Moments prior to the unveiling of Creative Santa Fe's new executive director at a Thursday, Aug. 30, event, I had a sudden, irrational sensation that it would be Steve Buck, who had announced his resignation from the Center for Contemporary Arts the day before. ***image1***
Whatever you think of the guy, and whatever his reasons are for departing from CCA, Creative Santa Fe could sure benefit from some increased visibility and focus, two qualities that Buck certainly contributed to CCA. But we'll leave that scenario to play out in an alternate reality: Creative Santa Fe's new pilot is Dena Aquilina, an artist and arts advocate. Aquilina was an avid participant in a series of public discussions about the arts and culture industry's role in economic development. Those discussions eventually led to the creation of Creative Santa Fe.
For anyone late to the party, Creative Santa Fe was formed in 2005 as an umbrella organization to manage resources, strategize initiatives and consider workforce development issues for the benefit of the arts and culture industry and community in Santa Fe. Its specific mission is a little hard to glean, either from its Web site (
) or from the organization's actions to date. This has led to questions about its ultimate relevance. Basically, the organization is simultaneously a cheerleader, lobbyist and coordinator. The hope is that Aquilina and the new board of directors president, Mary Ann Schaening, will galvanize the organization's idea-driven structure into concrete action. Schaening intimated a five-pronged plan for the coming year and Aquilina begged to get her sea legs before detailing the full scope of her plan of attack.
The Aug. 30 event was one in a series of what the organization calls Creative Conversations, in which it invites its membership to listen to a speaker or learn about an another organization. Keith Toler, director of the City of Santa Fe Convention and Visitor's Bureau, and the tallest paycheck on the city's entire payroll, detailed what he and CVB have in the works for promoting Santa Fe. Toler good-naturedly lamented his lampooning at this year's Fiesta Melodrama (one character is an evil "tzar of tourism") and laid out his vision for a holy trinity of cooperative and efficiently marketed creative, preservation and hospitality sectors.
The CVB, under Toler's guidance, has been conducting a series of surveys to hone in on what visitors like and dislike about Santa Fe, why they come here, what they do and how they spend money. The results, as well as the details of an upcoming plan to promote the city, will be unveiled by Toler at a 10 am public presentation on Sept. 26. The location has yet to be determined.
Tourism is one of those mortifying industries into which it's best not to delve too deeply. Toler is eloquent, smart and clearly knows his industry, but the few clues he doles out as to the direction of future campaigns makes me not just skeptical as to whether or not those are the best ways to promote the city, but makes me want to leave the room. Apparently, we are going to "geotarget" San Diego, Austin, Denver and New York. Studies indicate that people from those cities most readily self-identify themselves as Santa
Fe-curious. An aggressive online advertising campaign is going to let them know that, while we may never know if there's going to be enough snow on which to ski, Santa Fe is great for "romantic getaways."
Toler also wants to target those four markets because they're packed with a demographic he doesn't see visiting: 35 to 45 year olds. The CVB cavalierly plans to lure this age-based hotbed of expendable income with the phrases "irresistible Santa Fe" and "sensational Santa Fe." Great. Now our city is not only synonymous with a Hyundai and mass-marketed chicken salad, it has all the properties of a sheen-inducing shampoo. We'll soon see the evidence of Santa Fe working its full-bodied, softer magic on visitors though. A plan is in the works to launch a Web site for people to upload videos of their Santa Fe vacations. Kind of like a YouTube for people who regret being born in the post-slide projector era, when it was possible to brutalize your friendships with lousy vacation photos. On the other hand, the site does have the potential to be anthropologically mesmerizing.
Asked if there were any plans to market to people even younger (gasp!) than 35, Toler says that he'd love to, but doesn't have the budget. "It all comes down to dollars," he says. Because Creative Santa Fe needs to lower its own age demographic even more desperately than CVB does, I pestered Aquilina about her plans on approaching people under, say, 50. She says her hope is to get out into the community and find out what Creative Santa Fe can offer to younger people. She says she wants so much to understand the youth perspective on Santa Fe that she wishes there was a way for kids to make short videos on what they think is cool about the city.
Now there's an idea that would allow Creative Santa Fe to work its inter-organizational, cultural umbrella voodoo. Warehouse 21 and the Santa Fe Film Festival can facilitate teens creating storylines and shooting footage, CCA can offer up its swanky, new digital media lab to edit and produce the films and the CVB can pay scholarships of $1,000 each to the five best shorts and host them on its Web site. That would give people a sense of the real Santa Fe, which is neither irresistible nor sensational, but is a unique place where creativity and cultural traditions are passed through generations. And we have enough committed organizations to pull off a collaborative project that allows our next generation to explore and display the city on its own terms.
Hey Keith, surely we can find $5,000? For the kids?
