The Arts Council of Fayetteville/Cumberland County had modest beginnings, starting with one employee: Marvin Weaver.
In May of 1974, Marvin, the first executive director appointed by the state, and three volunteers put together the first Sunday on the Square as a way to raise funds to pay for Marvin’s salary and other necessities, according to the group’s website that showcases its 50th anniversary.
That first Sunday on the Square featured performances from 38 different groups. Thousands attended and the Arts Council collected $3,592.47 in proceeds.
The Junior Service League of Fayetteville also provided a $3,000 grant to establish the Fayetteville Arts Council, Carolyn Cone Weaver said, who eventually became a staff member and served as the second executive director from 1977 to 1989.
Fast forward to this summer, when the Arts Council of Fayetteville/Cumberland County held its 50th anniversary celebration on June 6. According to its anniversary website, “now the Arts Council boasts over 30 board and staff members and gives away over $1.25 million in grants to artists, nonprofits, and municipalities.”
More than 200 guests attended the anniversary celebration.
“I was absolutely amazed that the Arts Council is still there after 50 years,” said Carolyn, 87, who lives in Durham and is not related to Marvin Weaver. “It’s far, far beyond anything that we had ever envisioned.”
The Arts Council today
During that 50th anniversary celebration, Arts Council President and CEO Robert “Bob” Pinson announced “the founding of Arts XL, the Arts Council’s first Art Accelerator, and the addition of a secondary building,” according to the website, that features “office and performing spaces for local arts organizations.” It will provide a space in the area for “organizations such as Sweet Tea Shakespeare and the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra [to] have an affordable space to work, practice, and perform downtown.”
Another goal for the organization as it looks to the next 50 years, Bob said, is to continue reaching out to the community with grant programs.
Bob, 73, has been with the Arts Council since 2011. He served as interim director beginning in May 2020 before becoming the full-time CEO in May 2023, and oversees a yearly budget of $2.9 million.
“I love this job,” said Bob, the seventh executive director and CEO of the Arts Council. “What attracts me and what still attracts me is the things we do are making positive differences in the lives of the people in this community. I can’t change the world, but I can change the world that I touch.”
Bob said the Arts Council of Fayetteville/Cumberland County also serves four other counties — Hoke, Robeson, Scotland, and Sampson.
One major program still going strong is the Artists in Schools initiative.
The program, established in the 1970s, has been around for 48 years. “Over the past year, the Arts Council has paid 488 artists to teach in Cumberland County Schools,” according to the anniversary website.
“That’s a program where we fund and put artists in the school system,” Bob said. “The importance of that program is that studies show that if you engage students with art, they’re going to show up.”
Another big event for the Arts Council was September’s 46th annual International Folk Festival, the oldest festival in Fayetteville that the Arts Council took over in 2000.
The beginning and the move downtown
Marvin Weaver is now 80 and retired in Granby, Massachusetts. He is a former instructor of English and creative writing at UNC Greensboro.
While Sunday on the Square no longer exists (it ran from 1974 to around 1994, Bob said), Marvin remembers it, and the Art Council’s beginnings, fondly.
“I was a known commodity to [the North Carolina Arts Council] and I wasn’t interested in going back to teaching,” Marvin said. “So, I go in there and get this Sunday on the Square off the ground and it was one way to introduce the Arts Council to the community and to invite the community in. My job was promotion, fundraising, and collaboration.”
Marvin said community leaders got behind the Arts Council. Marvin also reached out to the military. He reached out to some owners of topless bars on Hay Street, too.
“They were some of our biggest supporters,” he said.
Marvin recalls an instance when longtime North Carolina Arts Council executive director Mary Regan was in Fayetteville to meet with Arts Council community members from around the state.
“I asked a local strip club owner, who contributed generously to Sunday on the Square, if she could give us a space to meet at her club, which wasn’t active earlier in the day,” said Marvin, who couldn’t recall the name of the owner or the establishment. “The owner even had one of her performers dance briefly on our table. Were they not part of the local art scene and economy? Mary loved it.”
Marvin recalls being struck by the fact that the businesses were “great supporters of the arts” in their own way.
“Not only do they take care with their funds but they actually volunteer to do stuff,” he said.
During that first year, Marvin and his family “lived in the old parsonage for Hay Street [United] Methodist Church, and the pastor’s office was the Arts Council’s first home,” according to a report that Carolyn Cone Weaver wrote in 2007 about her tenure at the Arts Council from 1974 to 1989.
“It was just me and some part-time assistants,” Marvin said.
He developed a magazine called Spectra that was used to introduce each of the art institutions in town, Marvin said.
Spectra Magazine was how Carolyn got on board.
She read an article that ran in the local newspaper about Marvin being hired as executive director “of this new organization that nobody had ever heard of, and they were looking for volunteers to help,” she said. “He needed somebody to write articles, stories, and [to] edit. So, I volunteered, not knowing what it would lead to. It turned out to be one of the best articles I’ve ever read in my life. It was a huge life changer for me.”
Carolyn said she was hired as the second staff person in 1975.
The Arts Council later “moved to the lower level of the law offices of McCoy Weaver Wiggins Cleveland and Raper” law firm “on Maiden Lane,” according to Carolyn’s report. L. Stacy Weaver, one of the partners, served as the Arts Council’s first board president, according to the Fayetteville Observer.
In 1976, the Arts Council moved to the restored Arsenal House on Myrover Street, Carolyn said in her report.
“The Arsenal House had lots of charm but wasn’t very practical,” she wrote. “We squeezed every ounce of use out of every square inch of space. The tiny bathroom was used for its initial function, but in addition, the bathtub served as storage for supplies and files. We were very creative.”
Marvin Weaver left the Arts Council after four years.
“The leadership in the community really embraced us,” he said. “They highlighted what we did well. And what we were doing to make it a more welcoming place for the arts and artists.”
He recommended Carolyn as his successor.
“I worked very, very closely with Marvin and we were a real good solid team and we were learning together about what the Arts Council could be doing and should be doing,” she said. “The board members and volunteers provided the guidance that we needed, and we provided the backbone. I followed up with a lot of the things that he started.”
Carolyn was in charge in 1985, the year that current director Bob Pinson said he considers as the organization’s turning point.
“The Arts Council started getting a little bit larger,” Bob said. “So, in the 1985-86 time frame, they started working on a plan because they said if we were ever going to really grow we need to be downtown. We need to have a foothold in the downtown.”
Carolyn said in her paper, “the Arts Council then approached the city about adaptive reuse of the Hay Street Frances Brooks Stein [Memorial] Library building, which was being vacated in 1986, when a new library opened on Maiden Lane.”
“So, in 1985, they got together, convinced the city that the Arts Council would be the best fit for the building, and fundraised a million dollars to renovate this building,” Bob said. “That’s what has anchored us moving forward.”
The refurbished building had its opening in February 1988, Carolyn wrote.
Avoiding a crisis
The longest-serving leader of the Arts Council was Deborah Mintz, who served from 2000-2019 after joining the organization in 1994.
Deborah, 69, was the associate director, and when her predecessor Libby Seymour left, she was appointed interim director.
“I enjoyed what I was doing,” she said. “But then, as I was interim director just basically holding things in the road, there were some real funding issues that came about.”
State funding for arts had changed, she said.
“The City of Fayetteville was told by the city manager that we were not going to receive our fourth-quarter money and allocation and that the arts would be zeroed out on July 1, and this was, like, in March,” she said.
Deborah said the board came to her and said it needed to hire a full-time director to get them through the funding crisis.
“So, I told them I would do it for two years,” she said.
She called Fayetteville City Manager Roger Stancil, Deborah said, and asked him if he could talk to board members.
“He and the City Council, county commissioners, the chamber of commerce, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, we came together to find stable funding for arts and culture in Cumberland County,” Deborah said.
Deborah lasted as executive director/CEO far longer than two years.
“I’m so glad for all the incredible people who worked so hard to make all of it work,” she said. “It was my privilege to be that pivot point, that place that would help to bring them together, to help move it forward, but they’re [the community leaders] really the ones who did it.”
A look ahead
Today’s director Bob Pinson said the Arts Council of Fayetteville/Cumberland County has come full circle.
“We started out as an organization ourselves that went looking for grant money to get going,” Bob said. “We did not have money to pay for a director, so we were having to go out and fundraise because we wanted to be able to at least pay for somebody to come in every day and be able to answer the phones and be able to push the organization forward.”
He said the Junior League actually gave the Arts Council its first $3,000 grant “because they saw some potential of what we could do,” Bob said, “which is exactly where we are today ourselves, which is so ironic.
“That’s what we do. We try to use our grant programs to go out and grow programs, grow individual artists.”
Read CityView Magazine’s “Arts & Culture” October 2024 e-edition here.