On May 15th, Alyona Ushe took the reins as the Executive Director of the Centers for the Arts in Bonita Springs. Her prior experience uniquely qualifies her to help the Centers better achieve its mission of enriching lives through artistic expression, education and arts appreciation.
Going forward, the Centers will place greater emphasis on musical programming. This plays directly into Ushe’s forte. After running the New Orleans Opera Association for a number of years, Ushe founded the critically-acclaimed Arts Garage in Delray Beach. During her tenure, the Arts Garage presented more than 500 performances by both regional and international recording artists.
“The idea was that I was going to open a warehouse that we were going to transform into an art gallery, but the journey turned a little bit and I started Arts Garage, which was a mini-cultural center,” Ushe said. “It was very intimate and we did a lot of various programming from music, jazz, blues, country, to a theater company, gallery exhibitions, various intense educational programs.”
Ushe’s selection was not coincidental. A survey that CFABS conducted a year ago revealed that members wanted more musical performances. At its Bonita Beach Road campus, CFABS has two venues that are especially well-suited to musical performances, the 400-seat Hinman Auditorium and the smaller Moe Auditorium and Film Center. Ushe is particularly enamored of the Moe’s more intimate feel.
“That’s something that jazz and blues really offer themselves up to. So you can see the sweat coming down the musicians’ faces and you can feel that you’re part of the music,” said Ushe.
Besides jazz and blues, the Centers plans to offer everything from country and bluegrass to classic rock and cabaret.
“We’re going to have an eclectic series. And we’re going to be offering for the first time in a while, I believe, a subscription series to engage our audience," she said. "But I would love to hear from our patrons. I want to know what they would like to see on stage.”
Ushe is also planning some outdoor performances, not only in Riverside Park but on the outdoor stage at the Visual Arts Center.
“We’ve been talking about doing some of the performances here and test the waters a little bit or maybe do something a little more eclectic and crazy. I’m all for crazy, so I love to experiment and take creative risks and I think this spark will give us an opportunity to start, and then we can grow into something bigger.”
Ushe also plans to build upon the success of the Centers’ every-other-Monday-night film series by screening more independent films and documentaries. This will create opportunities for local filmmakers, but it’s local visual artists who will benefit most under Ushe’s direction.
“I strongly believe that the only way we can build a cultural community is by supporting our local artists.”
Support will not only come in the form of monthly on-site exhibitions, but special shows at off-site venues and even the opportunity for local artists to create their own webpage on the Centers’ website.
For Ushe, collaborations without borders are critically important.
“I don’t believe in cultural competitions, so to me the more partnerships we have with other organizations, artists, businesses, universities, schools, you name it, it’s all about working together to achieve one goal -- putting more arts and culture into our community.”
This collaborative philosophy begins at home, so she’s tasked her team with coming up with as many creative ideas as possible. But she wants to hear from the public as well.
“I’d love to hear what people feel that we’re missing, what challenges we’re facing, what the solutions are, and how we can come up with some creative things that haven’t been done before …. I don’t know yet what’s out there, and everyday something new is going to pop up, and I want to know what that new thing is and then we can connect dots together because by connecting those dots, we can create something magnificent.”
Big dreams and great ideas need financial backing. Ticket and art sales alone are just not enough. So Ushe makes this plea:
“I call to your viewers not only to support us, but to support the arts in general because together again we can make things that are beyond our imagination.”
The return on investment is huge because the arts transform lives.
“If there is a problem, arts can solve it in one way or another. When it comes to building imagination, when it comes to building relationships, when it comes to dealing with depression, when it comes to dealing with PTSD, arts can solve just about anything. Going to listen to music helps your mood. When you see a beautiful piece of artwork on the walls, it can transform your observation of the world, and it’s fun. [laughing] Arts are fun, and without arts, it’s just survival. With arts, we’re living.”
MORE INFORMATION:
- Alyona began her career by founding Classika-Synetic Theater in the Washington DC Metro area. “Right after college, my mother, who was an established actress in the former Soviet Union, decided that she wanted to start a theater company based in the Russian theatrical tradition and she looked at her only offspring and said, ‘Hey, honey, why don’t you help me out.’ So I thought I was humoring my mother, but the joke was on me [laughing] because many decades later, I’m still doing this.”
- As President and CEO of South Florida’s Creative City Collaborative, Ushe grew the organizational budget to over $4 million.
- More recently, Ushe won a highly competitive bid in Pompano Beach to revitalize, program, and operate a 3,000-seat dormant amphitheater and to open a new $20 million Cultural Center.
- “I strongly believe that all of my previous positions kind of prepared me for this one, with the two centers and the [Bonita Springs International Art] festival,” comments Ushe. “All the activities that we are doing here are so rich in programming, and are so important to the community that my previous experience hopefully will enable me to build on its success.”
- Founded in 1959, the Centers for the Arts Bonita Springs (CFABS) is committed to enriching the lives of the community by providing opportunities for artistic expression, education, and appreciation. CFABS has two campus locations dedicated to the visual or performing arts, the 10-acre four-building Visual Arts Center at 26100 Old 41 Road and the four-acre two-building Performing Arts Center, 10150 Bonita Beach Road.
- Ushe suspects that marketing the Centers’ expanded programming will be more challenging than the programming itself. “I think our biggest challenge is that we do so much, and when it comes to our marketing department, how do we make sure that we reach the right audiences for all of the things that we’re doing,” Ushe observes. “I’m really hoping that the word of mouth is going to continue to spread as it has been, but that the people who are most passionate about a particular musical genre will bring their friends, and have their friends bring their friends because we do need help from the community to let everyone else know how much is being offered this year.”
- Ushe is a pragmatist. “I think it’s important to understand what works and what doesn’t,” Alyona remarks. “Ideas are easy, but for us creative people, it’s the implementation that takes a little more time.”
- Although she’s only been on the job for two weeks, Alyona thinks the Centers’ prospects and opportunities are infinite. “But I also want to be really smart about it and develop programs that are appropriate for this particular community but also develop programs that will appeal to the world outside so we can bring more folks to us. So that’s the juggling game that we’re playing and we have enough talent, we have more than enough talent on staff here to make sure we will surprise everybody who's been here before, and make sure that they want to come back, over and over again.”
- Echoing Woody Allen (who once said “80% of success is showing up”), Alyona points out that “most of the partnerships in my previous life have come unexpectedly, mostly by me showing up to different things.”
- Ushe has experienced first hand how the arts can drive economic development. “Arlington, Virginia, where I started my career was a sleepy, forgotten neighborhood in Washington D.C. and then the Cultural Affairs of Arlington County came in and said enough is enough, and they created an incubation program where they helped local performing arts organizations get free space. And that transformed the county completely. All of a sudden, theater and dance companies were coming to Arlington County. All of a sudden, the galleries started to pop up. All of a sudden, there was a need for festivals. And all of a sudden, Arlington County’s tagline became ‘Arlington County, where arts come out to play.’ And that was because the county realized the significance and economic development contribution the arts made to the community and you cannot recognize the county that I was in then and what it is today.
To read more stories about the arts in Southwest Florida visit Tom Hall's website: SWFL Art in the News.
Spotlight on the Arts for WGCU is funded in part by Naomi Bloom, Jay & Toshiko Tompkins, and Julie & Phil Wade.