The Business, Arts and Recreation Center

The Business, Arts and Recreation Center in Windom, Minnesota evolved from a significant change in the community—the opening of a new high school and plans to tear down the historic school in the center of town. With the only performing arts space for miles, plus thousands of square feet of classrooms, workshops and other facilities, community members soon came up with a plan to reopen the school as a local center for arts, learning and recreation.

Question

With a grant from the Bush Foundation to expand arts and education programming, the Business, Arts and Recreation Center (BARC) was required to show that it was contributing to the vitality of the local arts and education community. One of the biggest challenges facing BARC was that most programs were brand new and still developing an audience. BARC turned to the Improve Group to figure out ways to measure the need it filled in Windom.

Process

The Improve Group worked with staff and a volunteer committee to perform a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis. From this analysis, we identified key questions that we could answer through course registration forms, surveys and shared reflection. Key to the evaluation was to keep tasks simple and streamlined; staff had many other responsibilities to attend to and wanted to make the most of the talents of their very creative volunteers.

Outcome

The initial SWOT analysis clearly states the issues facing the education and arts programming at BARC. With simple evaluation tools in place, BARC continues to collect data that helps it fine tune course and event offerings. In summer of 2008, the volunteer committee and staff will meet to review data and develop plans for future years.