Announcer 1: The views and opinions expressed in to the point are those of the host of the program and its guests.

They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of WGTE public media.

Doni: Imagine going to work every day knowing that your tasks are to inspire vibrancy.

Support artists and creatives and even give away a bit of money.

More than $100,000 to be exact.

To help aspiring artists follow their dreams.

Now imagine an organization with more than 100 volunteers that coordinates major community festivals and helps place art all over the city.

Think less city center while maintaining more than 80 works in the city's public art collection.

This is just a glimpse of what the Arts Commission of Toledo does for this town.

Their sole mission is to make Toledo an inspiring place to live, work and create.

Its president and CEO, Marc Folk, has the best job in town.

Except for mine, of course.

He's with us today to remind you why we love our Arts Commission.

I'm Doni Miller.

Welcome to the point.

Connect with us on our social media pages.

But you know that.

You can also email me at Doni underscore Miller at wgte dot.

Org again, for this episode and other additional extras.

Don't hesitate to go to wgte.org To the point it is.

So we're going to have so much fun today because you know who I am with me.

I have Marc Folk with me.

You know what he does?

He runs the coolest organization in town, the Arts Commission of Toledo.

It is amazing what you guys do down there.

And we should be talking about this all the time, because I think your work brings joy and peace and just a recentering of our souls.

I think that's what it does.

Yeah, but you tell me what you think it does.

Marc: Well, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Thank you.

It's a big week for us.

On Saturday, we turn 65 years old as an organization.

And we've existed throughout the years to inspire a vibrant Toledo.

So we have a broad list of programs that we do for the community.

But if we boil it down to four pillars, we fundamentally believe that artists work and we connect opportunities for, investment in artists and artists to market.

We work hard to improve our collective, public spaces through the arts, really work to make sure all our included in the opportunities that we provide, and then care for the overarching ecosystem and beyond the on the street programing, we do a lot of policy work and advocacy work and get up and represent Toledo and Northwest Ohio at the national level.

Doni: So why is this important?

Marc: Well, I for so many reasons.

I mean, the arts connect us with each other.

You know, we're still recovering from, the pandemic where we were all forced to separate and the arts are, one of the core ways that we build social cohesion with each other.

You go to an exhibition.

An artist shares their work, and then the community is there to join in an experience that you go to, a performance, you're moving to music together.

You see a play, you're having an experience where you're relating to something through the ages.

And I think that's, so important Late last year, the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, announced that we were in a, epidemic of loneliness and social isolation.

And they said the impacts of that on a person is, equivalent to, 15 cigarets a day.

It's negative attributes on your health.

So getting people out, connecting them to place, celebrating stories, sharing cultures, all of those things make us more healthy people.

And it makes our community a richer place to live.

Doni: Yeah, I really do think, though, that being in those sound, in those kinds of surroundings, just if there's nobody there but me, it, it brings on a, just a reconnection with the environment I'm in with myself.

It's it's really an important interaction.

Marc: I think it is it's powerful.

And, you know, we often think about the artwork as the document of process.

So there's the experience that you're having.

But when we go through, say, a public art process, we're connecting representatives of the neighborhoods where the artworks going, people from the city, business owners.

So there's also this, really great magic that happens on the way to getting to those individual experiences.

Doni: Yeah.

Your work is is really broad to as I learned in preparing for this show, I was stunned at the number of tentacles that you guys have out showing in so many different ways.

You support artists, we do, which is so cool because do you know how many?

Of course you know how many people want to be artists, but they're afraid because it's feels like a sort of lonely process.

Marc: It does that.

And I think that's, one of the things about being an artist, you generally go into a space, an idea eight and create, but you're alone, right?

And then you harvest that to bring it out, to share with other people.

And that brings them together.

But then you retreat away again and you make that next work to bring out.

So it's a big investment from our artist.

One of my mentors, Roberto Bedoya, calls it an ROA ROI, not a return on investment, but a return on imagination.

So we know, you know, that our artists need support, and we we don't.

We rarely do anything without talking to the community we're hoping to serve.

And when we went to talk to our artist community, they came back and said, we need two things.

One, they're I'm in that position where I'm making work, and I don't know, I need that thing until I need it, and if I can get it, then I'll accelerate in my career.

So we offer, accelerator grants for that.

Real simple applications for artists to get that next thing to propel them forward.

And then there's a tier of artists in our community who are, you know, working much closer or at the professional level, and they just need more resources so they can have more time to be in the studio.

So we do a once a year merit award, that are larger dollar awards, recognizing the accomplishments of individual artists.

And then even with, support of the city and county coming together to invest with the American Rescue Plan, Act dollars and our cultural ecosystem, we've supported organizations through that, and I'd love to talk about that in a minute.

But we've also, to your point, we've supported over 100 artists a year.

They work to recover from the impact of the pandemic Doni: and given away more than $100,000.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

That yeah, Marc: just an individual artist over the arc of the Arpa program will have funded close to $6 million.

In supporting 44 organizations throughout northwest Ohio.

Doni: That's amazing.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

And so if I'm an artist, I'm in high school.

Right.

And I know in my head this is what I want to do, but I have no clue how to get started.

Do I call you?

Marc: You call.

And you would apply to our Young Artists to Work program, which also celebrated 30 years this year, just this past summer.

So each year we hire somewhere between, 50 and 75, 14 to 18 year olds.

They work for a living wage, for six weeks under the instruction of local artist to do individual works and large scale public art projects.

We have a fantastic partnership with the University of Toledo since their classrooms are vacant.

They allow us to use the center for Visual Arts.

So our young people are getting access to a college environment and seeing what that next level could look like.

And, we're really fostering their creative skills, leadership.

And, and, it really empowers them to go back into their own communities and then take the things that they learn in your and apply them, to where they live or to their future lessons.

It's, it's really amazing.

I started as a stone carving instructor there many, many moons ago, and now it's so true.

Doni: I'm like so impressed with that.

So Marc: yeah.

Thank you.

It's what what's fascinating and really fun for me to see is now we have second generation families coming into young artists to work.

So a parent who went through the program are now sending their kids back through, and again, that social cohesion thing, we, focus on making sure the opportunities available to everyone and get some support through job and family services and the community development block program for young people.

Doni: So we're doing real wraparound services.

Marc: Yeah, yeah.

I mean, connecting kids with meals became a partner because we noticed some of the young people were showing up lethargic and hungry in the morning and can't work if you have an eating, you know, so wherever we can really, focus on that and then, you know, sometimes we get kids up to 32 different schools from out northwest Ohio.

So we're weaving the fabric of, relationships again through the arts and connecting.

Are you an artist with other young artists and removing that sense of isolation?

They may feel.

Doni: Well.

And you all also manage.

Well, there are two things I want to ask you about.

One, you've got some public art.

Marc: Yes, quite a bit of it going.

Doni: Yeah, yeah.

Your favorite one of all those.

Is there a favorite?

Marc: It's like children's.

Doni: I know the minute I asked that question, I thought, it's like kids, Marc: what I am, what I'm vibing on right now the most is the Field of Histories project at the Metropark.

The the 1% for our program is funded by the city of Toledo, but that's catalyzed all different kind of investment in the arts.

When the Metroparks decided they were going to build the Glass City Riverwalk, they wanted to make sure that they were connected with residents.

And through a creative placemaking program, we had been doing a lot of neighborhood work over the past decade.

So we were in a position to help.

We did this project called The Field of Histories, where individuals from the community were able to bring an object out that connected them to the city of Toledo, whether it was their, a swizzle stick from the bar, their grandfather used to run, or a glass tool that their, you know, grandmother used that Libbey glass or whatever that was.

We documented those stories.

An artist named Briony Roberts did this project, and it was funded, through an anonymous donation to the Metroparks Foundation.

These objects were three dimensionally scanned, stories documented.

And then they have this process where they can laser etched the inside of a glass sphere.

So it actually breaks the inside of the glass sphere to reproduce the object that the people brought in.

There are 175 of those collective histories organized now in the Glass City Metro Park, out in the public display, materializing history and then showing what connects the people who live here to our place in a way that our visitors can, find a sense of awe and wonder, and and it's it's really fantastic if you go out and look at it because they're about, 3 or 4, private between three and 4.5ft tall.

And when people are out there looking at them, they're bowing down.

It's almost like they're, you know, they're they're acknowledging, these histories and honoring them.

Yeah, it's really fantastic.

Doni: So stay with me, all right?

We have lots more to talk about.

Not going to go away, but we will be right back.

Please don't you go anywhere.

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Doni: Welcome back!

As you know, you can connect with us on our social media pages, and you can email me at Doni Underscore Miller at wgte dot org if you want to see Marc Folk again or any other episode, don't hesitate to go to wgte.org to the point we have, as I mentioned, Marc Folk with us.

He is the president and CEO of the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo, and they are doing amazing, amazing things.

This town really ought to be talking a lot more with Marc about the kinds of things that happen at the Art Commission.

I mean, it's sort of it, it it helps what you do just brings the temperature down.

Yeah, yeah, brings the temperature down.

And, you know, we could really use a little bit of that.

Marc: Yeah.

You know, that's interesting that you use the phrase bring the temperature down.

One of the things we're working on right now, we've written, Grant to the Bureau of Justice, that we're hoping will get funded, where we can look at how public art and other civic infrastructure has the potential to cool gun violence in our community.

So we're actually taking this legacy of public public art a step further into community safety.

And really, I think as you look across the through line of all of our work, we're just here to use the arts to do everything we can to make Toledo a better place.

Doni: Let's talk a little bit more about that.

That's really interesting.

Marc: Yeah.

So, we've, through the last, probably eight years, we've really been working a lot with, Well, it goes back ten, actually, neighborhood groups.

What we did is we took every cultural institution, every neighborhood, organization, every public park, every public art piece, every mural and we put them into a GIS mapping system.

You can overlay, crime data on that so you can understand and compare where these investments are happening and whether that's cooling gun violence.

So I was giving a presentation about this work and a criminologist from Bowling Green, his spouse happened to be in the audience.

They reached out, we began to think together, and we put an application in last year almost got there was some great feedback and we resubmitted that.

So fingers crossed we'll find out yet this year if if we can get this funding and it would be a really, deeply community engaged process.

Doni: So you would bring artists from those communities.

Marc: We would bring the community together around a public art commission.

Local artists would be eligible, but the community would inform, what the work, the work, what the work is.

And then we would, install it and then measure, against neighborhoods where there weren't those types of investments.

So we can document that.

It does, in fact, make our communities not only healthier, but safer and more secure.

And it it fosters ownership of place and, you know, really advances creative belonging as part of the community.

Doni: Your mentor would be pleased.

That's definitely an ROI.

Yeah.

Project it really is it.

Yeah.

You have one, coming on Broadway.

Marc: We do,Doni: don't you?

Marc: We do.

Yeah.

As soon as the street gets in there.

We've got a great project on the Broadway corridor.

It is involves, a series of sculptures that will be in the median and represent, the symbolism is butterflies.

It's, it's a symbol of migration and connectivity.

Doni: So there's a picture on the website, the actual sculpture.

It is that will go there.

And you guys are to go to the website and take a look.

It is stunning.

It is absolutely beautiful.

Marc: Yeah.

Nathan Mattimoe, our director of art and Public Places, leads that work.

And he just does a fantastic job.

Doni: Yeah, it's gorgeous and no idea.

Just sort of waiting on the city to finish their work.

Yeah.

Broadway?

Marc: Yeah.

We're ready to go.

I read last week that there's a water main going in, and then we'll move forward from there, so that's great.

Doni: Yeah, that's really cool.

And how long will that installation take?

Marc: It shouldn't take terribly long.

Once the infrastructure is in, we work really carefully with the city, to make sure that we're integrated into their construction cycle.

So as soon as the hardscape in, we should be ready to go.

It's.

You have any idea what that's going to do for that neighborhood?

I mean, just making the not just the investment, not just the attention to that neighborhood, but making it pretty, making it interesting is going to do wonderful things for the for the folks who live there for businesses.

Yeah.

So your your economic impact.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing.Marc: It is.

We commissioned we were part of a statewide study in, 2022 with center for Regional Development at Bowling Green.

And the arts in Wood.

Lucas and Fulton County have $2.4 billion of economic output, and employ over 10,000 people.

So it's a huge part of our economy, that doesn't get a lot of play and a lot of press.

But it is, you know, it's it's these, everything from your designer to the folks in my office to the individual artists.

It's it's a huge part of the fabric of our community.

Doni: Yeah.

So was momentum.

I was Dan.

Yeah.

So cool, so good.

Marc: Yeah.

Hundreds of artists, you know, 10,000 people estimated over the course of the weekend, activating downtown, the superior block between Huntington and the Valentine Theater, and just using the arts to create connections.

Again, an opportunity for our creatives.

Doni: Yeah, yeah.

And this.

And they get to show who they are and what they do in a way that people can touch and ask questions.

Marc: Yeah.

And it's it's a non juried.

It's a non juried opportunity as well.

So if you sign up and are willing to be there and represent your work, you were in so there's a full range from young artists who this is their first exhibition to, you know, professors who have, exhibited around the United States.

So it's a really great, learning ground for folks as well.

And, and it triggers a lot of imagination.

You never know what you're going to see the next time you turn a corner.

Doni: So I want to talk.

You've got, two more events.

Yes, we want to talk about, but I don't want to forget to ask us, how do people help?

How do people become involved?

Marc: You can get involved.

Sign up, at the Arts commission.org, if you'd like to volunteer.

If you'd like to make a financial contribution, we'd love that as well.

But just reach out.

You know, we're, we've got DeVaughn Fagan who's working with us as an AmeriCorps, placement.

He's setting us up with, a more structured volunteer program.

So we could take advantage of the people that want to donate their time to, helping to advance Toledo as well.

Doni: That's really good.

Yeah.

I hope I hope that people do that.

This is what you do is so important on so many levels.

So I hope you get some response to that, to that invitation.

Another couple of events.

Marc: Yeah.

For the poetry lovers out there, we are, we have a poetry slam art loop coming up on November 8th.

We're going to bring some sunshine and spotlight to the Collingwood Art center.

That will take place.

It's being, organized in partnership with Johnny McIntyre, our Lucas County poet laureate.

And there'll be some prize cash there for folks to, to, to sweeten the interest and then, you know, always looking to connect artists with market.

November 23rd and 24th will be holding an artist trunk show at the Libby House.

We have about 30 artists signed up where they'll bring their wares out and set up all throughout the house.

Small admission fee to support the Arts Commission, but you can come out and get artwork for the holiday for your family.

Doni: And.

And what?

What's the data that?

Marc: that's November 23rd and 24th.

Doni: Lots of things that you're doing to support artists.

Yes.

Supporting artists.

Marc: Yep.

That's everything.

They're the building blocks of culture.

And from there they inform organizations and we work to support those too.

Doni: So I heard that you all are involved in redesigning Toledo's flag.

Marc: We are.

Yeah.

We're facilitating a process again to make sure that everybody had a chance to submit and contribute their thoughts towards Toledo civic pride.

Doni: So where are you in that process?

Marc: We are in a community input process.

All there are ten finalists.

The 86 were submitted, 68 were actually eligible.

They were.

There's a geography eligibility.

You have to reside in the city of Toledo.

The panel got that down to ten.

You can go to the Arts Commission's website right now.

They're all anonymous.

Unless you know the designer.

To keep the bias level.

And there's a description of each one of the artists intent, behind their flag and how it connects to this place.

So we're asking the public to visit, there's a form where you can offer your input, and all of that will be aggregated.

And then presented to the design review board as they make the step to work it down to three.

Our goal is to get the three flags ranked, vote them, and then turn them back over to the city.

And let the political process work in adopting the new flag.

Doni: That any idea when we'll have our new flag?

Marc: The the mayor has asked for it by the state of the city.

I believe that's, January 7th, 2025, which is also, I believe, a birthday for the city of Toledo.

Doni: Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

You guys are really busy.

Yeah.

We are.

That's really, really busy.

So before we go, we only have, 1 or 2 minutes left.

I want to make sure that people understand that artists understand the financial support.

Yes.

That you have a mayor.

Is there it did I read that there was a merit.

Marc: Yep yep yep.

There's a merit based award on, artistic excellence.

A little bit more for those folks that are, working at, at a higher, not a higher level, but have been able to to make it more of a profession.

We help people get to that point.

The merit application that's opened is for artists that are up at that level that just need a little more investment so they can just have a little more time with their practice and get to that next level.

Ellie hopes, a local glass artist.

She was one of the recipients last year.

She used the funding to travel, to the Czech Republic to study glass button manufacturing, that she's going to integrate back in her work.

So this is that, again, return on imagination.

It provides artists the opportunity to have that big idea and reach for it and then come back and and bring everything they've learned in that process back to our community, and help the whole cultural ecosystem rise up.

Doni: How many of those words do you give?

The is it a yearly it Marc: the merit award is, once a year, and there are, four grants through that process.

So it's a little more competitive.

One of the things we do is we bring in jurors from other arts markets around the Midwest.

So those folks are learning about whether or not you receive a merit award.

Your work is getting exposure with people that have the opportunity to give you a gallery show in another city, or commission your work, or just gain interest and knowledge about the fantastic creative economy in Toledo, Ohio.

Doni: Yeah, and this kind of information is so important because I think sometimes, in fact, I know because I know, I, you know, I know a bunch of artists in town, and I know that sometimes there were, it seems, unreachable.

It seems undoable because they don't have the financial resources.

Marc: You know, I lift up another public art project we're doing right now, with, mercy called it's, shade canopy Project in Uptown Green.

We designed that project specifically because local artists don't always have the infrastructure it takes to get a major public art commission, for example.

So we did a local call.

Mercy's design was selected, and now we're coaching her through working with insurance, working with engineers, building that capacity to have that first project so you can get the next project.

Yeah.

Doni: You guys are amazing.

Marc: Well, thank you.

Doni: So glad that you came.

Yeah.

You'll have to come back.

Marc: I'd be honored.

Doni: I'd love to have it.

I'd love to talk more about this.

I really would.

You guys go out, show a little kindness that can change somebody's day.

And I really hope to see you next time.

On to the point.

Announcer 1: The views and opinions expressed in to the point are those of the host of the program and its guests.

They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of WGTE public media.

Announcer 2: To the point is supported in part by American Rescue Plan Act funds allocated by the City of Toledo and the Lucas County Commissioners and administered by the Arts Commission.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.