Arts Fairfax's two-year Regional Artist Survey found Fairfax County has a large and active artist community but that many local artists lack funds, space and audience access, Stuart Holt, the nonprofit's president and CEO, told County Magazine.

"We ended up getting a bit over 1,400 responses, but when we put the lens of practicing artists and living or working in Fairfax County, that dropped down to just over 1,000 responses," Holt said. "The responses that we got were really enlightening." The survey, Holt said, was created with an artist advisory council, analyzed with AMS Analytics, offered in English, Farsi, Hindi, Korean and Spanish, designed to take about five minutes and was available for six months.

The survey identified three primary needs: financial support, space to create and space to present work. Holt said more than half of respondents reported presenting most of their work outside the Fairfax region, a statistic echoed by local performers. Ken Avis, guitarist and vocalist with the local duo Verano, said "there was a comment in the survey that 75% of their work is outside of the Fairfax region," and described the difficulty of building local audiences when listings are fragmented across many online sources.

Holt said Arts Fairfax already reworked its website this past summer and highlights an events calendar as the organization's top-visited page. "We have a one-stop shop for the community to know what's happening and to, in turn, support both the arts organizations and the artists that are creating this work in the county," he said.

While Arts Fairfax administers grants and professional-development programs, Holt said creating physical space is beyond the nonprofit's capacity alone. "Arts Fairfax can't create spaces on our own, so we need to have county and civic partners in that conversation," he said, noting the agency receives a county allocation that it regrants to arts organizations.

Artists interviewed said partnership with venues, expanded listings and more opportunities to present work locally would help keep performances in the county. The report and the conversations it produced leave county leaders and arts organizations with next steps: use the survey data to prioritize funding and investigate public or partnership-based spaces for creation and presentation.

The organizations named in the conversation include Arts Fairfax and AMS Analytics; Creative Cauldron and Fairfax Parks were mentioned as local venues and programmers involved in the region's arts activity. The survey's methodology and multi-language approach were presented on the program as key elements in capturing a broader cross-section of artists.

Next steps mentioned on the program: Arts Fairfax will use the survey data in discussions with county partners about possible spaces and continued outreach; the organization has already emphasized its events calendar and calls page to help artists find opportunities.