Rockford Arts Area Council

In early 2023, The Rockford Area Arts Council (RAAC) hired Lord Cultural Resources to facilitate a cultural plan for the Rockford Region (Winnebago and Boone Counties). The Lord team worked closely with the Arts Council, Project Advisory Committee (PAC) and Community Ambassadors, to ensure inclusive and representative public engagement to complement extensive research. The resulting plan includes four high-level “gears,” or interconnected priorities, (in recognition of Rockford’s proud manufacturing history) surrounding an overall vision for arts and culture to thrive in Rockford.

The Rockford Region Cultural Plan quickly produced multiple positive impacts for the region. During the cultural planning process, Rockford’s City Council voted to allocate $200K towards public art, after community input surfaced that a monument to Rockford multi-racial founders was in need of refurbishment after long-term storage. Since the unveiling of the plan, each priority of the plan has yielded specific results. For Advocacy & Policy, the newly arrived Hard Rock Café agreed to provide $250K annually towards arts and culture. For Youth & Arts Education, RAAC’s signature SPARK! summer arts program expanded to include a mental health agency as a partner. For Inclusivity/Intersectional Collaboration, RAAC began a Business of Art program to collaborate with the business community and expand access to the arts. And for Neighborhood & Space Development, in 2024, RAAC purchased the defunct Illinois National Guard Armory to convert the facility to a cultural center. In May 2024, RAAC was awarded $1.5 million from the USEPA, to clean up the facility in preparation for cultural use – resulting in a total of over $2mlllion that have flowed to Rockford’s arts and culture ecosystem, as a result of the cultural plan.