A panel of four people experienced in promoting the social and economic benefits that come with a healthy music scene gathered in Aberdeen Tuesday and told a crowd at the D&R Events Center the city has all of the components in place to organize a music district into something that will be good for the entire community.
“One thing is, you have all the assets here,” said Angie Kim from Los Angeles, Calif. “You have the artists, the college, all you need to do to make it happen is decide what you want to happen.”
Kim is President and CEO of the Center for Cultural Innovation, an organization that supports artists financially and teaches them skills that help them turn their art into a living. She has provided consulting for the creation of music districts primarily in southern California and designs programs for funding that intersect social justice and the arts.
Jessie Elliot is a co-founder of the Fort Collins, Colo., music district. He showed a picture of the facility that thriving scene is using as its center, and noted there were several buildings right in downtown Aberdeen that could offer even more space for a music district hub.
The day before the business forum, hosted by Greater Grays Harbor Inc., local officials and music promoters took the four panel members on a tour of the area, looking at different properties that could have potential to centrally house the Aberdeen music district. This included a tour of the Becker Building, among many others.
Dr. Bryce Merrill, a sociology professor who has written about the social and economic impacts of music and is also co-founder of the Fort Collins Music District, spoke about the evolution of funding for the arts.
“In the 90s, people started asking why their tax dollars should fund art they might consider obscene,” he said. “All the stewards of the arts had to figure out a counterargument, and in the late 1990s that argument was ‘art means jobs.’”
Elliot and the others said they were impressed by the number of people who showed up for the business forum and the amount of true interest he’s seen from the people of Aberdeen.
“Here it’s important to keep this group of entities together,” he said. “The success of this music district will rely on grassroots community effort to be the base of it.”
Kim said the large turnout at the Tuesday event is a good sign the Aberdeen scene can become a reality. “To turn out a group like this for a talk like this, you’re way far ahead,” she said. “You guys are so ready for this.”
The economic environment also creates unique opportunities for the combination of music and development and leads to an “ecosystem” that complements the growth of other art forms.
“Artists are looking for communities like this as they get priced out of Olympia and Seattle,” said Merrill. Kim added that the majority of the money spent by artists is on housing and studio and practice space. Likewise, an influx of musicians needing affordable rentals can lead to increased funding opportunities for funding aimed directly at the arts.
A discussion of marketing of the music district led to a question about using Aberdeen’s status as the birthplace of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in marketing the local scene. Rebecca Gates, the fourth member of the panel and a musician and music activist from Portland, said there were ways to perpetuate the spirit of a local artist who served as the voice of an entire generation that wouldn’t pigeonhole the overall music scene itself.
“I knew Kurt and played gigs with Nirvana and the Melvins,” she said. “I understand that legacy; obviously Kurt’s presence is very strongly held to here. I would look for a way to build Kurt’s legacy into a current context.”
She said Cobain’s legacy could be aligned with “what is going on in this town now and how music can help.”
Music and art as a means to improve the overall health and sense of wellbeing of a community is something those who fund the arts are focusing on more and more, said the panel.
“The center of funding gravity is using art to improve the quality of life in a community,” said Gates. “Focusing on ways music can impact socially in areas of public health and others.”
Bringing music and the arts into a community and making it accessible to all audiences “brings joy,” said Merrill. Programs across the nation allowing access to live music have shown to have positive impacts on Alzheimer’s patients, and also on their family members and caregivers by giving them a place to gather with people in like situations.
Merrill stressed the importance of placing more emphasis on organizing a tangible music scene rather than marketing it.
“You have a lot of grassroots creative energy to build on here,” he said. “It’s a long process, and over marketing can be dangerous if it’s not backed up with infrastructure.”
As for what’s next, Elliot says it’s about getting the group of people who attended the event Tuesday to “spend some time on the ground. The most important thing in Fort Collins was doing extensive community outreach.”
A year and a half was spent simply talking to local businesses, artists, community leaders and anyone even remotely connected with music and the arts in Fort Collins. “We would meet with the local bank at 7 a.m., the punk bands at midnight, and everyone else in between to get a sense of what was needed and what wasn’t needed.”
People like musician and promoter Wil Russoul, the administration at Grays Harbor College, local artists and others have set the groundwork for the music district. But what will it take to really bring it all together?
“In Fort Collins, we had an idea of what our music district was,” said Merrill. “Then at some point someone says, ‘Here’s the project, here’s where we start.’” Once the ball gets rolling, he added, the attitude becomes, “Now let’s fill in the rest.”
