Calling all Photographers and Poets!
Our grant proposal for Art Has Power was accepted! Now, we are seeking photographers and poets to share their art and help beautify Rogers City’s downtown.
What is “Art Has Power”?
“Art Has Power” is a project to activate the empty business spaces in our downtown area with art & poetry. Installations will cover the empty windows and we will create traveling poetry that leads people from one end of 3rd street to the other.
Our community has a long history of arts and culture. Beginning in the early 1900s this community has had movie theatres that showed film and vaudeville performances. Many artists have made this area their home from writers to visual artists, to performing artists and filmmakers. Poetry is a medium that brings those arts together. A poetry slam is a performing art. A poem and image can be made more powerful by pairing them together. Poetry has a unique way of crossing generational and cultural boundaries in a community. As a northern town with snowy winters, we have a large population of readers, and our love of books and culture brings our town together. We want to create a new way to do that. We have empty business spaces in our downtown area that will be activated with art and poetry. In addition, we are lucky to have an active group of photographers who post on Facebook, in “I Love Rogers City”. We want to leverage that population of artist posters and followers to find and select the art that we will pair with poetry to fill these empty spaces. We will create installations to cover the windows with poems and artwork that will draw people in and get our community talking. In addition, because of these empty spaces, during downtown events there are gaps in activity and these installations will create places of interest that will lead community members from one end of the street to the other, rather than losing them in a “dead” zone. We also want to create smaller poetry signs that can be placed one after the other through the downtown as “traveling poetry”. For our art walk in the fall, the activation of these storefronts, and the signs of traveling poetry will provide intrigue and lead attendees to the next location, from one end of main street to the other.
The whole community comes together in the spring, summer, and fall for our arts and cultural events. Our photographers and volunteers come from all walks of life. The art and poetry installations will also be a feature in downtown where people can share their favorite image of the area, take photos in front of it, and share with their friends, family, and social media.