Conroe, Montgomery County, Texas
Conroe hosts a vibrant arts community. In 2018 the Conroe Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) proposed funding the arts through Municipal Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) instead of general funds. Since funding has been allocated using HOT taxes, the community has seen a dramatic increase in growth and increased visibility of the arts across the region and state!
The Conroe Art League’s modest start hosting a visual arts competition was transformed into a robust and still growing “Madeley National” arts festival now aligned with the Young Texas Artists Classical Music Competition and the Greater Conroe Arts Alliance’ Arts Week in downtown Conroe through the investment in HOT funding for the arts. Read about this transformation here!
Conroe has always been host to a vibrant arts community with fifteen different arts organizations including a symphony, two theaters with resident acting troupes, a symphony orchestra and more. And the city has been very supportive of the arts with annual grants and generous use of city-owned facilities. The funding of these grants had been coming from the city’s General Fund however, in 2018, the Conroe Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) stepped forward with a proposal to the City Council to begin funding these grants from the HOT tax (Hotel Occupancy Tax).
This has a dramatic impact on Conroe Art League and has resulted in tremendous growth and a higher profile in the area and beyond. Formed in 1969, Conroe Art League has enjoyed a beautiful gallery space in a 107- year old city-owned building in Historic Downtown Conroe for the last eight years. The city rents the space to CAL for $1 per month while CAL is responsible for all the utilities and other operating expenses. The city’s prescribed mission for CAL and the other arts organizations was “community outreach”. This made for a comfortable existence of what one long-time member referred to as “Hobbyville”. CAL hosted Cub Scout troops, senior Citizen homes and others and usually led a craft project as a part of their visit. But with the change to the HOT tax we had a new, more challenging mission to reach beyond the local community. At the time of this change we had 200 members. Today, less than two years after this change, we have 350 members… a growth of 175%. To create a welcoming space to absorb this growth we held a couple of New Member Meet and Greets when the Gallery was closed on Sunday afternoons. No agenda, no show, just a chance to get to know one another. So how did this happen? We had to start “thinking outside the box… the box being the confines of Conroe alone. There was a sea change with a new Executive Board being elected at that time. We could not have mounted this effort with the same thinking that had guided the previous years. We realized that we were the arts anchor, the flagship of the arts in the historic downtown. The theatres and other performing arts had a good local attendance at their productions but when the show was over and the lights went out they were locked and unavailable to visitors. By comparison, we had a brick and mortar presence and were open five days a week. We had to think how to leverage that to fulfill our new mission. We had never reached out for other grants beyond the city grant before but we tackled this for the first time a couple of years ago.
We used the first grant to upgrade our facilities and equipment. There had been a history of using cast-off furniture and other hand-me-down items that set the tone for the gallery. We wanted to change that and did so with new lighting in the exhibit and classroom areas, a new docent desk in the gallery, a Square POS system, a new coffee service area and a pipe and drape system for models in the classroom. This instilled a new sense of pride and a new level of energy at CAL. We then went to work to promote our National Invitational. Although it had started two years prior to this change it had actually lost money in the second year. We reached out to Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches who had a successful 25-year history of hosting the Texas National Art Competition & Exhibition. We engaged Peter Andrew, a professor of art at SFA, as our judge for the event and he took it upon himself to promote the event to their network of applicants. He took a liking to the Gallery and wanted to see this grow. In the end we received over 295 entries from 20+ states and cleared $4,000 in profit in the third year. Last year it grew to 350 entries from 26 states with over $5,000 in profits. We have an aggressive effort for the 2020 show renaming it the Madeley National, the original name of the building from 100 years ago when it housed a meat market and the first telephone company in Conroe. We have attracted an anonymous donor for this year’s show that has given $1,500 for the Best of Show award and we now have total prize money of $6,000 in two categories.
The National Invitational has drawn many artists to travel to Conroe from around Texas and other states for the reception and announcement of the awards. We partnered with CVB for housing and local guides to restaurants and other events the artists could attend. We also aligned the dates of the National to coincide with the Young Texas Artists (YTA) Classical Music Competition, a state-wide and nationally renowned event. We also aligned with the Greater Conroe Arts Alliance who puts on an Arts Week where all the arts organizations stage events. The YTA is on the opening weekend and our National Invitational is on the closing weekend, bookending Arts Week in Downtown Conroe. We redesigned our logo to bring a fresh look to CAL and began an aggressive social media presence as well as launching a new website this past July. Here are some of the results: When we launched our new website we introduced a new meaning for our acronym of CAL… Create Appreciate Learn,,, capturing our three target groups of artists (Create), Patrons (Appreciate) and Learn (Classes, Workshops and Education). Our Education Chair has done a tremendous job of recruiting top-flight artists for our classes that range from classes for home schoolers and after school sessions for kids to nationally recognized artists that teach drawing, painting and acrylics. And she has brought in renowned artists for three-day workshops over a weekend that draws people from all around Texas and out of state. We have an email list of 1,600+ patrons that we invite to our monthly receptions.
A new monthly feature is our People’s Choice Award. One of our teachers approached us and offered to donate the money earned from his classes toward a monthly award of $400. He told us it would bring in more art, higher quality art, more patrons, more sales and more members and indeed it has. We are now in our fourth month of this new effort and our patrons love to come and vote for what they think is the best piece in the gallery. We then unveil the winner at the next month’s reception. We are seeing 300+ votes cast each month and growing. We also reach out beyond the Gallery with pop-up shows. When we heard that the CVB had landed the World Series of Bass Fishing on Lake Conroe, a nationally televised event, we proposed an outdoorsman themed exhibit in the lobby of the La Torretta Resort Hotel that served as headquarters for the event. We also have a regular rotation of “Art in the City” at various sites throughout Conroe. These shows serve to raise awareness of CAL… instead of sitting in the gallery waiting for somebody to come in… and generate sales as well.
We also have groups that get together and paint outside the confines of the city. People love to see the “magic” of an artist at work and we stage plein air events in collaboration with the Master Gardeners Club, a nearby arboretum and at the Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival in April. But we haven’t forgotten our community roots. We serve as volunteer judges for the Conroe ISD and Montgomery ISD in selecting their finalists for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Student Art Competition. We work the Career Days at local schools reminding them that it isn’t all just STEM… there’s a missing letter there and when you add art to the mix you have STEAM. One of our feature events is our Annual 12 x 12 Auction and Gala where our artists create and donate nearly 100 pieces of art on 12” x 12” panels. We exhibit them in the Gallery for a month while holding an online auction that culminates in our live auction. All the proceeds go to our Annual Student Awards for High School Seniors. Last year’s auction raised $5,000 for these awards. The winners were selected at a special student show in May. It’s the ultimate “pay-it-forward”… from the hands of our artists to the hands of the artists of the future. And in August we host a Teacher Appreciation Show for the hard-working public school art. Teachers who don’t often get a chance to show their own work once school starts.
Finally, we collaborate with other Art Leagues in and around the Houston area. Lone Star Art Guild (LSAG) is a group of fifteen art leagues like CAL all within a 200 mile radius of Houston. We all hold local shows where winners are selected in multiple divisions and categories. The winners then qualify for the annual LSAG Convention and Competition. We had 350 entries in our local show this weekend and when you put all fifteen art leagues together it takes a large space. When LSAG was finding all Houston area venues booked and exorbitantly priced, CAL reached out to the CVB to help negotiate a deal for LSAG with the Lone Star Convention Center in Conroe. CVB provided grant funds toward the event and services for the over 500 artists that came to the show. LSAG was so pleased with the space and the pricing that they have signed a multi-year contract to hold their annual convention at the Lone Star Convention Center. So how did this happen? Some things you can measure… members, visitors, web site visits, Facebook followers. But the most important factors are immeasurable. It’s all the big and little things you do throughout the year to engage those that create art, those that appreciate art and those who want to learn art. And it was all spurred by the new challenge of the HOT tax mission.
