Clarifying Our Creative Landscape | How Art Grows in Ely | NLAA’s Rural Arts Ecosystem

Lately, we’ve been reflecting on how art grows in Ely and what it means to belong to a creative community.

This season, we’re launching a new storytelling campaign to share how the arts take root, connect, and thrive here.

Part rebrand. Part clarification. Part statement of who we are.

We call it the Rural Arts Ecosystem. It is a look inside how performance, education, and community weave together to make Ely a place where creativity belongs to everyone.

As NLAA approaches its 40th year, we’ve learned a lot about the people we serve, the projects we create, and the community we’re building. In Ely, our role has become clearer and stronger every day.

With that growth comes a new responsibility: to welcome our community into the fold so everyone understands what NLAA does and how our programming fits into the wider cultural landscape of our region. The Rural Arts Ecosystem campaign is our way of doing that. We are offering a window into how we work.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll share six stories that trace how art grows in this ecosystem:

how it starts no bigger than a mustard seed,

how performance becomes our shared light,

how education tends the soil of creativity,

and how connection moves like water through our community.

Together, these stories remind us that an ecosystem thrives when every part does and invite all of us to help it grow.

We believe that when the arts thrive in Ely, every cultural institution in our community thrives. This campaign isn’t about competition but about clarity, connection, and communication. Our hope is that by being open with you and sharing consistently, our neighbors, partners, and fellow artists will see how our work complements theirs.

As we celebrate 40 years, we’re committed to leading with transparency, creativity, and collaboration so that the arts continue to belong to everyone who calls Ely home.

Next week, we’ll share the first story in the series: how the spark of creativity begins no bigger than a mustard seed.