As the Regional Arts Commission (RAC) gets ready to mark 40 years, what’s the attitude around the office? It is feeling joyful. When I came to RAC five years ago, in 2020, we were in a really tough situation. We lost 47 percent of our revenue over a six-month period [due to COVID-19]. RAC hadn’t had that kind of devastation before. When COVID hit, it threatened everything. My eye was on the prize of the 40th because I knew that was about how long it was going to take us to dig out of this hole. Fundamentally, COVID changed not only RAC, but also the arts and culture sector. A lot more digital offerings exist, but people still like to gather and be present for each other. What the arts have been able to provide St. Louis over these last five years is a way to be together. I think that that’s really important. Now that we’re turning 40, we get to look back and see what we’ve done well and things that we need to improve for the next 40 years. It’s very celebratory because there was a point where we didn’t know if we were going to make it.
How do you plan to celebrate? You’ll see some more communication, whether it’s billboards, ads, stories, or our digital properties. We really want to tell the story of our grantees—the artists and arts organizations who have made St. Louis a great place to live, work, and visit. Then we are having a big, old-fashioned birthday party on August 28 at Union Station, and everybody’s invited. Tickets will be $19.85 to mark our first year. We’ll have our arts organizations and artists performing, so it’ll be an opportunity for people who aren’t as familiar with RAC to see what we’ve been doing.
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What does the future of RAC look like? For the next 10 years, we’ve developed a new theory of change that really focuses our efforts on impact. We asked ourselves, How will St. Louis as a region be better and different because RAC exists? We are excited about what we’re going to be focusing on, which is to really increase the joy and prosperity that people experience in St. Louis through the arts.
