The City of Round Rock understands that true community enrichment extends beyond essential infrastructure like water and electricity. Just as vital to the city’s fabric are the arts and culture initiatives that foster enjoyment, understanding, and growth. These cultural utilities, managed by the city, contribute significantly to the local economy and tourism, enhancing the overall quality of life for every resident. The Office of Arts and Culture serves as a key municipal utility, providing resources, education, and artistic programs that benefit individual artists and cultural organizations throughout Round Rock.
Round Rock recognized the importance of these cultural utilities by adopting the Round Rock Arts and Culture Strategic Plan in June 2011. This Arts Master Plan represented an initial city investment, funding staff and programs dedicated to cultivating arts and culture. Like any forward-thinking utility plan, the Arts Master Plan is designed to be adaptable, evolving to incorporate new artistic ideas, particularly with the future development of a dedicated performing arts venue. Currently, over 50 arts organizations operate within Round Rock, delivering a diverse range of visual and performing arts experiences to the community, effectively acting as extensions of the city’s cultural utility network. Since 2011, the Office of Arts and Culture has consistently produced annual events, most notably the Round Rock Chalk Walk Arts Festival, a major draw bringing 60,000 visitors each year. Other significant cultural utility services provided by the city include SculptFest, Music on Main, and the Wine and Jazz Festival. Furthermore, the city actively supports cultural diversity through events like Dia de los Muertos and DiwaliFest, highlighting the rich tapestry of Round Rock’s community, further broadening the reach of its cultural utilities. The Downtowner Gallery, a city-operated art space and artist workspace, provides crucial visual arts utility, offering opportunities and resources within the city’s core. These efforts are amplified through partnerships with the Round Rock Independent School District (RRISD) and higher education institutions, ensuring ongoing arts exhibitions and events that function as accessible cultural utilities for all.
The Office of Arts and Culture actively promotes Round Rock as a vibrant arts and cultural hub, a crucial utility that strengthens the already thriving tourism and hotel sectors. Since 2016, the Arts and Culture budget, essentially the operational funding for this cultural utility, has been sustained through Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) revenue, demonstrating the city’s commitment to investing in these vital services. Concurrently, ongoing initiatives are in place to engage charitable organizations, raising awareness about the necessity of securing private funding to support the future expansion of arts facilities, ensuring the long-term growth of this essential city utility.
Arts and Culture staff maintain close collaboration with local arts organizations, artists, and performers, acting as a responsive utility service, ensuring their concerns are addressed and their needs are met. Looking ahead, the Office of Arts and Culture has outlined key goals for the next decade, all aimed at enhancing and expanding this crucial city utility:
- Supporting the economic development of the community by integrating arts and culture into downtown and planned growth areas, recognizing cultural utilities as economic drivers.
- Solidifying Round Rock’s reputation as a destination for visitors, leveraging arts and culture as a key attraction utility.
- Fostering innovation and unique partnerships across public, private, and non-profit sectors, maximizing the impact of cultural utility initiatives.
- Contributing to Round Rock’s standing as a full-service community with a high quality of life, recognizing arts and culture as essential utilities for community well-being.
To achieve these goals, the Office plans to expand arts and culture infrastructure, thereby strengthening the city’s cultural utility network, fostering collaboration, raising the profile of the arts, and improving funding mechanisms. The Office of Arts and Culture employs three core strategies to realize these objectives, further developing the city’s arts and culture utility framework:
- Creating spaces dedicated to arts and culture that celebrate Round Rock’s past, present, and future, building physical infrastructure for cultural utilities.
- Connecting higher education, health sciences, and creative industries to stimulate innovation, integrating cultural utilities with other key sectors.
- Developing Round Rock as a center for artistic creation and engagement, establishing the city as a utility for artists and art enthusiasts.
While arts are flourishing in Round Rock, the city currently lacks a professional-grade venue for artistic performances. Establishing a city-owned, state-of-the-art venue for visual and performing arts would provide a central hub, enhancing the city’s cultural utility infrastructure and further boosting the local economy. Over the coming decade, exploring locations for a new arts and culture facility capable of accommodating diverse functions will be a priority, representing a significant investment in Round Rock’s future cultural utility.
