T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Arts + Culture Alliance Executive Director Amber Danielson presented a mid-year update to the Marshalltown city council during Monday night’s regular meeting.

For the first time since the Marshalltown city council narrowly approved a five-year funding agreement with the Arts + Culture Alliance (ACA) at a cost of $130,000 a year last November to lead the implementation of the Arts and Culture Master Plan, the nonprofit organization’s executive director, Amber Danielson, came before the council during Monday night’s meeting to provide an official update.

The ACA has since moved into a new office space downtown at 126 W. Main St., and Danielson started by touting the value of public/private partnerships like the one between the city and the organization. From there, she detailed some of the work they have already completed, including awarding a Community Artist Grant to Kiran Singh Sirah, who is in the process of launching a storytelling project called “Gather ‘Round the Table” and has already visited Marshalltown.

“He is kind of working on fine tuning exactly what this project’s gonna look like towards the end of this year. He’s in a lot of conversations with a lot of those (community) partners about how we can do that storytelling and how we can do a great job of documenting it so that we can archive those stories for years to come,” Danielson said. “So stay tuned on that.”

The Alliance has also invested $17,000 in six artists and seven different projects to be implemented in 2025 through the Artist Innovation Grant. The Folkloric Dancing class held at the YMCA Cultural Center on Saturday mornings and led by Bertha Santillan de Medina has been particularly popular, according to Danielson, with 70 people signing up for the inaugural sessions although they could only accept 30. The primary participants, Danielson said, have been mothers in their 30s learning to dance with their children.

The Marshalltown Community Band, which receives $5,000 annually as part of the agreement with the ACA, saw 10 new members participate in 2025 and crowds of around 100 people at each concert this summer. Additionally, their three most tenured members total over 160 years of participation.

The Marshalltown community, Danielson noted, is showing up for arts and culture “in a big way” as they have created a centralized hub for events and programming in partnership with the Chamber and its tourism office.

“The old myth that there’s nothing to do in Marshalltown just simply doesn’t hold up anymore. In fact, there’s multiple days this past summer (when) there have been so many events that we had to split one day into two tabs because we couldn’t fit it all and make it be able to be visible,” she said. “People are hungry for arts and culture in this community, and the community is not just watching it happen. They’re participating and supporting this work.”

The momentum ultimately results in economic gains, Danielson said, as both residents and visitors spend money at local businesses or even purchase works from artists themselves when they attend such events.

“What we’re seeing right now is not just creativity for creativity’s sake. It’s creativity as a catalyst. The arts are helping shape the kind of place where we want to live — people that have been here their whole lives, young professionals wanting to stay here, move here. It’s where visitors want to spend their time and their dollars,” she said.

As an example, the Sabado de Gloria concert at the Central Iowa Fairgrounds drew over 3,000 visitors with an economic impact of over $90,000, and the Live and Local concerts at Grimes Farm have had an economic impact of over $37,000. Other major events were the Live After 5 concert series at West End Park, the Marshalltown Arts and Civic Center’s (MACC’s) first group show since reopening with 27 artists and 42 pieces.

Public art projects have also continued to pop up around the city at places like the Little League fields and the Marshalltown Community College (MCC) campus, and the ACA has worked with Marshalltown High School (MHS) students and staff on the Bobcat Cafe launch.

“This really shows the engagement that we’re seeing from the community. We talk about, in the Arts and Culture master plan, that this work is going to take all of us, and while we’re amplifying this work and supporting this work, we weren’t directly tied into a lot of these initiatives because we were doing this work together as a community,” Danielson said. “These organizations, our community is really showing up because they understand the value and the belonging and welcomeness that happens when we do these types of programs together.”

Danielson showed a brief video from the Grand Gathering kickoff event at the downtown space, which drew over 300 attendees, and described the new headquarters as “a creative incubator” and “a test lab.” She highlighted a poetry event held at the ACA building and plans to host something similar at the Iowa Veterans Home in the near future along with the fact that Aaron Buzbee, who performs under the stage name Buz Owen, introduced himself as “a local artist” in addition to an entrepreneur for the first time when he spoke at the Chamber’s scholastic banquet.

A local artist networking event drew about 30 people, and the first ever songwriter’s showcase featuring all original music by local artists on July 30 had a standing room only crowd. Danielson noted that final fundraising efforts for the Linn Creek District projects have wrapped up in the last few months and praised city staff and leaders for their ability to work collaboratively on those efforts.

As she went further into the data, Danielson said the organization saw a 67x return on investment based on the funding the city provided, and she noted the creation of a Creative Placemaking Committee including city staff, business owners, the school district, and other local organizations and foundations — one attendee described the first meeting as “invigorating.”

Finally, she discussed plans for reporting tools going forward to ensure accountability and hoped arts and culture would play a key role in attracting new residents to the community. The final video she showed, created by Austin Chadderdon of Soul or System Photography, included aerial drone footage of the Linn Creek projects such as the Emerson Bridge and the Apgar Family Water Plaza. Social media engagement and views have also been increasing dramatically, Danielson said.

“We’re really seeing that content like this is getting people excited. It’s getting them to participate, and it’s getting them to have more ideas on how they can be part of the community,” she said.

As she opened up the floor for questions, Councilor Gary Thompson asked Danielson if events like the grand opening led to sales for the artists. She responded that there were “a handful,” but many of the pieces were deeply personal to the artists and were not listed for sale. Comparatively, the summer artist series last year, which highlighted the work of one individual as opposed to 39, saw near sellouts. As the report concluded, City Administrator Carol Webb spoke of how much she appreciated the partnership with Danielson, calling her “a delight to work with” who makes the partnership very easy with her enthusiasm. The presentation can be viewed at https://artsandculturealliance.org/news/aca-mid-year-city-council-update/.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.