The greater Peterborough area hosts an art community known the world over.
It is the home of MacDowell Colony, and the region fosters creativity, innovation, experimentation, cultivating and preserving beautiful traditional aesthetics and pushing boundaries of the definition of art.
MAxT Makerspace, Arts Alive! and the team looking into how to rebuild arts community assets after the closing of Sharon Arts. The team conducted a survey and results showed that space to show and sell work was lacking.
There was a clear need for studio and workspace for makers who may not align with the space and tools provided at the MAxT Makerspace, there is also a clear need for shared teaching space for community arts educators, but most startlingly, there is a strong desire for a local venue or venues to showcase and sell creative and fine art products made in our region.
80 percent of artists who participated in our survey said they don’t show their work locally. And about half of those surveyed said there was not an appropriate venue for their work in town. Of the two dozen surveyed artists who do feel there are appropriate venues to sell their work, only half of them actually sell their work locally. Why?
Five individuals in this group commented on how there was not a strong enough market for their work. To those of us who know and value the efforts of fine art venues – from community-based, to professionally curated, to private collections occasionally made public, to juried artist cooperatives – these survey results are a hard pill to swallow.
In fact, there are venues in town that show and sell art and fine craft products. However, not everyone feels welcome, catered to, or that there is a market for their work here.
One celebrated artist from the region mentioned one of his biggest challenges was “finding a market for something other than scenes of Mount Monadnock.”
The Peterborough Arts Collective is doing an incredible job building community and connections for artists of all sorts to each other and to local venues. They are an active part of the town economic development hub and spoke model. I look forward to seeing the town invest in supporting this group to develop effective strategies to dive in to the economic development work needed to support this sector. Securing appropriate retail and gallery space is a key part of this support.
Survey respondents said some of the biggest challenges for their practice were being new to town, isolation and not knowing other artists, and feeling like there is an “elite club” they have to navigate to participate in the arts community. We can address these issues with a space around which community, and connections, could be built. A space where the Arts Collective and other groups can meet regularly.
Of the artists who did not feel there was an appropriate venue for their work in town, six commented that the biggest challenge for their art practice in Peterborough was that there wasn’t a quality gallery that would represent them or show the type of work they do.
They also echoed comments about the challenges to find a local market for their work. There is one last statistic I want to close with.
24 percent of the artists sell their work in stores and galleries outside of Peterborough – in New Hampshire and beyond. 27 percent sell at craft fairs. 28 percent sell online.
What would it mean for the local economy if even half of those sales could happen in person in town? What vibrancy that would bring!
Jessica Gelter is the executive director of Arts Alive! an arts service organization providing business technical support and arts advocacy, and facilitating cooperative projects for artists, arts organizations, and the arts community across the Monadnock Region