Leaders of a rebranded Columbus Area Arts Council have unveiled a new logo, new website design and content, and reiterated a new direction highlighted earlier this year.
The arts group has narrowed its focus to smaller, family friendly events and away from financially risky big-concert and multi-act, weather-dependent outdoor gatherings.
The switch was necessary, agency leaders said, to be more responsible with donor and grant dollars and to reach a broader base of Bartholomew County’s population.
But Kathryn Armstrong, who began steering the nonprofit agency in part of its new journey as executive director 12 months ago, said it might be tough to precisely measure the success of the new mission by this time next year.
She spoke after Tuesday afternoon’s arts council annual meeting at The Commons before board members, agency leaders and arts patrons and supporters.
“It is always tricky to quantify the arts,” Armstrong said. “However, I think we can look at what the social media response is, and see how people might be accessing things in ways that maybe they weren’t before. We can get that kind of data.”
She said the agency already noted some growth in visibility since it began boosting its Facebook posts last fall. She compared the agency’s overall changes to the transition in the classic film, “The Wizard of Oz.”
“We had to take the organization, like Dorothy in Kansas, and move through black and white to now find that we’re landing in technicolor,” Armstrong said.
For more on this story, see Thursday’s Republic.
