Spaced Out | ArtsAVL Town Hall on Affordable Arts Workspaces

We all know the impact of Asheville’s skyrocketing housing costs. What we don’t hear nearly as much about is how artists and arts organizations are finding it more challenging to do their work in Asheville.

Affordable workspaces was the topic of the latest ArtsAVL Creative Space Town Hall. Matt Peiken moderated a May 10 panel at Asheville Community Theater and recorded it to bring it to you here.

Joining Matt on stage were DeWayne Barton (Blue Note Junction), Ashleigh Hardes Koslow (Lexington Glassworks), Jeffrey Burroughs (River Arts District Artists), Tamara Sparacino (Asheville Community Theatre) and Rebekkah Hilgraves (RadHaus Studios).

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Transcript

Matt Peiken: Today it is an extension of some of the things I've been talking about on my show. And we have some great guests here. I'm going to introduce them. DeWayne Barton from Blue Note Junction. Rebekkah Hillgraves from RadHaus Studios, Ashley Hardes Koslow from Lexington Glassworks, Jeffrey Burroughs of the River Arts District Artists, and Tamara Sparacino from Asheville Community Theater.

I don't know that we have a lot of solutions in bulk, but each of their organizations are doing some really interesting things. And we're going to just briefly go through and talk about what they're doing for their organizations and for the community at large in some cases in what they're doing to help solve and address some of these space issues and crises.

Let's start with you, DeWayne. You've got your hands in so many things here whether it's hood huggers, peace gardens, now Blue Note Junction. How did Blue Note Junction even begin to take seed in your head? And what do you want to accomplish with it? What is it going to be? 

Dewayne Barton: For me, Blue Note Junction came out of the peace gardens. He was doing a peace garden and Then we got another piece of property and we know how art was such a powerful thing for restoring neighborhoods. So we say, okay, if we rent out this house, let's make sure we rent it to an artist.

And then that artist can contribute and then just creating a space for artists. And of course, with the tours, highlighting artists and businesses, particularly African American businesses and artists in the area. Just the experience of doing it for over 20 plus years of trying to imnprove community through the arts, it just led us to what else can we do? 

Matt Peiken: just want to be clear about this and you can clarify this so from what I understand it's going to be at least on paper you have it as a performance venue and an artist studio village along with an outdoor community spa, a salon, a market, a commercial kitchen, and co working spaces.

Dewayne Barton: Yeah, all of that. 

Matt Peiken: That's amazing. 

Dewayne Barton: Yeah. 

Matt Peiken: Wow. 

Dewayne Barton: Yeah. 

Matt Peiken: So how are you accomplishing all that because, in short, nothing like that exists in this community right now and that's a big dream. How are you accomplishing this?

Dewayne Barton: We're getting money. 

Matt Peiken: That simple? How are you getting, now, what kind of 

Dewayne Barton: We're trying to get money to do it, and then we're using all our community partners.

We're resting on everybody. But to really be honest with you, the Blue Note Junction, Another thing that drove it is the highway expansion, because we was hoping that DOT was going to pay for a business incubator in the neighborhood. Really? And they were like, nah, we're not going to do it.

So we said, okay, as a community, how can we make this dream happen? So this really was anchored in our neighborhood plan that was started, that we created back in 2009. 

Matt Peiken: That's a long time ago. What's your budget for now? Obviously things, just the cost of doing everything has amplified and magnified exponentially.

What's the budget now and how much have you raised of it? 

Dewayne Barton: We got a hit 7 million and maybe a little bit higher and we probably raised about 2. 2 million so far. 

Matt Peiken: Wow. Of that 2. 2 million, how much of that is small dollar donation from the community, and how much of it comes from real big pocketed, deep pocketed, generous supporters?

Dewayne Barton: I think we might have raised about 300, 350k through small donations. 

350, 000 through small donations. 

Yeah, that's about right. And then we just got a about 500k from the TDA. 

Matt Peiken: Tourism Development Authority. 

Dewayne Barton: Yes, Tourism Development Authority. And then the Mellon Foundation. They gave us about 500k. We're expecting to hit R. W. J. Robert Woods johnson foundation. We was one of their culture of health leaders and they plan and pay a visit back to Asheville in june. So the goal is to try to hit them up for it. Yeah. 

Matt Peiken: Okay, that's a lot. I want to come back to that. Let's go just one step down the line to Ashley Lexington Glassworks.

Tell us a little bit about the workings of that. How many glass artists are working out of Lexington Glassworks?

Ashleigh Hardes Koslow: Lexington Glassworks was founded almost 10 years ago by Jeff Koslow and Billy Guilford. And they are the glass artists who are the co owners and artists. And then we have Three to four other artists who work at the studio. 

Matt Peiken: Just three to four other artists. 

Ashleigh Hardes Koslow: Yeah, it's impressive how musch glass they are able to create and we blow glass seven days a week. So we are always working And you know a ten to six workday, so we're creating all the time.

Matt Peiken: Tell me about the glass working community at large in this city? Are there studios, are there workspaces for glass artists? 

Ashleigh Hardes Koslow: Glassblowing is one of those things, it captures you. You really develop a love for it and it's you see it, it's magnetic, it's fire, it's smoke, it's flame, it's performative, it's really interesting to watch. And I think a lot of people really develop a love for it. 

Matt Peiken: There's a real community among the glass blowing. 

Ashleigh Hardes Koslow: There's a lot of people who really want to have that time with hands on material and have access to space to do that. And there are a couple of other glass blowing studios in the area, North Carolina glass studios. is a great place to go and rent studio time and do workshops and classes. And we are really fortunate. And one of the reasons Lexington Glassworks really wanted to be in the Asheville community is because there is such a rich community of glass artists, but history of glass here in Western North Carolina.

And we have a wealth of Knowledge and support and love for our medium here. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. Tamara, let's talk a little bit about ACT. One of the things that I think is a real jewel and rare in this community, you have an ancillary space called 35 Below. And before we get to the expansion of what you're doing in your basement here in the core building, talk about the role of 35 Below in the community for theater makers here.

Tamara Sparacino: Well, 35 Below is a 40-seat theater and it's a black box theater so it has a lot of flexibility. You can do a lot down there even though it's a small space. And we have done various things with it over the years but currently what we're doing is creating an application process for local groups or local individuals that want to produce a show and they can apply and they get two weekends of performances plus four nights or days of rehearsal in the space.

And then they can produce their own work down there. And we do that, we try to make it as affordable as possible by doing it as a ticket split. ACT gets a portion and the artist gets a portion after some basic expenses. And then ACT will run the box office and do all the administrative pieces in the front of house for the artist so they can focus on actually producing the work. 

Matt Peiken: And, to be clear, the groups they're not paying anything up front For this, it's a ticket split, correct? And so they get four rehearsals out of that So that's probably teching in the space. That's a pretty amazing. Does ACT own its buildings?

Tamara Sparacino: Yes, we are very fortunate. We own this building, and we have a building next door that is just filled with 16, 000 costumes and props. And so we own both of those spaces. 

Matt Peiken: I know you've recently renovated your basement space here. So tell me about the uses that you're getting out of that. 

Tamara Sparacino: We have a need here because we have a Our education programs really flourish here. We need more space. We're one of those businesses that we're fortunate to have this space that we need more. And so we took the basement, which was our scene shop, and it was really dark and full of machinery.

And Jill Summers, our production manager, managed to find a way to get rid of a lot of it and move our scene shop upstairs. And then we renovated that space downstairs and made it into a studio, which is a classroom slash rehearsal space. So it's allowed us to expand what we can do here, and at the same time it creates more space on the main stage for other groups to use the main stage because we don't have to use it for rehearsal as much, although it is pretty busy here at all times.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, so the main stage, it is available to the community when there's cracks in the schedule. 

Tamara Sparacino: Correct. The main stage is available for just straight rentals. We really can't do Productions because we don't have the time to give for rehearsal space for people renting it so we really use it for just Groups that want to do a movie or want to do a speech or something like that. 

Matt Peiken: Rebekkah, let's talk about RadHaus studios. From what I understand, there's a recording studio and two Band rehearsal rooms. Tell us about the genesis of this. What were you doing before the development of this and what led to developing that? 

Rebekkah Hilgraves: It's a fun story, actually. So I noticed that White Horse Black Mountain was one of the arts organizations in the presentation. We actually started inside of White Horse. We built a small studio in there during the pandemic because we knew that White Horse Without a little bit of extra help, wasn't going to survive the pandemic. So we actually came in, worked with Bob the owner, invited artists in to do performances and stream them.

So behave as though this were a full life performance in front of a live audience, only your audience has several cameras and some crew instead of a full house of people. And that went very well. Actually, we did over 160 episodes of white horse live. We streamed it across a couple of different platforms and the learning curve was a vertical climb because I had never done video before.

I've been an audio engineer for many years, but once the pandemic sort of wound down and public spaces started opening up again, I wanted to keep the crew together because we had worked so well together and there's a story there too. It's an all female crew. And we had such a good time working together and the crew themselves were just an amazing collection of people from here in town.

Some were students, some had just graduated from UNCA, from the music tech program, and we got on so well and we knew we had a good thing. So once we moved out of White Horse, because they were doing fine on their own, we decided that we wanted to continue. So I started looking around for other spaces in town to move the studio and build it out a little bit more than what we had at White Horse.

And found this perfect space, which was about twice as much space and twice as much money as I had originally intended to spend on a recording studio space, but it turned out to be a great thing. 

Matt Peiken: Now you own that building, correct? 

Rebekkah Hilgraves: I do not own that building. I wish I did. 

Matt Peiken: Wow, that's a huge risk in a sense, right?

Rebekkah Hilgraves: Yes, it is. So It's a five year lease, so yes. 

Matt Peiken: Wow. Okay. We'll get into renting versus owning a little bit in this conversation. Let's talk with Jeffrey Burroughs with River Arts District Artists. You represent, that organization represents about 300 some artists, correct?

Jeffrey Burroughs: Over 300 artists. within the district. 

Matt Peiken: Now, do you serve as a lobbying voice for the artists? Tell me about the roles that RADA serves for its artists. 

Jeffrey Burroughs: Yeah, I think this is a really exciting time for our organization. I think that during the pandemic, and just to be clear too, I moved here during the pandemic.

I'm one of the imports from outside. Where'd you move here from? New York City. Okay. So what was really interesting to come in and then hear from community members is this transformation that happened because the district was heavily affected, of course, during the pandemic. And now that we're in a place where we're starting to open up again, there's three major developments that have been already approved within our district.

And unfortunately there wasn't a lot of community input from actually the river arts district. So we've been pushed up against a wall where we've really had to unite as a coalition of people and artists. So I think the last year alone has really put a lot of fire under us to really formalize our organization and take it to the next level and evolve so that we can form as a real coalition and a real voice because of the change that's happening right now to the district.

Matt Peiken: Yeah the River Arts District in particular seeing just tremendous growth, apartments there, just as a rundown. 700 units. Yeah, among five or so different complexes. And hardly any road improvements there. I don't know how the RAD is going to accommodate that. I know this is spinning off a little bit.

Jeffrey Burroughs: There's a helicopter, Uber, 

Matt Peiken: yeah, and I'm wondering, what are you hearing from your artists As a recurring motif around what, as a group, they hope to accomplish in terms of affecting, if not development, affecting what space they can hold for the arts, and as Katie Cornell told me in a recent conversation, You won't be able to call it the River Arts District after too long.

It would just be the River District. 

Jeffrey Burroughs: And you just gave me goosebumps because that is the saddest thing. And I think that's also why we're so activated and trying to be louder, like. hey, you're pushing us out. And, for me, it's almost a bit triggering because I went through this in Soho in New York city, and I'm actually seeing the same thing happening here where we all got pushed out and all had to move uptown or out of town.

And I can see it happening again. And I think that we're in a unique position too, because we're also the majority of the artists, there's only so much space. We're not the owners of our buildings, and I don't know if there's specific villains we can point at. There's buildings that are selling for millions of dollars, and again, they're a hundred years old, so they need a million dollar renovation.

Those studio prices are going up 400%. Likewise, we have really wonderful owners like the wonderful individuals who took over 375 Depot Street at Aura Arts. And they've worked very hard with the current tenants including Trackside Studio, which has been able to double their artist representation.

And because they didn't do a gross increase in rents, they were able to keep prices affordable for artists. But likewise, we have new developments that are coming in. I'm in a new building and those rents conversely by square foot are gregariously different. I think that there is a need for city involvement, and one of the goals as the president of the district and uniting the district, I've actually been developing a plan for How are we going to do historic preservation of buildings?

So maybe they can get grants to help subsidize the funding. How do we get the city to get involved to say, Hey, you know what? Maybe it is important that this arts community stays within the river arts district. 80 percent of new builds, retail needs to be prioritized for local artists, like what is the city going to do and where are they and helping us preserve this very important and necessary part of our community. Could you imagine Asheville without the River Arts District? 

Matt Peiken: I think a lot of people are starting to see that Disintegrate in real time, Which brings me back to duane because you're developing Blue Note Junction. It's not in the river arts district it's in a part of Asheville that has Largely been neglected or Overlooked and looks like you're trying to rebuild or build something that can be a real arts destination in a way that it hasn't been.

How important is the location, the part of the city that you're in, how important is that to your ability to make Blue Note Junction happen? 

Dewayne Barton: It's my neighborhood. I want my neighborhood to be an art destination. We support visitors and then the visitors in turn support our efforts on the ground in the neighborhood to try to protect what's left.

We was looking at this from an African American perspective, they definitely been wiping out African American neighborhoods and landmarks, that's why we got into the tourism business, to try to protect and educate people about those places. I remember The Wedge. Back in the day, The Wedge was filled with artists, and they was all You know, I remember I could go to this artist's house and then go to his studio and go to her studio.

It was like that. This is not the first wave, there's a wave before this one. Yeah, our goal is to protect neighborhoods, create a art destination, and that supports the economic development of Historically African American neighborhood. 

Matt Peiken: Jeffrey was just talking about city involvement and really pushing the lever on that, needing city involvement. How important is the city's support for what you're doing? What is the city doing or not doing? Or are you doing a workaround in a way. From what I understand, just trying to get new development, redevelopment happen with the city levers it's slow. Getting permits, everything is just really slow as far as city involvement.

And I'm wondering how important city of Asheville itself, the government and city workers are to what you're trying to accomplish in your neighborhood. 

Dewayne Barton: Like I said, the first official document that I was involved with was the neighborhood plan, and that dealt heavily with feds, city, and county.

The trick is to take the neighborhood vision with their plan, What they develop and connect it to the existing plans that the city and county already developed. It's a lot. 

Matt Peiken: To their master plans.

Dewayne Barton: Master plan, comprehensive plan, disparity study, all of it. It's a bunch of it. But when all those policies and plans get to the neighborhood, it's like an old and gray disconnect. So it's like, how do you connect these two visions as one, and then it's a clear flow towards accomplishments and accountability. 

Matt Peiken: One of the things that I thought is a real kind of access point here is whether you own the building or not. Jeffrey, you just alluded to in the River Arts District, at large, artists don't own their buildings. As we start seeing these escalating costs of living, escalating real estate prices, diminishing incomes for artists, how important is it that artists own their spaces?

Jeffrey Burroughs: I think it's really important. I think timing is also, we're past it, right? Like, if you're looking at the current market, if you're an artist and based on just what we saw in the findings and what artists are making, they can't afford their spaces if they haven't bought them already. So there seems like there's a big divide between how do we close that gap?

Now, Arts AVL has a really great grant that they have that does allow for capital funding. But we're an arts organization that represents many artists. So we're like, do we have to start looking for real estate? Do we need a warehouse to ensure in the River Arts District that we have a place to not just represent the artists that are there, but we have initiatives for scholarship programs to help diversify the River Arts District as well.

So like, how can we continue to do these initiatives or come up with these initiatives if it's already too late? Which is why we need the city to help us. 

Matt Peiken: I want to bring up, just for some context, there are some fantastic developments in other cities that are if not artist driven, it's developer driven with artists in mind.

I moved here from Minnesota and in St. Paul, Minnesota, there's a place called the Carleton Artist Lofts. And this is a for profit company that has a mandate for every unit in this building, I think there's a hundred and ten apartments in this building, I believe. And every unit has to have at least one working artist.

You have to prove that you generate some income from the arts. Every unit has to have at least one person who qualifies for that. And, your income has to be below a certain level. That might shift over time, but it has to be below a certain level. If you make too much, you cannot qualify.

The Carleton Artist Lofts has A dry studio, a wet studio for artists and a dance rehearsal studio solely for its tenants. That's just one place. I look at Greenville, South Carolina. They are developing spaces that are very artist driven, real estate costs while going up, it's not like what they are in Asheville. Places like the Peace Center and others that are doing big expansions. 

I have a couple of thoughts about What particularly challenges Asheville, and I'm going to throw this out there and you can tell me I'm full of it or that there's something here.

One is we lack the sort of corporations in this community that have Thousands of highly skilled, well paid jobs. The people who hold those kinds of jobs in those communities, they are younger people, they tend to be younger, and they invest in their communities through philanthropy or other development.

Here, it's a tourism based economy, it's largely extractive. And that's one thing. Do you want to comment on that? 

Rebekkah Hilgraves: Yeah there's an interesting thing about that. I am also not native. I moved here about six years ago. And it was made very clear to me at the time that I needed to bring my own job.

Speaking exactly to that. And I work in tech. I had to bring a job where I could work remotely and have that kind of income. It's not here. There are maybe two major tech employers in town and that's it. 

Matt Peiken: It's funny you say that. So when I got hired at Blue Ridge Public Radio back in 2017.

And, you know, when you go to a community and you just meet people and they say what brought you to town? Most cities you live in, oh, I got a job at so and so. and they say, oh, great where do you work? I got so and so. Here, I told people, oh, I got a job that brought me here. They said, you got a job?

And I thought that was the most hysterical reaction, I'd never heard that before. Another part of what I think is particularly challenging we've got a university in this town, UNC Asheville. Where do we see them in Asheville proper? Their spaces out there could be utilized during downtime for artists, performing artists, visual artists, you name it.

And it, they seem in their own silo in terms of intellectually, physical facilities. You look at other university towns, there's much more of an arts back and forth. I don't know if that's something you've noticed or thought about. 

Tamara Sparacino: We've worked with UNCA quite a bit doing programs over there and collaborating with their theater department specifically. So that's been a really good collaboration for us. But I do agree that there's a lot more room for collaboration. And I wanted to just comment on the owning your own space, if I might for a minute, for people to understand how important it is that you own your own space. 

I just want to share that ACT has owned this space for ever, ever since we started here. And what it enables us to be able to do is a, we don't have to pay rent. But we do have to pay a lot of maintenance costs. That's part of owning your own building. But also, when we do a capital campaign or something like that, we can get a bridge loan. We can get help from the banking industry to take those risks and do building and expansion.

So when you don't own your own building, you don't have those options. So I think that's important to understand why that's so important for artists. 

Matt Peiken: Some of the takeaways that I took from the report that Katie just gave, the median earnings for creative occupations in Buncombe County are 14 percent below the current living wage for Buncombe County.

So right there, it's an uphill climb. Another takeaway that 50 out of the 66 occupations in the arts have median earnings that fall below the living wage, 50 out of 66. That's Terrible. And a little more than 15 percent of people said they previously had workspace in Buncombe County and now they don't.

Where do you see opportunities? You're all making your own opportunities. You're all working hard in this. Where do you see untapped opportunity, whether it's through collaboration, financing, creative space making? 

Rebekkah Hilgraves: Since I have a microphone in my hand. One of the things that I'm doing is I'm having discussions with some of those itinerant theater groups about having rehearsal space in the studio when we're not tracking.

There's this beautiful space available, so why not take advantage of it for something like that. And I've done some work with with UNCA. We've done some recording over there and those sorts of things. I feel like we could do a lot more collaboration when it comes to those sorts of things.

I listened to the report and I started, Thinking that I have some ideas about how to do some more collaborations like that. But I think a lot of it is all of us recognizing that we can't work in silos, that we do have to collaborate, that we have to reach across to different disciplines and different areas of the arts and work together to find solutions.

I made A point of when I hire subcontractors to do the work. I don't have full time employees. I make sure I pay them a living wage. Unfortunately, that means that I have to pay that cost on to whoever is hiring us for whatever, so our costs have to go up a little bit to cover that. We've got to make our expenses and hopefully pay the rent.

So it's a balancing act, right? The cost of living is high I want to make sure that I'm paying my contractors enough to stay in Asheville, but I also want to make sure that I provide affordable services to people who are coming through and Using our services. So it's an odd sort of balancing act. We're also talking about maybe doing some education programs where young folks, Women especially who are still grossly underrepresented in audio tech in particular, we're still less than 10 percent of the overall industry in the world. I have tried to bring in all women engineers. I want to create training programs for people of color, for people who don't necessarily have opportunities in their school systems, or those sorts of things, and develop some training and internship programs to educate the next generation or two of audio and video techs. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, Ashleigh, Lexington glassworks is one of the fixtures in the glass community around here. Are there efforts that your company is doing to bring in other glass artists or expand to be a home for more glass artists?

Ashleigh Hardes Koslow: Sure. You know our capacity is You know, small in that way, we have tried to find creative solutions to increase our workforce and to diversify our workforce within our company. And, a few years ago, I think three years ago, we purchased a building and we were very fortunate to be able to do that, not our space that we actually blow glass in and work in every day, but another building that we could house our employees or other people.

And so we were like, okay, so how do we get creative about attracting A diverse body of people to come and work in Asheville. For people who don't know, the glass world is very small, trained professional glass artists. You don't put an ad out on indeed for a glass blower.

So it's a lot of networking and a lot of training people up and, things like that. And we're trying to get different groups of people into the studio. And so we bought this building and we built this program called the resident assistantship program.

And we bring in artists for three to six month Periods and they have to have one year of experience in the glassblowing studio. And the application process is very easy. We want to make it accessible. You don't need to have a lengthy resume and we're trying to open doors and level the playing field and get people through and have hands on material and really allow people to work in the hot shop.

Working with glass is an expensive art form. You need large pieces of equipment and material costs are high. And being able to give people access to our hot shop, because we don't do rental time. We're not an educational per se facility. We're a for profit arts business, but how could we use our space and open that up to young artists. 

Matt Peiken: Tell me a little more about this space I didn't know about this.

An 

Ashleigh Hardes Koslow: apartment building? Yeah, how many units it's five units and we specifically were looking for something within a mile of our studios so that people didn't have to necessarily have a Form of transportation to get there. You could walk, bike, ride a bus.

Matt Peiken: Are these for all for out of town residents, glass students to come? 

Ashleigh Hardes Koslow: We have two residents at a time. They stagger. And so we've had artists come in from places all over the country. But yeah, only two of those units are actually artists occupied that work at Lexington Glassworks.

And interestingly enough, when we purchased the building, the other units were already occupied by artists. Really? Yeah, and we've tried and it's still, with the exception of one unit, still occupied by all female artists who live and work in Asheville. 

Matt Peiken: Wow, That to me seems like a replicable thing to do that other organizations could potentially do. You're a small business, right? And how many, you said six employees. 

Ashleigh Hardes Koslow: We have ten. 

Matt Peiken: So you have ten employees. Okay, so it's a relatively small business. You bought a five unit building. Do you have a mandate, or you said it was about three years ago that you bought this. Do you have a mandate to keep this affordable in a certain way, or what's, 

Ashleigh Hardes Koslow: That building was built in 1920 something. So it is an old building with lots of maintenance. We didn't increase rents for the first two years. This is the first year we've done rent increases and we've remodeled two of the units.

We really are passionate about affordable housing for artists. We lived in West Asheville. We were able to connect at the wedge with another person there who hooked us up with an apartment that was affordable while we were getting our business started. And so we understand that sort of need for having a space that's clean, safe, and affordable.

Matt Peiken: Have any of you or do you know people who are using or taking use of our community centers for space? These are city owned spaces, city managed spaces.

There's a brand new center, not far from the Burton Street neighborhood, the south neighborhood. I can't remember the name of that community center. Yeah, a brand new building with a new theater, and I'm wondering, is this an underutilized resource for our arts community?

Dewayne Barton: Yeah. I can even for Blue Note, the Burton Street Center, the whole basement is not being used and we created a whole plan. It's supposed to turn into a technology center, recording studio. And we did that in 2011. 

Matt Peiken: Why do you think when we're so starved for affordable spaces, large enough spaces, these community centers, it's a multi use proposition. Why is our community at large not taking advantage of community centers as arts centers? 

Rebekkah Hilgraves: I suspect some of it is just knowledge of those spaces and how they could be used. I'm newish in town, so I don't know where all the community centers are. Even people who have lived here might not necessarily know that they're available for that kind of use.

That's my guess. 

Matt Peiken: When you were talking about what RadHaus is, and I think of the former Rabbit Motel that is Soundspace Studios, here are two privately developed rehearsal studio facilities. Yours is also a recording studio, but between the two of you, there's six rooms. We've got this music crushed community, we've got so many musicians and bands, and we've in terms of Dedicated band rehearsal studios. I don't know of any others 

Rebekkah Hilgraves: There are two or three more small studios in town Studios, as rehearsal studios. Yeah. 

One of the reasons that I was excited to get this space is that there was a room large enough to rehearse A band that i'm in that's a nine piece band because not only are there few rehearsal rooms in town, but there are Vanishingly small number of rooms large enough for a band that size.

One of the reasons that I was excited about that space was not just that it would be a recording studio, video media production studio, but also that there would be a wing of it available for rehearsals because we already felt it acutely how few rehearsal spaces that were in town. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. When you come to the visual arts, We're seeing galleries go away or at least having to move. Tracey Morgan Gallery was in South Slope now, Thanks to Randy Shull and Hedy Fischer, they're now in 22 london It's actually been a good move for Tracey, but lucky to have that and The Magnetic Theatre in terms of theater space, they left the RAD. 

Rebekkah Hilgraves: That's sad. And Zapow closed a few years ago and part of the reason they closed was because rents had gone up high enough that they couldn't justify it anymore.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, Satellite Gallery which was in downtown right near Blue Ridge Public Radio. It's now, I think it's VaVaVoom. Are there any glimmers of light? All of you are part of, I think, of the guiding lights of Where things can happen and where things can be replicated.

Yeah, go ahead, Jeffrey. 

Jeffrey Burroughs: Yeah, I just wanted to share, so really exciting things that we've been doing in the River Arts District to try to continue to engage the community and people visiting is we evolved our very well known fall studio stroll Into second Saturday art stroll.

So really cool partnership with Arts AVL. We have a trolley. If you don't know that literally every second Saturday of the month, you can get on, if I remember correctly, noon to six is the new hours this year, but you can get on, and it'll take you downtown, and it'll take you right to the RAD, and you can get on and off, you don't have to worry about parking.

What a great initiative to help people get to the RAD, get downtown. 

Matt Peiken: But this is just once a month. 

Jeffrey Burroughs: Every second Saturday. I mean, We have hopes to grow it, it's an expensive endeavor, but we're working on it. And additionally, on top of that, what we've done in the RAD too is we've layered on the launch this year of our 2024 theme "Who am I? Who are we?" Which again, it's about getting out of the silo. 

So what was really important for me in coming into the presidential role this year is uniting us again as a coalition of people to get something just as a project that we can work on together. So each month we have a prompt and you essentially have a month to come up with something and you debut it at the art stroll, the second Saturday art stroll.

And so there's over 70 galleries and artists within the district participating. Every second Saturday, you can go out, you can see new work from your favorite artists or gallery. And it's something really exciting to talk about. And there's also live painting. There's a lot going on in the district.

And it's just going to continue to evolve. We're working on a really large festival event to launch in the fall of 2025. Again, uniting the district and coming up with the ways to work together as over 300 artists. And it's really exciting. 

Matt Peiken: That's great. One of the things that has been mentioned, but we haven't really talked a lot about is the Tourism Development Authority. I know, DeWayne, you've gotten some support for Blue Note Junction from the TDA, you said. I know ACT received some TDA funding. Are there things that you think is within the purview of TDA, Tourism Development Related Things that aren't happening. 

Jeffrey Burroughs: This is a, yes, I have one thing. I went to the last big meeting they have and I think what was so shocking to me when this, I can't remember his name that came and spoke at that big town hall or big event, but it was all about Oh, what's Asheville got to offer tourists?

And not one thing was mentioned about the arts. Not one. In fact I've also been in meetings where I've heard it called the River District. And I think that just the first thing we could get is a little bit of support from the tourism department. They're talking about the hiking. They're talking about the beer. What about the art? 

Matt Peiken: This is something I've thought about for quite a while. I agree with you. If you look on the Explore Asheville website, if you dig in and go, know where the right links are, you'll see some selected events. But you can't really drill down to the music scene.

Rebekkah Hilgraves: Yeah, we've had, we've actually had some trouble with that. We were trying to get the studio listed there. We were but they said it's not a tourism type thing. Actually, that's not necessarily true. We want the studio to become a destination studio because the art scene here is so great, because the music the, all of the craft and art things and the beer and the food and all of that is all a big part of it. So getting them to understand that the arts scene is part of the attraction for people coming from out of town, holy cow, the live music scene here is amazing. The arts scene here is amazing. And the fact that they're not focusing on that and actually brushed me off when I tried to get the studio listed Because it wasn't considered a tourism industry was a little mystifying.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, when you look at the tourists who are coming here and you were to ask them and I've done just some sparse interviewing of tourists, Never do the arts come up as a reason that they're coming here, and you look at what the TDA, when they market, they go to the U. S. Open, they go they sponsor big events, but there's a real skill in marketing the arts that I think isn't happening. 

Jeffrey Burroughs: I think that's true, but if you go and ask the Glass Center, they have over 50, 000 people that come there to do classes every year, the North Carolina Glass Center.

When you're in the district, and you ask people around. There are plenty of people that are coming to visit for the district and for the art scene. It's just not being communicated at a larger scale. So I think that makes it a little bit more challenging. We're seeing it on the ground level and we're also likewise seeing people that are showing up in the district here in Asheville their second time and they were like, We never knew it was here.

So if we had a little bit more support, maybe they would have found it the first time. 

Katie Cornell: So we're actually out of time. Oh yeah. I'm going to come up here and, I just want to Say that our last town hall was actually on arts marketing and it was in partnership with Explorer Asheville And they really actually do a lot to support the arts in our community, From a lot of the capital and renovation projects that happen as well as festival and event grants. And there is a lot of marketing that's done for the arts by Explorer Asheville. 

Could it be improved? Sure. We all have some work to do. But I would say that they are doing a good job in supporting the arts in our community, including sponsoring the ArtsAVL Trolley, which is this second Saturday. The full report will be on our website by the end of today. I hope you found this enlightening. There's a lot more information in the hundred page report. And then this is just the beginning of a long conversation. 

Let's give our, our panel a big round of applause.

Thank you all for coming out today. I really appreciate it.