The Wellesley Select Board is partnering with the town’s Cultural Council to develop a strategic plan for arts and culture, an initiative they say will boost the town’s social fabric and economic viability.
Corey Testa, Wellesley’s assistant executive director, was tasked with organizing this plan after Select Board members Lise Olney and Marjorie Freiman identified the need for arts and culture as a top priority.
“We have some really great organizations, nonprofits, and entities in town that provide arts and culture offerings and programming, but they’re really kind of disjointed and disparate,” Testa said. “They don’t work together, they don’t organize as one group, and people, therefore, don’t really know that they’re in town.”
The plan is in “the infancy phase,” as Testa is still working to secure funding from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which he said he’s hoping to hear from in the next three to six months.
“As soon as [the MAPC] lets us know if we’re going to get some funding through them, we would start as soon as they’re available,” Testa said.
Olney said an arts and culture initiative has been on her “back burner for a long time,” but the turning point for many Select Board members was when they attended a Chamber of Commerce event last year. Michael J. Bobbitt, the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s executive director, spoke about how arts and culture can drive economic development.
“He made such a compelling case for this kind of nexus between arts and culture and economic development, and particularly on the local level, and what a huge boon it is to communities to have active arts and culture scenes because it brings people to your community,” Olney said.
The Wellesley Cultural Council serves as the local presence of the Massachusetts Cultural Council. It comprises nine volunteers appointed by the select board, said Marc Zawel, the Wellesley council’s chair. The council allocates funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to community-based projects in the arts, humanities, and interpretive sciences. It announced its latest grant recipients this month.
“We’re really excited about both the role that the council can play as well as the potential to really revitalize both from an economic standpoint as well as from a quality of life and cultural standpoint, the arts initiatives that are happening here in Wellesley,” Zawel said.
Testa explained how developing arts and culture can impact the town’s economic viability.
“If we’ve got more of a broader arts and culture offering in town, we can drive more people — not just residents, but visitors and shoppers — to those arts and culture offerings, and vice versa,” Testa said. “People who go to see the symphony orchestra, or go to the town band, or go to an art gallery can then go to a restaurant for dinner. So they can coexist and work to help each other.”
Through some of his early research, Testa learned that Needham had worked to develop its arts and culture scene over the past year and finalized an action plan in July. Two members of the Needham Council for Arts and Culture gave insights to the Wellesley Cultural Council at its Jan. 13 meeting.
They learned that Needham secured funding from the MAPC and got additional funding from the town. It also has a “much larger, more robust council,” Zawel said. He described the Wellesley Cultural Council’s team as “small but mighty” and said it received about $10,000 from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
“We had to reject more grants than we could accept, and we could not fully fund even the grants that we did approve just because we have very limited resources to work with,” Zawel said.
For the first time, Wellesley is considering investing town funds for the Wellesley Cultural Council in its 2025-26 budget, which will go to Town Meeting on April 1. The town is also considering a bylaw to more formally recognize the council’s existence and scope.
“It’s still small dollars,” Testa said. “But it’s really our way of showing that the Select Board … want[s] to support this part of the community.”
Annie Newman, co-founder and executive director of ArtWellesley, one of many arts organizations in town, hosted a fundraiser in September called “Small Art, Big Party”. Around 300 people attended, and the event raised more than $17,000 for future programming.
“What was amazing to me was not only that all of the artists came out, but again, the broader community came out to support the arts,” Newman said. “And I think people have always assumed that that community didn’t exist in Wellesley, but I think just by having the party and having so many people show up … it reinforced what we sort of already knew, and that is that there is a desire for this in town.”
Zawel said he has also been impressed by the town’s interest in art during his time on the council.
“What’s been really remarkable is seeing just the level of engagement and interest in the arts within Wellesley,” Zawel said.
The Wellesley Cultural Council’s most well-known grant, Zawel says, was a collaboration between the Public Art Committee and the Wellesley Police Department to paint artwork on the boxes around town that contain electronic equipment for traffic signals. If they removed the paintings, people would notice, Zawel said.
“That’s the thing with public art,” he said. “It becomes part of the fabric and the landscape of the place in which it’s installed.”
Newman said anything to do with arts and culture in town is “a great move forward.”
“More art is good,” Newman said. “Promoting creativity is good. I believe that creative energy enriches our community, and so whatever the town leadership can do to encourage more creative thinking and more creative energy, the better.”
This story is part of a partnership between the Swellesley Report and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
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What a great community enhancing program. This was a very enlightening article that describes how community engagement can make positive differences for all.