Hutchinson City Council members voted unanimously at Tuesday’s meeting to continue the city's membership and financial commitment to the Hutchinson Center for the Arts.
This action means the city will continue to provide $15,000 per year through 2020. It continues a commitment that began in 2012 with a three-year commitment of $15,000 a year. That arrangement was extended for another three years in 2014. The current three-year commitment ends in 2017.
At the July 25 council meeting, Lisa Bergh, executive director of the Hutchinson Center for the Arts, gave the center's annual update to the the City Council:
- The center has 12 partner agencies: Crow River Area Youth Orchestra; Crow River Singers; Historic Hutchinson; Hutchinson Parks, Recreation and Community Education; Hutchinson Photography Club; Hutchinson Theatre Company; Litchfield Area Male Chorus; McLeod County Fair; Minnesota Pottery FEstival; No Lines Improv Troupe; RiverSong Music Festival and Wheel & Cog Children's Museum.
- The 12 partner groups presented more than 100 exhibits, performances, workshops and community events last year.
- The Hutchinson Photography Club led four field trips to different sites in the state.
- Wheel & Cog Children's Museum opened in July and had 3,100 visitors by early 2017.
- Historic Hutchinson celebrated the town's aeronautical history with a free community event, which showcased a B-25 at the Hutchinson Airport.
- During 2016, the center drew 2,000 people who attended an event, exhibit or took a class.
- In 2016, youth education programming served 120 children, with 10 percent benefiting from a youth scholarship/sibling discount program.
- The center hosted a series of visual arts exhibitions during the year, which introduced the work of Minnesota artists.
- New in 2017, the center partnered with Hutchinson Community Foundation for the Creative Families Fund, which provides free and reduced ticket/tuition vouchers for children and their families/caregivers to attend arts education and entertainment events hosted by the art center and partner agencies.
- Through a grant from the Southwest Initiative Foundation and designed in partnership with Vivid Image, the art center's website has been improved. It offers class and event registration, secure online donation, membership registration, calendar of events, partner information, blog and social media content.
- The Leader has published 65 stories about the art center and partner groups. The center has also be featured in two segments on Minnesota Public Radio's "Art Hounds," in three articles in the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council newsletter and in one feature article in The Minneapolis Egotist Blog.
For more information about the Hutchinson Center for the Arts, visit www.hutchinsonarts.org, or call Bergh at 320-587-7278.
