Follow the Red Brick Road
Story by Chris Graham
newdominion@ntelos.net
It’s not the yellow brick road, but Staunton’s new Red Brick District could put the Queen City on a path toward a kind of economic Oz.
“Tourism is a lifesaver in this economy in a city like Staunton right now. A lot of other industries are hurting, but tourism is the one industry here that’s been on the upswing,” said Erik Curren, the director of marketing at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, and the driving force behind the new Red Brick District, a partnership of arts and culture organizations and City Hall that will promote the arts and promote economic development at the same time.
The effort grew out of an attempt to adapt a similar undertaking up the Valley Pike in Harrisonburg to fit Staunton, and it has fit like a glove given the city’s stock of arts and cultural offerings, from Shakespeare to the run of galleries and music venues downtown.
The name Red Brick District is itself distinctly Staunton. “We’ve got the red bricks in the sidewalks that they’ve been laying down in the historic district, and of course we’ve got the red bricks in the Victorian buildings, and that’s something that Staunton is known for. We thought the name Red Brick District would encompass both those things, both capture what’s good about Staunton and suggest that this is the kind of place where you can get that arts and culture atmosphere,” Curren said.
The initial focus of work for District organizers has been on developing and distributing a marketing brochure highlighting the District’s offerings. The brochure is an example of how the District has been from the get-go a ground-up initiative, with the member organizations footing the bill for the development and printing of the brochure, and planning ahead to bear the costs of additional marketing early next year.
“We’d talked about having more organization, an executive director, all of that. I said, You know, we don’t need all that,” said Beth Hodge, the executive director of the Staunton Augusta Art Center, and an early participant in the informal arts and culture council that gave birth to the Red Brick District.
“The reason why I feel like we don’t need that is, even if we had the money, look around this table. These are people who are leaders in this community. They’re volunteering their time. We can get a great deal accomplished without having to have a structure to work under. We never felt like we needed the organization. We just went right on,” Hodge said.
“I’ve been impressed with how this was a grassroots effort,” city tourism director Sheryl Wagner said. “It was the arts and culture organizations that did this. It was City Council that approved it, but the organizations organized themselves. They’re going to promote Staunton as an arts and culture destination on their own.”
And in the process the Red Brick District will also be a benefit to the city’s ongoing economic-development efforts.
“So many different communities can have similiarities in terms of, I have this kind of building, I have this kind of space, I have this kind of office space. We believe it really comes down to quality-of-life and quality-of-place issues, and we know that people looking to relocate from a more urban market like the idea of less congestion, better environment, but they don’t want to leave the cultural amenities that urban areas have,” assistant city economic-development director Amanda Huffman said.
“One of the strongest points that Staunton has going for it is that while we do have quality of life as our advantage, we also have a world-class theater, so much in terms of artists and artisans and crafters and musicians, and that adds to the quality of life and quality of place here in Staunton that other communities our size don’t have,” Huffman said.
So there’s really a twofold plus to the Red Brick District – both to help attract, say, a new high-tech industry to town, and to grow an industry in the arts and culture realm all in and of itself.
“Number one is we want to save what we have. Number two is when the economy improves we want to encourage people from existing organizations or people who aren’t with an organization, including individual artists, to start up their own deals, their own studios, their own galleries, to start theater groups or music groups, to encourage existing groups to offer more performances or exhibitions,” Curren said.
“By working together on those two aspects, on the marketing and on the management and fundraising, we feel like we can help all of our organizations be stronger,” Curren said.
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