It has been a wild week indeed. First my apologies to Joey Judd for leaving his name out of the supporting cast in my last blog entry. That will teach me to post something without proofing it thoroughly.
God's Favorite continues to do great box office with a great word of mouth. There are shows tonight, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, and Sunday afternoon. Tickets are still available for the Sat. and Sun. matinees.
On Wednesday I left at 4 am and drove to Frankfort for Arts Day. Symphony Director Darlene Dryer rode with me and we arrived in Frankfort by 8:15 (9:15 eastern time) for our first appointment of the day 30 minutes later. We visited with most of the Western Kentucky legislators and had time to talk about the arts and their importance. I was really pleased to have hard facts and figures about the economic impact of the arts in the greater Paducah area. Generally when people talk about the value of the arts it is in the quality of life and the educational benefits. In this really difficult budget time period it was important to talk about how many jobs were created by the arts programming in our area. Over 819 jobs are created in our area because of the arts. To give a better sense that makes the number of full time jobs supported by the arts industry in the Greater Paducah area about the same size as James Marine, Wal-Mart, and Harrah's Casino. In addition the arts in the Greater Paducah area provide over $2.6 million dollars in state revenue and approx. $1 million in local government revenue. Those returns come from an investment of approx. $150,000 for the total community. That is a huge return on investment.
Everyone is going to have to share in the pain of this economic recession. It is important for elected leaders at all levels of government to look at the return on investment in these tight times and make informed decisions. Too many times the arts are looked at as a feel good nice thing to do and not a jobs and economic impact engine. We made a strong case for the small arts funding that has already been cut several times to not be cut any further. May Louise Zumwalt with the Quilt Museum and Darlene with the Symphony and I all went to a reception in the evening where we had a chance to talk with the Governor's wife who raised in LaCenter KY. She talked about her fond memories of Paducah growing up. The three of us from Paducah came the farthest of anyone in the state to make our case for support. We are all waiting to see what happens in Frankfort concerning future support. We are fortunate in Western Kentucky to have some very capable people representing us.
Today at lunch the Strategic planning committee met with Kristin Williams to go over the results of our recent Internet survey. There were some surprises and some things that we all had a gut feeling about but the survey verified it. We will take these results to the board strategic planning meeting on Feb. 20. I will post the results after that meeting.
Last Sunday during the performance we noticed a smell of something burning in the theatre offices. We traced it to a computer that was warm and shut it down. On Tuesday we turned the computer on to back up everything on it and it began to smoke. The power supply was apparently worn out. We replaced the computer yesterday and all the data is intact. Four of our computers in regular use are over almost 10 years old. We still have one we use occasionally that is about 12 years old. We have certainly got our money's worth out of them. We had hoped to change out most of the old computers one at a time over the course of the next couple of years. We are looking at accelerating that a little.
Auditions for Cinderella and Wedding Belles are next Monday and Tuesday. I'm really hoping that we get a good turnout of men and women. There are great roles for both in Cinderella. Wedding Belles has seen lots of perusal scripts checked out for women in their 40's and up. Auditions start at 7 pm at the theatre.
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