has shifted from the needs of arts organizations and artists to the needs of the community.

And while nonprofits were once viewed as the major contributors to a community’s cultural life, she said, restaurants, ethnic food stores, small businesses and galleries, even landscape designers are now viewed as part of the community’s cultural life.

"The diversity of cultures in Red Bank is what makes it a wonderful and special place to live. I ask all of you to think about what makes Red Bank really special as a place to live," Stevens said. "

She challenged participants to think beyond existing arts programs.

"There are things the borough can do in the form of incentives for cultural development, opportunities to make things work, that can take it to the next level. I’m trying to say, with all the success Red Bank has had, what’s the next 10 years going to be like? If you’ve got big enough thinking, you can take it to the next level."

"Why are none of you thinking for the next decade right now, only for the next six months," prodded Stevens. "What about needs in Red Bank? What are the major cultural needs?"