Earlier this month, a quartet of Connecticut’s nonprofit performing arts operators – the Fairfield Theatre Company in Fairfield, the Wall Street Theater in Norwalk, the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center (also known as The Kate) in Old Saybrook, and the New Haven Center for Performing Arts, Inc. which operates College Street Music Hall and the Westville Music Bowl, both in New Haven – announced their collaboration to form Community Arts Venues, a coalition focused on highlighting the economic value of arts and entertainment within the state.
John Reid, artistic director at the Fairfield Theatre Company, observed that the coalition’s founding members share much in common.
“We’re independent venues, nonprofit organizations, or operating out of nonprofit owned venues,” he said. “It’s all of our missions to serve the community and bringing the best music and the arts. When we began, we realized that in the state budget there are a few cohorts, organizations, theatre, and performing arts centers that have consistent government funding through line-item funding. But we feel that the small independent venues are somewhat underserved in our state budget. So, part of this is really an education program for us to make sure that our that our elected officials and our supporters really understand the value that we bring to the communities, which can be assessed in a few ways.”
As Reid explained, the organizations not only seek to enliven the cultural environment in their communities, but they are also economic engines that rarely receive their due for helping to fuel local business revenues.
“In Fairfield County, for example, everyone who attends an event at FTC spends an average of $38 in the surrounding businesses,” he said about his venue, which is located in the center of the town’s Post Road commercial corridor. “As an organization, we bring in 50,000 to 70,000 people a year. If you do the math, you can see that brings a couple of million dollars in revenue directly into the town and businesses.”
Reid also pointed out that the organizations within the Community Arts Venue group also contribute to their local economies by hiring local vendors and providing touring artists with accommodations and meals – which totals up to $350,000 each year for these services.
Reid stated the coalition came together because the four founding organizations are all based in southern Connecticut, and he welcomed the opportunity to bring additional arts and entertainment organizations from across the state into the group. However, Reid acknowledged many of the organizations that would fit into the new coalition are still having difficult regaining the audience levels they enjoyed prior to the Covid pandemic.
“Some of the very large venues have seen an increase in stadium-sized shows,” he said, noting the smaller independent venues are still working to rebuild audiences. Nonetheless, he is optimistic for the future.
“Overall, I think Connecticut is going through kind of a mini-renaissance of the arts, just in terms of the number of venues,” he added. “I’ve been at FTC for 12 years and the number of venues just within a fairly close radius of FTC, 30 to 40 miles, have tripled – and more are planned. I’m sure you’ve seen the news that Live Nation is now undertaking the building of a 330- to 500-seat venue next to the Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater in Bridgeport. There’s a huge increase in terms of opportunities for people to go out and hear live music.”
