Kansas City, Mo., officials announced the first director of creative services Wednesday.
Megan Crigger is an arts professional with nearly 20 years of experience in Austin, Texas. Most recently, she served as that city's cultural arts division manager with a focus on tourism, arts and culture.
"Things that are my priority so align with what Kansas City is focused on that it just feels like a great natural fit," Crigger says.
Creating the new Office of Culture and Creative Services was one of the recommendations of the Mayor's Task Force for the Arts.
As director, Crigger will work on cultural community planning, relationship building, and advancing city arts and culture initiatives. She starts Jan. 5.
Crigger listed three initial areas of focus:
1. Listening and learning. "I definitely want to land doing a listening tour and understanding who those (arts and cultural) partners can be and helping to interpret and implement that goal."
2. Crafting a vision for the role of arts and culture. "All of the work that I've been doing here in Austin is so very aligned with the mayor's priorities, in what they call the 'Four E's': education, employment, efficiency and enforcement. That goes to show how deeply rooted arts and culture can impact everything that happens with the city."
3. Creating access to the arts. "It will be a huge priority for me, bringing national resources that can help us plan, and local resources — how to plan to move that forward. All the way from arts integrated strategies, that help with STEM learning...and also being able to bring in the arts partners, the community arts partners, non-profits and artists, so they have direct access to the fine arts."
