Montgomery County, MD, Arts and Humanities Council
Bressi has worked with the Montgomery County, Md., Arts and Humanities Council for more than a decade; creating a Public Art Roadmap, helping to update the County’s public art guidelines, and supporting ongoing public arat commissions. Now, he is working as an in-house consultant to advise on the developmend of the County’s first arts and culture plan in 25 years. ,He helped guide three preliminary research studies and the consultant search process, and is now helping AHCMC support the consultant through a comprehensive research, community engagement and analysis process.
Date | 2021-2025
Client | Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County
Collaborators | Metris Arts Consulting
Bressi is consulting with the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Md., to manage its new arts and culture plan, which will focus on themes of belonging, expanding the intersection between County government and arts and culture, and strengthening the resiliency of the County’s arts and culture sector. He helped lead preparatory research and develop a framework for the plan; he helped develop an RFP, recruit and select a consultant; and he is currently advising AHCMC’s leadership team and the consultant as the plan gets underway.
Montgomery County, a jurisdiction of 1.1 million people adjacent to Washington DC, has changed dramatically since its last cultural plan was completed more than 20 years ago. Its population has tripled, and its non-white population has grown so rapidly that it is now more than half the County’s population. Just as important, since then, ideas about how cultural planning has evolved dramatically, from plans to support cultural institutions to plans that consider how public-private partnerships can support the creative and cultural life of people in the community.
Bressi led AHCMC through two years of preparations for the plan. In 2021, he led a collaborative effort between AHCMC and the Maryland–National Capital Planning Commission to develop the Arts, Culture and Design chapter of the County’s comprehensive plan. The chapter expanded the County’s traditional focus on physical design and placemaking to lay the groundwork for community-based arts and culture strategies.
In 2022, he advised AHCMC on two research projects that serve as a foundation for the cultural plan – an exploration of what “arts and culture” mean to diverse County residents (MJR Partners), and mapping of the County’s cultural assets, both traditional resources and places identified by community members (Civic Arts).
Based on that research, Bressi prepared a white paper to provide a case and a framework for a new cultural plan.
Bressi is now supporting the selection and onboarding of a consultant, with the anticipation that the plan will be underway in July 2024.