ABOVE: Attendees at the Cultural Corridor Planning Meeting

In February GCCE gathered leaders of Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque to plan implementation of the Northern New Mexico Cultural Corridor.

Tourism is a critical economic driver for states. In New Mexico, tourism-related spending annually contributes $5.5B to the economy, including $770million in tax receipts.  Yet, our market share in the regional and national markets continues to fall.  GCCE is leading an effort to work collaboratively to build a vibrant regional brand that will penetrate this competitive marketplace, bring more travelers to our region, and strengthen the businesses and communities of northern New Mexico.

For more on our Cultural Corridor strategy, visit our website.

Also check out the extensive list in the sidebar of the Arts Entrepreneurship Educator’s Network.

Who else should be added to the list?

As I make my way into the Ancient Way Café for lunch, I wonder if I can skip lunch and go straight to dessert as I see a listing of their homemade all organic pies.  But I’m good, I eat my lunch first and enjoy dessert with the general manager and head chef, Maqui.  I learn that Maqui was a potter for years but fell into an opportunity at the Café as he says, “I have become an artist of food and now I get to create edible glazes!”  As a long-time resident of the area and a past board member of the El Morro Area Arts Council, he understands the challenges that both the artists and community face.

As Maqui has been with the Café for several years, he said, “In the first two years I doubled revenues by creating gourmet meals utilizing local and organic ingredients, and by establishing regular hours and a dependent staff.”

Maqui comments that, “In order to be successful you have to be fresh and cutting edge and you always have to show up.”  He also believes that you always have to affect other people in your work.  He loves the constant interactions amongst the public and friends, and feels the restaurant is the community hub.

Maqui understands the need for attracting tourists and is working with Sharron, the owner of the Café and campground, to provide more options for tourists. They offer massage and reiki in one of the studios on the property and are considering building a yurt to offer weeklong yoga retreats.  They want tourists to experience the way of life, not just get a taste of it.  This is cultural entrepreneurship at work.

Maqui has some great ideas for further development of the area.  Up the road there is an old gas station for sale.  He thinks it could be a great place to turn into a local market or even a co-op.  Even though there is the farmer’s market in nearby Ramah, it’s not enough for local farmers and gardeners so they have to bring their veggies to places over 50 miles away, like Gallup, to sell.  Maqui says, “It’s all about creating and thinking outside of the box.”

It’s easy to drive right by the businesses of El Morro Valley, but you can’t miss The Old School Gallery, with its brightly colored exterior.  Several artists within the El Morro Area Arts Council established the gallery 11 years ago to find a place for local artists to display their art.  The building itself was built in 1947 and served as a one-room schoolhouse for many years.  Today, the space is used for a gallery and so much more.  Attracting people from as far as the Acoma and Laguna Pueblos the space is used for art workshops, community meetings, yoga and tai chi classes, musical performances, and youth programs.  The gallery has one staff member and the rest is volunteer-driven.  It represents artists from approximately a 50-mile radius and displays new art shows quarterly.

What I love is that here, in this small rural community, they function as a social enterprise.  The gallery incorporated as nonprofit to help bring in income but found that its income had to be diversified beyond contributions and foundation support.  So now through their programs they generate enough earned revenue to maintain the gallery.

As I talk to Paula Tripodi, the executive director of the gallery, I realize not only am I sitting with a social entrepreneur but a cultural entrepreneur as well.  Paula has played the guitar since she was 10 and now she sings and writes songs too.  Initially shy about performing, she found she enjoys it as she performs at the gallery and at local festivals in such an accepting community.  She even recorded an album several years ago and is working on her next one.

As we talk about the gallery and the community she said, “Even with the gallery there is a constant challenge to get everyone’s art exposed.  Not everyone has galleries or studios, making it difficult to have regular hours to show their work.”  Additionally, things like having a website or even business cards, sound simple enough, but are lacking here to help move their art beyond El Morro.  However, one of the opportunities and something that they’re working on with the New Mexico Tourism Department is to find affordable ways to create studios along the Ancient Way Arts Trail and to have signs that show people driving by that the studios are a part of the Trail.

Paula further commented that, “Even though there aren’t many businesses in the area, we are working together to create packages and incentives for people to come and visit and make a day out of it.  For example, someone could come a see a show at The Old School Gallery, have a gourmet dinner across the street at the Ancient Way Café and then spend the night in a cabin at the campground.  The next day they could get up and get a great hike in at El Morro or El Malpais.”

El Morro may be a small community, but it’s certainly worth the visit!

As I continue to venture around New Mexico taking in the sights, food and culture, I head southwest of Grants down the Ancient Way Arts Trail towards the El Morro Valley.  Along the way I pass the El Malpais National Monument and the Ice Caves, go up and over the continental divide, and arrive in El Morro.  Once here, I find the brightly painted Old School Gallery and a feed store on one side of the road and the Inscription Rock Trading and Coffee Co., the Ancient Way Café and a campground on the other side.   And practically in their backyard is the El Morro National Monument.

This is an area with truly extraordinary geographic and cultural significance.  El Malpais National Monument displays a landscape of lava flows, mountain ranges, and mesas, while providing much evidence of American Indian history.  Today, Indian groups including the Puebloan peoples of Acoma, Laguna, and Zuni, and Ramah Navajo, make their homes here and continue their traditional uses.  And, its neighboring National Monument, El Morro, is home to many ancient carvings and writings alongside sandstone cliffs.

My visit was filled with meeting practically the entire community and lots of food!  I had the opportunity to talk to Paula Tripodi, the executive director of the Old School Gallery, Maqui, the chef and general manager at the Ancient Way Café, Jonathan and Pam Pickens, owners of the Inscription Rock Trading and Coffee Co, and many more who were interested in learning about what I was doing.

This is a community that is using cultural entrepreneurship to come up with ways to attract more people to the area in hopes of building their community.  They truly depend on one another and wear many hats in order to survive.  In the coming weeks, you’ll learn more about the individuals I met and how they are using cultural entrepreneurship as the foundation to build their community and economy on.

Grants, New Mexico is located on the Historic Route 66 – a highway known to many for its rich culture and history.  The Double 6 Gallery, appropriately named for its location, brings you back in time with its facade of a 40’s style theater.

The Double 6 and the adjoining Cibola Art & Artifacts Museum are both part of the Cibola Arts Council which is dedicated to providing the citizens it represents, especially youth, with experiences in the arts by providing an educational resource, promoting area artists and celebrating our region’s rich cultural diversity.  In their recent newsletter they say, “The arts promote tourism, are basic to education, are fundamental to a robust economy, and art is cost effective!”

Photo by Jessica Haynie

As I toured the gallery there were a variety of photographs, paintings, and pottery to enjoy, as well as interesting mining artifacts in the museum.  The gallery is spacious, allowing for gatherings from musical performances to poetry readings and educational workshops.

The Cibola Arts Council was founded in 1976 by women whose husbands were in the local uranium mining industry.  It began as a performing arts series and later expanded to include the gallery in the early 1990’s and now the art and artifacts museum.  Robert Gallegos, the executive director of the Double 6 and–an artist himself–tells me, “The last 3 years the gallery has been very busy.  Last year alone the gallery and museum had 13 scheduled events and ended up providing 23 extra exhibits and events resulting in 2,740 visitors.”

The gallery really seems to go out of its way to accommodate both its artists and the community it serves.  As I wrote in the previous post, the Double 6 largely influenced Ava Peets’ professional career as an artist.  Ava commented, “Had the Double 6 Gallery not been available for me to begin showing my pictures I would not have known how to enter work into a gallery.  I had painted for a couple of years before showing my work and becoming an artist member.  By paying a small fee as an artist member I became knowledgeable of the way galleries do business to sell artists work.”  The Double Six is a consignment gallery.  Any artist who becomes a member and shows work has to sign a contract stating the percentage due to the gallery upon any sale of the individuals’ artwork.  “It made me aware of how to conduct business with a gallery.  My work was sold and I learned how to contact other galleries to show and sell my work.”

When I asked Ava what role she sees cultural entrepreneurship and tourism playing in Grants’ economy and future she said, “We have just tapped the beginning of tourists seeing the lovely Double 6 Gallery and the Art and Artifacts Museum.  We need much more advertising for the community in general.  Through the help of cultural entrepreneurship an awareness of the importance of arts in our community and the area will become much better known.  Nearly every successful community promotes the arts, its museums, boutiques, good restaurants and any business that attract tourists.  Through the help of cultural entrepreneurship our community will have an additional boost in being able to fulfill such goals.  We have the Historic Route 66, natural wonders and we are multi-cultured.  People want a great diversity when visiting a community and we have it all. There is a huge economic benefit to promoting all that we have here Grants and the surrounding area.”

Inside the Cibola Art and Artifacts Museum Photo by Jessica Haynie

And as Robert Gallegos sums it up, “Tourism is the key…Route 66 is our plaza.”