Sustaining the arts through smart outreach in a rough economy

An interview with Valley Cultural Center’s President & CEO, Jim Kinsey

by Jen Pennington

2010 marked a new beginning for long-time Rhizome client, the Valley Cultural Center. A non-profit, founded in 1975 to assist the Los Angeles City Department of Recreation & Parks in bringing arts and culture to the San Fernando Valley. The Valley Cultural Center has been at the forefront of culture, arts, and arts education in the community for more than thirty-five years.

Every year the Valley Cultural Center presents free concerts in Warner Park. Featuring rock, classical, jazz, R&B, Latino pop, country, cowboy, Dixieland, folk, and more, their concerts entertain more than 140,000 Valley residents and visitors each year and are the cornerstone of Sunday afternoons in the San Fernando Valley. More recently this has expanded to Saturday evening movie nights.

Though we have worked together for eight years, this was the first year VCC would bring the production of their concert and movie programs in-house. This meant Rhizome had control over how the content in the program was presented in its entirety, not just a few random pages. We brought in Graphics Plus our print partner to help with all the pre-press and ad placements before the job was electronically delivered and printed in California. It also meant revamping the old www.valleycultural.org website. As President, Jim also wanted to green the events as much as possible and figure out a way to reach out to the community more. Even the concert and movie titles changed from Concerts and Movies in the Park, to Concerts and Movies on the Green. Before we knew it, this ambitious project produced some of the best results we had seen. (more…)