Artists, art fans and citizens are invited to come together at the Fayetteville Town Center for the first-ever art and culture community conversation for the city Wednesday, July 17, from 4 to 6 p.m.

Joanna Sheehan Bell, Arts and Culture Director for the City of Fayetteville, said the upcoming event is a compilation of the start of her work since the creation of her role two years ago. “What we’ve got coming up is this sort of very large public meeting called Creative Convergence. It is part of our arts and culture planning process. This is the first time Fayetteville has ever embarked on a strategic plan for the arts and culture sector,” she said. “And so we’re sort of doing a bunch of conversations, focus groups and this is sort of the culmination of that process where we’ve done surveys and we’re sort of collecting information from people who live here so we can figure out what our cultural policy should really look like.”

Bell said there is an emphasis on getting all people involved in order to truly make up the community driven plan. 

“First and foremost this meeting is for everyone. It’s for artists who are practicing artists, it’s for artists who consider themselves hobbyists, it’s for artists and arts fans. People who don’t necessarily practice art but love to be in the mix with artists. It’s for citizens who just enjoy living here. I think that people who want to come to bring ideas for what they’d like to see in the future and if they can envision what Fayetteville is like in 20 years, what three words would they want to be said about Fayetteville. How do they want Fayetteville to be seen in the world?” Bell said.

Beyond being a space to share perspectives, the event will include information to set the tone of the conversation, along with a poem by Na’Tosha De’Von that will be shared and crafted specifically for the event. From there, round table conversations to address the big questions will be recorded by a graphic facilitator illustrating the meeting in real time, Bell said. People are welcome to come to the meeting to observe or contribute with ideas of what arts and culture means to them.

“I want people to come and think about the things that make Fayetteville the most Fayetteville and share those ideas and those thoughts with the group because what we want to do is make a plan that makes space for the city to continue to grow, but maintain the culture,” Bell said. “And some of that culture is sort of the dominant culture and some of it is what maybe isn’t as said as often. And it’s not as shared by as many people, but we still don’t want to lose those aspects either. So it’s really important for everyone to bring sort of their full lived experience of their time in Fayetteville.”

To help support and share ideas for that plan, individuals are invited to RSVP to jbell@fayetteville-ar.gov if they plan to attend the upcoming event “Creative Convergence: community conversation envisioning the future of Arts and Culture in Fayetteville.”