BANGOR – The city has broken new ground in Maine by integrating cultural policy into local government, and the Maine Arts Commission has rewarded that innovation with a $15,000 Discovery Research Grant.

The funding, along with a $3,000 stipend to hire a folklorist to find untapped cultural resources in the city, will be announced this morning at City Hall.

“Bangor is the only city in Maine, to my knowledge, that has created a cultural commission within city government,” arts commission director Alden Wilson said Monday. “Bangor is a real leader among communities around the state for finding an appropriate way to address the arts and culture and the creative economy within its local structure.”

The city’s grant proposal meshed perfectly with the commission’s plans to shift focus away from solely cataloging resources, as Discovery Research Grants have been in the past. This is the second time the city has received such a grant, but what makes this one unique is the way it dovetails with the arts commission’s new capacity building grants. The grants, which will be awarded in late 2006, will help communities incorporate their cultural assets into a larger creative economy plan.

“This is leading to the future,” Wilson said. “What we would like to do is help communities build their artistic and cultural framework. This really is a trend-setting proposal.”

The city has a municipal cultural plan and a panel of credentialed leaders to oversee it. Bangor, however, also has taken the bold – and rare – move of incorporating the arts and culture into its comprehensive plan.

“When you think in terms of attracting businesses to any community in the state of Maine, when we do outreach, these businesses have a shopping list of amenities,” said Bangor businessman John Rohman, the city’s former mayor and current chairman of the Maine Arts Commission. “When we can show them that our natural, arts and cultural resources are a vital part, and are actually planned out in the community, that’s a real attraction.”

Sally Bates, Bangor’s economic and community development officer, said the grant will help the city accomplish three major goals: first, to identify a broad range of cultural resources – everything from Penobscot Theatre and Bangor Public Library to Cole Land Transportation Museum and Challenger Learning Center; second, to solicit information from community members in every sector on how they use these resources; and third, to identify any gaps that need to be filled.

“It’s not just the arts community that’s invested in it,” Bates said last week in her office at City Hall. To her right, a bowl made by a local potter was on display, while on the wall opposite her desk, a collection of black-and-white prints by Bangor photographers hung in a cluster. “The city has said we’re interested in evaluating our arts and cultural situation, evaluating what the community would like to see in the future, and how do we get there.”

To that end, the city has hired Christina Piazza to conduct a cultural asset assessment. Over the next several months, she will solicit comments from community members through surveys and focus groups. The surveys are available today, and the focus groups will begin shortly.

“To ask, ‘What do you want?'” Piazza said, “just to be able to go there for an hour in a focus group would be amazing. We’re not here to complain about what you really hate, but what do you want? That’s what we want to deliver in the long run.”

The arts commission will help the city to find an independent folklorist whose mission will be to unearth hidden arts and cultural players that may not be as obvious as theaters and museums.

Bates says the city has no preconceptions about what Piazza and the folklorist will find or what the next step might be when the research concludes in November. But Wilson said this preliminary phase lays the foundation for a capacity-building grant.

“We’re not trying to drive it toward any particular outcome, but be very open-minded to what the outcome may be,” Bates said. “Open-minded, open-hearted, and open-ended.”

Cultural asset surveys are available online at www.bangormaine.gov or at City Hall. Focus groups are open to the public, and anyone interested in participating should contact Christina Piazza at 433-7154, ext. 11, or bangorarts@hotmail.com.