Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Northwest Arkansas Artists Take National (Digital) Stage
On Sept. 8, four Northwest Arkansas performers or groups will be featured on The Kennedy Center’s “Arts Across America” digital performance series. Five days a week through Dec. 11, the famed arts venue will present free online programming from coast to coast that spotlights community arts leaders, unique regional arts styles, and organizations and artists focused on social justice.
“It’s an amazing organization, and they’ve always been really good at supporting local and regional artists in the D.C. and mid-Atlantic region. So I knew that they would take seriously the same idea, writ large across the whole country,” offers Jesse Elliot.
A musician himself, Elliot is also the director of creative ecosystems with the Northwest Arkansas Council’s project, CACHE — Creative Arkansas Community Hub & Exchange.
“Basically, I’m the artistic director to Allyson [Esposito’s] executive director, in the performing arts analogy,” he explains. “I, along with our team, am tasked with finding good opportunities for our local artists, our local creative businesses, our local creative nonprofits — we work across all those different axes — getting opportunities for folks who’ve been working hard, making amazing creative products for years or for decades, and getting them out into the wider world.”
When The Kennedy Center contacted CACHE looking for an hourlong program to highlight Northwest Arkansas artists, Elliot says the team eagerly agreed.
“Jerad Sears runs a really cool thing called City Sessions, and it’s similar content,” Elliot explains of the local concert series. “So I really just said, ‘Hey Jerad, can you put together a group of artists that is representative of the amazing diversity that we have in the region as far as genre, culture, background, geography, all of that?’ Because I think often, when people do think of Arkansas or Northwest Arkansas, they think in a pretty limited way about what music exists here. And of course, that music is here — that tradition and culture and heritage are awesome and we love celebrating that. But we also [wanted to] give people a real slice of what’s actually going on.”