Walk into the upcoming Dallas Colombian Festival and you’ll find performers dancing in flowing skirts as percussive beats fill the air.
That’s thanks to North Texas-based Representa Foundation, which promotes Latin American culture with performances and free dance classes.
Representa is one of six small arts organizations that were selected for this year’s second cohort of The Arts Community Alliance’s Arts Accelerator program. Other arts groups selected include: The Cedars Union, kNOwBOX dance, Lone Star Wind Orchestra, Over the Bridge Arts and The Writer’s Garret.
Maura Sheffler, TACA’s Donna Wilhelm Family president and executive director, said the program is a response to the “groundswell” of startup-level arts organizations in North Texas that are looking to grow.
“They need a suite of services and expertise to really help them figure out how to chart their course to the next level and to grow in a way that’s sustainable for their organization,” she said.
The 10-month program is designed to help these arts groups grow through training and coursework on topics such as marketing, branding, culture, financial management and fundraising. At the end of the program, groups are given $5,000 to implement a strategic plan created through The Accelerator. The program runs from August 2024 to May 2025.
Ana Parada, the founder of Representa Foundation, said she’s excited for her nonprofit to grow through the program.
“I feel like many organizations don’t make it in the first years because it is so hard to find resources and to find help,” she said. “So it’s very important to kind of guide the little organizations like ours so we can be successful and we can have a more diverse arts community in the city of Dallas.”
Aaron Glover, executive director of the literary nonprofit The Writer’s Garret, said he’s looking forward to learning more about topics like board development and marketing.
He applied to the program after he heard from Pegasus Contemporary Ballet, a member of the first cohort, about the program’s “level of detail” and the way it gets “into the nitty gritty of it.”
While Glover often hears “we love what you’re doing,” he said it can be difficult to get concrete support. That’s why he sees the program as a big opportunity.
“Especially small arts organizations are starved for meaningful support,” Glover said. “We can see that with more funding or with something that isn’t just like, ‘Here’s a one-time meeting and a worksheet’ … that’s huge and can be transformative for an organization that absolutely could not afford those things if it weren’t part of the cohort.”
Sheffler said that’s why it’s important to support small arts organizations that make up the North Texas arts ecosystem.
“You have organizations that have been around for a long time who have incredible reach and who provide exceptional value and quality to the community,” she said. “But you also need a broad diversity of artistic voices, of artistic visions, of types of work.”
The Arts Accelerator is supported by the Communities Foundation of Texas and Sapphire Foundation. It was created in collaboration with Suzanne Smith, founder and CEO of Social Impact Architects and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and SMU.
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