The
Allied Arts Council, the second oldest arts
council in Missouri, was organized in 1963 to
provide service to St. Joseph area arts
organizations, artists, and the general public.
The Council has since grown into a federation of
fifteen arts agencies, produces community arts
programs, raises funds, promotes public
awareness, and provides service and support to
its member agencies. The Allied Arts Council
seeks to make St. Joseph a better place to live
through the arts, and its mission is to provide
leadership and support for the arts and to its
member organizations. Simply put, our goal is to
bring arts and people together.
As the leadership
organization for the arts in St. Joseph, the
Council fulfills its mission in several ways: by
supporting its member organizations in promoting
artistic opportunities; by providing financial
support, and fostering coordinated cultural
planning; by offering programs to educate and
develop future audiences; by providing forums of
expression for local artists; and by advocating
for arts and its member organizations at the
local, state, and national levels. The Allied
Arts Council is managed by a professional staff
of four and 31 board of directors. Our programs
utilize over 2,000 volunteers each year.
In 1982, Council
inaugurated the Arts Fund Drive. Since then, the
Allied Arts Council has expanded its role in
aiding in the development of professional arts
for St. Joseph, while adding multi-disciplinary
arts education programs, city-wide marketing
efforts and programs to showcase the work of
area artists.
The Arts Fund has grown
from $67,000 in its first drive in 1982 to over
$200,000. These dollars are a vital 10 - 20% of
the dollars necessary to provide top quality
arts programming for the St. Joseph area.
Currently, seven organizations receive
allocations from the Arts Fund.
In 1982, Allied Arts
launched the Artists in the Schools program.
From 28 sessions its first year, this enrichment
program now reaches 3,000-4,000 children
annually with up to 100 sessions. This
successful partnership with the St. Joseph
School District led to the creation of the
residency program in 1988.
Begun with one visiting artist, the program now
reaches around 3,000 students and community
members. Also begun in 1988 in cooperation with
Missouri Western State University, Artscape is
the only integrated summer arts program for
children 8 to 15.
In 1983, Art for the
Health of It, a partnership with Heartland
Regional Medical Center, became the Council's
first program to benefit area artists with two
annual juried exhibits, and in 1991, Art for
Business' Sake allowed the winners of the
hospital shows to exhibit for the business
community. With the growth of visual arts
organizations, the Council phased out these
programs to focus on public art, and in 2012,
the first Traffic Box public art project was
completed.
In
the early 1990s, the Council secured a Missouri
Arts Council/NEA grant for a cultural plan,
which funded St. Joseph 2000's Arts and Cultural
Task Force. Its objective, "creating a festival
to showcase St. Joseph's unique cultural
heritage" was the final impetus in Allied Arts
leadership in developing Trails West!®, first
as the 150th birthday celebration for St. Joseph
in 1993 and then its adoption as the Council's
signature event. Trails West!® is operated by
the Allied Arts Council in partnership with the
City of St. Joseph and the St. Joseph Convention
and Visitors Bureau. The three-day festival is
Northwest Missouri's largest annual arts
festival, drawing over 40,000 visitors, and
featuring 60 fine artists and crafters, food
vendors, and local, regional and national
entertainment.
Since April 2003, the
Allied Arts Council has partnered with the St.
Joseph School District in the Kennedy Center
Partners in Education program. Since 2007 the
Council has hosted the National Endowment for
the Arts Poetry Out Loud northwest Missouri
regional competition.
In 2008, the Allied Arts
Council, in partnership with the St. Joseph
Public Library, Rolling Hills Regional
Consolidated Library, and the St. Joseph School
District received an NEA grant to host The Big
Read in St. Joseph. Our event took place in May
2009, featuring The Great Gatsby by F. Scott
Fitzgerald, with a wide variety of activities
appealing to a variety of age levels.
In 2008, the Missouri Arts Council awarded St.
Joseph the Creative Community Missouri Arts
Award, and in 2009, the Allied Arts Council was
awarded the Missouri Arts Organization Award.
St. Joseph's strong arts community is proud of
its substantial contribution to economic
development and for enhancing our city's
livability.
From
2011 - 2015, the Allied Arts Council produced
St. Joe's Got Talent as a fundraiser for the
Arts Fund. In 2013 the Council launched the
first annual Beer Walk for the Arts as an
additional Arts Fund fundraiser, and this
successful event continues to provide a unique
way for the Council to connect arts and people
together.
In 2014, after several
years of planning, the Allied Arts Council in
partnership with the City of St. Joseph and the
St. Joseph Downtown Community Improvement
District unveiled St. Joseph's first Sculpture
Walk. Sculptures are owned by the artists and
loaned to the St. Joseph Sculpture Walk for one
year, and are available for purchase. Artists
are eligible for awards, and the sculpture
selected for the Best of Show Award will be
purchased and relocated to a permanent location
in St. Joseph.
The Allied Arts Council,
one of 100 local arts agencies in the United
States, recently participated in the Americans
for the Arts local art index research project.
AAC will be on the leading edge of the
development and testing of the local index. The
Council also participated in the Americans for
the Arts & Economic Prosperity IV study. These
new and exciting works will help shape the
future of the arts in St. Joseph and in America.
St. Joseph is a unique
community for its size: being so close in
proximity to Kansas City, it would be easy to
defer to the larger city for quality arts
opportunities. That has never been the case. It
would be unfair to our children and our
residents to take a "pass." Instead, St. Joseph,
through the leadership and support of the Allied
Arts Council, supports member arts agencies,
stimulates new programs, fosters audience
development, forges community partnerships, and
seeks financial support to ensure that our
citizens have opportunities to experience the
power of the arts as active participants, not
just passive bystanders. The arts are alive and
thriving in our community!