Professional Membership

Featured Member

With rural populations declining, demand from local markets eroding, and tobacco-dependent communities facing an uncertain future, the North Carolina Arts Council is spearheading an innovative project aimed at stimulating statewide sustainable tourism and showcasing their state’s rural riches. The HomegrownHandmade project aspires to bring the reward of tourism to North Carolina’s vibrant rural communities.

With funding from the Golden LEAF Foundation, the North Carolina Arts Council—along with partners HandMade in America and North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service—has set out to create a unique series of self-directed driving trails across the state. Aligning arts and agriculture as a means of diversifying local economies, HomegrownHandmade will produce a system to develop "agri-cultural tourism" that can be implemented throughout North Carolina, from inventory development to business planning, market research, and development of marketing and promotion. As North Carolina Arts Council’s Executive Director Mary Regan noted, "Tourism to rural areas not only brings profits to farmers, merchants, local artists, and other members of rural communities, but also helps visitors from urban areas understand the importance of farming and rural life."

A division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources—the nation's first cabinet level state agency for the arts, history, and libraries—the North Carolina Arts Council became a statutory state agency in 1967. The Arts Council's goals are to develop, preserve, and sustain North Carolina's arts resources, to deepen the connection between the arts and North Carolina's communities, and to heighten understanding of the role and value of arts to the state. The Arts Council provides technical assistance, information resources, and more than 1,000 grants each year to nonprofit organizations and artists. It has a 24-member board appointed by the Governor, a 26-member staff, and serves as the steward of state and federal funds appropriated for the arts.