Stephanie Hainsfurther

The pewter disc around my neck sports a bee in flight and is suspended on a delicate beaded chain. This new favorite necklace was crafted by Jen Riordan of Mariposa Gallery (the place in Nob Hill with the unique, affordable jewelry). I often wear it during those three days a week that I flit from here to there, making honey. Money. Whatever.

Everywhere I go, artsfolk are buzzing around, too. The Albuquerque Art Business Association has just made a deal with the Hotel Andaluz to hang their member-galleries’ artwork in the in-house Cultural Center on the Mezzanine, with room on the kiosk for their ads and announcements. (Read the article online this month at abqarts.com). This brilliant move enhances Downtown tourism at the same time it promotes AABA’s ArtsCrawl and First Friday events. Get those hotel guests out on the street and into the galleries and watch the excitement trickle down to all of the Downtown, Old Town, Uptown, Edo, Nob Hill and Northeast Heights shops, restaurants and performing arts spaces.

The arts businesses aren’t strictly business, though – so many of them are all about education as well. Every theater in town has an educational outreach program that goes into the schools (and brings APS students to the theater) to teach drama, public speaking skills, dance and movement. These classes carry minimal fees and often don’t make a profit for those theaters or their teachers – they do it because kids need art in their lives, to help them think creatively, build confidence and have full lives. Right and left brains should be acquainted with each other, don’t you agree?

It’s time to bring the right-brained and the left-brained together in Albuquerque’s economic development efforts. You don’t have to keep pointing to the 2007 BBER report, “The Economic Importance of the Arts & Cultural Industries in Albuquerque and Bernalillo Counties” ($1.2 billion in revenues! $413 million in wages! 6% of all employment in the county! ) to know that. Just look around you. Arts and culture mean a lot to us here – they mean tourism, and quality of life, and plenty of economic development opportunities.

As I write this, artsfolk and business people are meeting to sketch an initiative on designating Downtown an Arts and Culture District, spearheaded by the Downtown Action Team and New Mexico MainStreets , attended by arts organizations and business groups with a stake in the plan. Let’s keep that type of collaboration going strong, to the benefit of all.

Arts people are business people, too. Busy bees, all of us, in these challenging times.

–Stephanie Hainsfurther, publisher AlbuquerqueArts Magazine