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Arts and Culture In Frankfort | Existing Conditions
CHAPTER 2: ARTS AND CULTURE IN FRANKFORT
Frankfort’s inventory of cultural assets and resources is modest but diverse. From indoor and outdoor performance venues, museums, and heritage sites to galleries, public art, breweries, and distilleries, the city has something for almost everyone. This is in addition to a year-round calendar of festivals and events and a collection of arts and cultural organizations that engage with everything from dance to environmental conservation. But there are some gaps. Most performance venues, for example, are informal. They include bars and restaurants, churches, school facilities, and multi-use spaces that might hold a small concert one night and a community meeting the next. Outdoor performance spaces tell a similar story, with most being temporary spaces on lawns or bar/restaurant patios. While these types of informal gathering spaces are absolutely necessary to a thriving arts and cultural scene, they are not ideal for annual performances of The Nutcracker, attracting touring entertainment, or for nurturing the growth of the community’s fledgling arts groups. This was echoed throughout the community engagement process, where many spoke of Frankfort’s vast quality of talent and lack of quality in space.
Mapping Frankfort’s cultural assets and resources adds additional color. In total, 108 assets were inventoried. Of those, 69 are located within Frankfort’s downtown core. This is particularly true of the city’s outdoor performance spaces, galleries, and museum/historic sites, nearly all of which are in that downtown area. While indoor performance venues are dispersed somewhat more widely, the City’s only dedicated, purpose-built venue, The Grand Theatre, is downtown.
This suggests an opportunity to decentralize the arts, perhaps through programming partnerships or new facility development. This opportunity is further emphasized when Frankfort’s arts and cultural assets are mapped on top of demographic characteristics like income and race, which reveals that most of the City’s assets are in communities with higher median household incomes and majority white populations.
