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Make the Impossible Possible: Lynchburg, VA (pop. 79,697) PART 1
This month and next month, I am excited to share a part of my own story. From 2012 to 2015 I was straddling a tenure track position at a liberal arts college while also running a small theatre company here in Lynchburg, VA (pop. 79,697). I was plugged into the arts locally (I grew up in a nearby county) and I was very aware of the Academy of Fine Arts (later renamed the Academy Center of the Arts) and its efforts to restore a historic theatre that had laid dormant for nearly 60 years. The project all in all would cost a total of 30 million dollars and the efforts to build belief around its viability had stalled. The narrative in Lynchburg was that this project was just not possible. I too believed this narrative until some important community leaders that I speak with over the next two episodes changed my mind. In 2015 I would take a leap of faith and leave my teaching position and my theatre company to become the Executive Director of the organization. I was lucky enough to become a part of a team that changed the organization's narrative and made the impossible possible. Over two podcasts I interview some key board members that were part of an organizational transformation that lead the Academy Center of the Arts out of a period of austerity, negativity, and debt and into an era that would see a completed 30 million dollar restoration project, the quadrupling of its operating budget, and emerge debt free. How did this happen? Hear from a group of leaders who through volunteerism provided expertise and credibility to a struggling but important community project and changed the culture of the institution and perhaps even the wider community. In Part 1 (January 2023), we will speak with three former Academy board members. Sackett Wood (CEO of Moore and Giles, former board president), George Dawson (retired CEO of Centra Health and former chairmen of the capital campaign for the theatre), and John Fees (retired Executive Chairman of BWXT and former board member/fundraiser/construction committee member). These former board member discuss how credibility was brought to both the capital project and the organization and how organizational change in a small town arts organization can happen.
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By Grove Street FMThis month and next month, I am excited to share a part of my own story. From 2012 to 2015 I was straddling a tenure track position at a liberal arts college while also running a small theatre company here in Lynchburg, VA (pop. 79,697). I was plugged into the arts locally (I grew up in a nearby county) and I was very aware of the Academy of Fine Arts (later renamed the Academy Center of the Arts) and its efforts to restore a historic theatre that had laid dormant for nearly 60 years. The project all in all would cost a total of 30 million dollars and the efforts to build belief around its viability had stalled. The narrative in Lynchburg was that this project was just not possible. I too believed this narrative until some important community leaders that I speak with over the next two episodes changed my mind. In 2015 I would take a leap of faith and leave my teaching position and my theatre company to become the Executive Director of the organization. I was lucky enough to become a part of a team that changed the organization's narrative and made the impossible possible. Over two podcasts I interview some key board members that were part of an organizational transformation that lead the Academy Center of the Arts out of a period of austerity, negativity, and debt and into an era that would see a completed 30 million dollar restoration project, the quadrupling of its operating budget, and emerge debt free. How did this happen? Hear from a group of leaders who through volunteerism provided expertise and credibility to a struggling but important community project and changed the culture of the institution and perhaps even the wider community. In Part 1 (January 2023), we will speak with three former Academy board members. Sackett Wood (CEO of Moore and Giles, former board president), George Dawson (retired CEO of Centra Health and former chairmen of the capital campaign for the theatre), and John Fees (retired Executive Chairman of BWXT and former board member/fundraiser/construction committee member). These former board member discuss how credibility was brought to both the capital project and the organization and how organizational change in a small town arts organization can happen.