In developing a community and quality of life, near the top of the list should be arts and culture. From preserving and passing on a community’s history, to the visual and performing arts, arts provide for distinctive experiences and often become a resource to connect members of a community.

To some, the arts and public funding for them may seem like luxuries, and the ideal place to cut during tough economic times. If we can agree that public support for the arts has value, as Lewiston and Auburn have through the shared agency L/A Arts, the next discussion is how to make limited public dollars go as far as possible.

To illustrate this strategic investment, consider two buckets, the filling of which with funding are crucial to ensuring arts and cultural programming are available in a community.

One bucket is for bricks and mortar. The other is for program delivery.

The first bucket supports the most visible component of providing programming – facilities in which to hold the activities. Brick and mortar investments, like Courthouse and Festival plazas, the Franco-American Heritage Center, Gallery 5 and numerous others, provide venues to expose the community to the arts. The costs for these venues can be significant, from initial renovation or construction costs to ongoing costs of maintenance, heat, and utilities.

After the initial hurdle of providing for facilities, then comes the true impact: delivering the programming. This takes many forms, from the popular outreach to schools by L/A Arts to public performances, exhibits and demonstrations. Costs include staff, bringing in guests or performers, materials and equipment.

The exciting part of providing for arts and cultural activities are the creative partnerships and collaborative projects that can come from bringing different groups together. L/A Arts, for example, can deliver art in the classroom by taking advantage of school facilities, and also can provide performance art in the community through facility rental at the Franco-American Heritage Center, or gallery-based art through the Art and Java wall at Willy Beans in Lewiston.

There are several other partnership examples, but it boils down to a basic question for policymakers, community members and supporters of the arts: With a finite amount of funding to invest in the arts, how do we balance brick and mortar investments with delivering high value arts programming in the community?

A study, supported by the Community Little Theater and funded in part by the city of Auburn, is looking at the viability of developing the former Great Falls School into a community arts center. The study, commissioned last November, will bring to the forefront how the Lewiston-Auburn community resolves that question.

Even with apparent dissention in elected ranks for support of joint services, a glowing success of collaboration is the work of L/A Arts and its strong foundation from a cultural plan developed for Lewiston-Auburn some time ago.

Much has changed since that plan was assembled, a plan that pre-dated downtown master plans of both cities and the development of new and renovated arts facilities in the last 10 years.

As Auburn mulls the future of the almost 50,000-square-foot building, the prospect of a multi-million dollar effort to renovate the former school to meet modern building codes, then its re-configuration to support arts and cultural activities beyond the local theater troupe hangs in the balance.

And with it, the answer to the question of how Lewiston-Auburn supports arts and cultural programming in an environment that has all of us in the community trying to make our dollars go a little further.

Jonathan LaBonte, of New Auburn, is a columnist for the Sun Journal. E-mail: [email protected].