Missouri: Alchemy Award

Through its new Alchemy Award, the Missouri Arts Council (MAC) recognizes the state’s economic developers—including individuals, businesses and organizations—that leverage the arts to create jobs, develop the work force or generally enhance the economy. The award celebrates the transformative power of the arts, which can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary in business just as in language, paint or stone. Through the Alchemy Award, MAC will highlight successful examples of creativity and innovation at work transmuting business into an economic force. The award criteria are the utilization of arts and culture in economic development, the community impact of that development and the potential to replicate it in other communities. The recipient of the 2016 Alchemy Award (to be presented by Governor Jay Nixon at the annual Governor’s Conference on Economic Development in September) is Kansas City’s Office of Culture and Creative Services, which has a mission of serving residents by catalyzing culture and creativity and by leveraging the arts as a strategy for economic development, neighborhood revitalization and cultural vitality. For additional information, contact MAC Executive Director Michael Donovan.