Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Hearts In The Arts
WAC keeps home fires burning online
Theater stages across the world have gone dark because of the covid-19 pandemic, leaving many arts organizations wondering how they can stay connected with the communities they serve. For the Walton Arts Center, the answer to that question turned out to be “heARTs to homes” — a series of live arts performances the organization has been releasing on its Facebook and YouTube page every weekend since April 11.
“When you start working well in advance of a year to bring in these shows and then watch them as they’re canceled left and right — it is extremely difficult,” says Scott Galbraith, WAC vice president of programming and executive producer. “Producing ‘heARTs to homes’ was a bright spot in what was a rather dark moment for us. It gives us a chance to be who we were supposed to be.”
The family-friendly videos are under an hour and feature artists and arts organizations — almost all of them local — performing around a topical theme set by the WAC programming team. Released every Saturday, the videos are only available for 48 hours, in an attempt to mimic — as much as possible — the immediacy of live performance. Also released with the videos
are links to other online programming and online arts education opportunities.
Galbraith says the idea for the videos were not just a way for the WAC to continue to offer arts programming to the community, but also, a way to help support parts of the community that were experiencing economic loss during the coronavirus shutdown period.
“As soon as the pandemic started, so much of the conversation in the industry and the community was, ‘What’s the economic impact going to be?’” notes Galbraith. “But we also started thinking, ‘How do we stay connected with our audience, and how do we stay connected with the community? How do we keep artists working?’ Those were all as important to us as the performances we were canceling.” Galbraith says his team reached out to artists and arts organizations across the region to see how they could best offer support. “Based, to a large degree, on that input, we created ‘heARTs to homes’ as a way of keeping artists seen and heard and employed.”
The project also helps steer some business in the direction of local restaurants, as the WAC partners with three to five restaurants offering specials each week.
“When you come to the Walton Arts Center, you usually grab dinner and see a show, so this is the quarantine version of dinner and a show,” says WAC Director of Public Relations Jennifer Wilson.
“Yes, we want to make sure we were staying connected with our audience, but we also want to build a sense of community while we’re doing that — so it’s not just you in your home having this arts and culture experience, you’re watching it with others,” says Galbraith. “By wrapping the restaurants in, we were able to create a culinary experience for the community. We’re really trying to lift as many people as we can at one time.”
Wilson says the project has, so far, employed 19 artists and partnered with 24 restaurants across the region.