By Nancy Bargar
Jamestown, NY – Chautauqua County will use a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to promote cultural tourism with this summer and fall.
Most people are familiar with Chautauqua's most famous tourism attraction, Chautauqua Institution. Thousands of visitors each summer have no trouble finding their way to the world renowned center for the arts and culture.
But now the way to Chautauqua County's many other arts festivals and artists will also be a well-marked path. The new tourism promotion is called the Chautauqua Arts Trail, a map of new and existing arts events, which will be widely distributed. It will be published on the web and in fold-out brochure form.
Andrew Dickson is project coordinator. He says there will be an especially strong push to bring people to Chautauqua County from July to December this year.
"We're going to put some heads in beds and we're going to sell some restaurant meals and some artwork," Dickson said.
On the list is the already popular Scandanavian Festival and the wine and arts summer festival. Plus, there is a new event, the Fredonia Storytelling Festival, and host of others.
Dickson says the sprawling campaign is a countywide collaboration.
"There's, of course, the Arts Council who took the initiative and the financial risk to make this happen," Dickson said. "There is the Chautauqua County Visitors Bureau. They're a ten percent financial partner. We have the grantor, the Arts and Business Council of New York State, and we'll have a local funding source as well.
Then the ten or 12 events so there are a lot of collaborators and it's a bit unwieldy at times but we'll make it go for sure."
The Chautauqua Arts Trail is modeled after a similar one in Ithaca. Besides attracting visitors, the $40,000 marketing and mapping program is expected to make the arts more economically viable.
Organizers expect revenue from art purchases, meals and sales tax to help the lodging industry and vacation-home owners.