A Cultural Branding: CFO puts up seed money for arts initiative

There's an art to promoting - and endowing - the arts in Springfield, and local performer Leah Hamilton Jenkins is hoping to master it in her newest role.

Jenkins has been named coordinator of the Arts Programming Sustainability Initiative, an effort conceived by area nonprofit agencies and universities to bring Springfield's cultural offerings under one brand to raise awareness - and money - for the arts. She starts Feb. 2.

Jenkins, who has been education director for the Springfield Regional Arts Council for more than a year, is tasked with establishing an arts sustainability endowment. The main fundraising mechanism will be the Festival of the Arts, a series of existing events and live performances brought under a single banner. The festival, which begins in mid-March and lasts through June, will include First Friday Art Walk and Artsfest as well as numerous theatrical and musical productions.

Jenkins said each dollar raised through the festival would be divided evenly between the arts endowment and Care to Learn Fund, which was formed by Springfield businessmen Doug Pitt and Jim D. Morris last year to support basic student needs at Springfield Public Schools.

The arts endowment will be administered by Community Foundation of the Ozarks, which has committed $150,000 over two years to pay Jenkins' salary and fund early marketing efforts for the initiative.

While the festival and endowment are the first order of business for Jenkins, her new job has other facets. She also is responsible for growing existing endowments for individual arts organizations, coordinating educational efforts aimed at local schoolchildren and increasing public awareness about the role arts play in the community.

"This initiative has come up with some well-thought-out and attainable objectives to help sustain the arts groups for the future," said an enthusiastic Jenkins, a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance.

Jenkins was the first choice of the 10-member panel that met between August and November to develop a strategy for sustaining and expanding Springfield's arts scene.

"Leah was somebody who popped into everybody's mind who was completely capable of making this happen," said panel member Katie Cornwell, business affairs manager at Springfield Ballet.

Cornwell said the panel was created to address some recurring and widespread issues facing the arts community, many of them due to limited funding and staffing.

"Manpower is always a problem and several things had been done over the years that were new things," she said. "We really turned to, 'What can we do to strengthen and sustain what we already have?'"

Foundation Senior Program Officer Randy Russell said panel members decided a rebranding effort was needed to capitalize on events such as First Friday Art Walk that reach large audiences.

"There were a lot of opportunities that were being missed," Russell said.

Jenkins, a Springfield native, said her connection to the tight-knit arts community should serve her well as initiative coordinator.

"The beauty of this job, and the beauty of arts in Springfield, is that there's such a collaborative spirit," added Jenkins, who is married to Jeff Jenkins, CEO of Skinny Improv and an initiative panel member. "I'm excited to work with each of the groups and help grow their existing endowments ... because I'm very passionate about the arts in Springfield. They helped me - at a young age - become what I am today."

Despite her shifting job duties, Jenkins' will continue to work out of the Creamery Arts Center, 411 N. Sherman Parkway, which houses the Springfield Regional Arts Council, Springfield Ballet, Springfield Symphony and Springfield Regional Opera. Each of those groups was represented on the panel.

A three-person panel subcommittee will monitor Jenkins' monthly progress. Subcommittee members are Carey Adams, dean of the Missouri State University College of Arts and Letters; Gloria Galanes, Springfield Regional Arts Council board president; and Tom Russo, Drury University art history professor.

Russell said fundraising goals for the new initiative would be based on goals of the individual arts organizations. Those benchmarks, which will take into account the economic downturn, are still being determined, he said.

This story has been corrected. It originally omitted Jan Hyde from the panel members list.[[In-content Ad]]