-: My name is Lisa Scails and I'm the executive director
for the Cultural Alliance of Western Connecticut,
and we are a regional service arts organization
based in Danbury.
We're a member organization.
We have 300 members.
Of those, about 50 or so are organizations,
performance art organizations,
museums and history groups, libraries even.
And then the rest of our membership
represents visual and performing artists,
framers, architects, designers, and things like that.
Marketing is a huge priority in our region,
particularly in the area that we serve
with everything being all spread out.
So we market the region through a product that we have
called Arts Western News and Events.
It's an online publication once a month.
So if anybody wants to know what's going on in the area,
we're a really great place to find out.
And then the second thing is
we provide leadership development for our members
and the greater business community,
particularly creative entrepreneurs.
We partner with other stakeholders in the area
like SCORE and other business leaders.
Microsoft is another example.
And we provide workshop business development opportunities
for either organizations or creative entrepreneurs
to take advantage of.
Programming development is a big part
of what we do for our workshops
and for our networking opportunities.
So reaching out to the community and finding experts
to be able to provide professional development is important.
A lot of what we do is all about engagement.
It's important for us to stay connected to the community
in order for people to either find out
about what we're doing or stay up-to-date
with what we're doing.
And we do that in a variety of different ways,
physically being out in the community,
networking with business professionals,
and maintaining relationships with the arts community,
the arts leadership in all 10 towns.
But we also do it online through
digital channels,
social media and email and things like that,
so technology is an important part
of how we get things done.