Arts & Events Strategic Plan

The City of Elgin is embarking on a comprehensive strategic planning process to establish a vision and shared goals that will help guide the city's continued support of the arts. The planning process will consist of four major phases and is expected to be adopted in the late winter of 2023. 

To find out how to get involved and keep updated on the project, complete the short form here. 

• Listening Phase: Background review, community meetings and workshop, and stakeholder interviews culminating in a finalized vision for success that also informs the creation of a community survey.
• Learning Phase: Benchmark and environmental scan, cultural landscape assessment, community survey, focus groups and community conversations, and workshops culminating in a comprehensive report that will inform the programming recommendations and strategic plan.
• Planning Phase: Workshops determining the programming mix, operations analysis and modeling, and implementation plans culminating in a workbook detailing all of the above with strategic objectives and goals. 
• Ensuring Success: Draft strategic plan utilizing the input gathered to date, workshops and a final presentation to city council on the final strategic plan and implementation process. 

Community Survey

As part of the Learning Phase of the project, Create Today LLC has built a short online survey for residents to voice their opinions and hopes for the arts and events in the City of Elgin. The survey covers topics such as participation in community events, motivations for attending, and preferences for different event types. The surveys are completely anonymous. Survey takers are given the option to enter to win a $50 Amazon gift card at the end of the survey. The survey is available in both English and Spanish and takes 7-9 minutes to complete. Click below to participate. 

1. Community Survey- English
2. Community Survey- Spanish

Project Kick-off

In partnership with Create Today, LLC, the City of Elgin hosted the first of many community meetings. The goal of these meetings was to officially launch the project with the full community of Elgin, present the project work plan and proposed timeline, review opportunities for the community to engage in the process, and share the channels for attendees to provide feedback about their hopes, ambitions, and any concerns for the future of arts and culture programming in Elgin. You can view a recording of a meeting below. A brief participation activity was part of these meetings which lead to the creation of various word clouds. These can be seen below. 

Resources

As meeting are conducted, deliverable documents and resources will be shared here. 

1. Community Kick-off Meeting held September 29th at 6:00pm. The recording is available here.