COVID-19 continues to impact local community events including the Arts in the Heart of Augusta Festival.
The Augusta Convention & Visitors Bureau Board set goals for the next 18 months at its meeting on Wednesday.
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Those goals include community building, customer engagement and organization sustainability, and they are meant to help the tourism agency do its work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meeting via teleconference, CVB President and CEO Bennish Brown stated that although Richmond County ranks seventh out of the top 10 counties in Georgia for tourism-related revenue, the pandemic inspired the organization to jump into “response recovery mode,” with a new business plan that features “fewer and better” strategic goals.
“COVID is not going to go away without a fight,” Brown said. “We want to help Augusta to continue to grow as a successful visitor destination, and as we have seen first-hand, again during the pandemic, it’s important that our industry guide the community to remember, or to believe, that tourism drives economic development.”
The organization plans to use a new lexicon, developed last year, to better explain the ACVB’s values and goals internationally, Brown said.
One of the pandemic casualties is The Arts in the Heart of Augusta Festival. Organizer Brenda Durant of the Greater Augusta Arts Council discussed the cancelation of popular annual festival at the meeting.
Keeping with the “fewer and better” pandemic-related theme, the arts council decided to host a smaller festival the same weekend instead, Durant said.
Those who attend the new Arts City Festival, a mini-version of the usual event, should expect fewer international food booths and increased emphasis on take-out from local restaurants.
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“We know how much downtown needs that help,” Durant said. She added that the council intends to take a “super COVID friendly” approach.
Not all Augusta ventures look smaller these days, though. Durant reported the “overnight” success of the city’s Sculpture Trail.
“Sometimes someone has been an actor for 20 years, and they get a big role, and overnight they are a success,” Durant said. “So, it seems effortless that in one week the Arts Council and City of Augusta installed 10 sculptures in downtown Augusta and created the Sculpture Trail.”
Three years and $100,000 from the Recreation & Parks budget went into planning the Sculpture Trail. The downtown vision evolved through multiple city and Rec & Parks managers. The arts council borrowed the sculptures from around the country and is displaying them locally. A digital app, Otocast, provides spectators with spoken descriptions of each work. A web-based walking tour for the less tech-savvy is available on the arts council website. The sculptures on display are available for purchase, Durant said.
“The excitement from the city and the people touring it already without even a ribbon cutting or a lot of press is remarkable,” Durant said.
The trail’s ribbon cutting takes place at 1 p.m. Feb. 6. Additionally, Augusta’s downtown admirers may soon view a larger number of plywood murals, a canal-placed sculpture and decorated storm drains, according to Durant.
“It is an exciting time for public art, but it takes a village,” she said of the public-private partnerships that enable the downtown artwork expansion.
The ACVB’s next meeting is Wednesday, March 24 at 8 a.m.
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