Arts & Culture

In 2018, Greater Franklin Development Council partnered with Arts Farmington to apply for a Maine Arts Commission Creative Communities = Economic Development Phase One grant. We received that grant to create an arts, cultural, and heritage strategic plan for the Franklin County region. Completion of the CCED Phase One grant allows us to apply for the CCED Phase Two grant in the future.

During the planning process, we conducted six community conversations across the region and collected 249 survey responses to learn about the perceived goals and challenges of the arts and culture sector within our region. The data from the surveys can be found here:

• Public Opinion Data
• Artist and Performer Data

Those messages prioritized and guided the structure of our CCED Phase One Plan, which was completed in late 2019:

Franklin County Region Arts, Culture, and Heritage Plan

The first thing we did after completing the plan was to create the “Franklin County Cultural Coalition” of artists, organizational leaders, and invested citizens not only to address the need for more arts-sector networking, but to also serve as the grassroots committee to carry out the rest of the plan. If you’re interested in joining the Cultural Coalition, contact Morgan at mspencer@greaterfranklin.org.

Currently, the Cultural Coalition is tackling two main projects: The creation of a cohesive regional arts and cultural events calendar, and the development of a website to host it on.