Continued Culture

(From left) Ethel Mortenson Davis and Tom Davis are Door County’s current Poets Laureate until March 31, 2025. File photo by D.A. Fitzgerald.

With the column on this page from Write On, Door County, we kick off another year of Culture Club articles written by a rotating schedule of Peninsula Arts and Humanities Association (PAHA) members. 

PAHA is a coalition of nonprofit organizations – currently, 15 of them, listed at the end of each Culture Club column – whose purpose is to enhance, promote and advocate the arts, humanities and natural sciences in Door County.

Here at the Peninsula Pulse, we highlight throughout the year what these organizations offer our residents and visitors. The columns enable each of the members to give voice to anything they’d like to highlight about their organization or field. 

Jacob Janssen, the Jackie & Steve Kane Artistic Director for Third Avenue PlayWorks (TAP), is serving as this year’s PAHA president, facilitating monthly meetings and communication between members.

“I think you’d hear from every member of PAHA that arts and humanities are what make Door County so special,” he said.

Special, with an economic punch. Door County’s nonprofit arts and culture industry generated $38.6 million in economic activity in 2022, according to the latest Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 (AEP6) report, an economic and social impact study conducted by Americans for the Arts and released in October 2023. 

That economic activity – $16.8 million in spending by nonprofit arts and culture organizations, and $21.8 million in event-related spending by their audiences – supported 738 jobs and generated $6.2 million in local, state and federal government revenue. 

“I think we all benefit when we have a thriving arts ecosystem,” Janssen said.

PAHA membership funds the Americans for the Arts report and uses it to show the significant, economic contribution made by local arts and humanities organizations. 

“Everyone has a vague understanding of that and then you see the numbers,” Janssen said.

This kind of advocacy tool is especially important in a state like Wisconsin, which ranked dead last in the country in March 2023 in the amount of money flowing from legislative and line-item appropriations to state arts agencies.

“We’re able to show how valuable the arts are to the county, the region – and the latest one shows [the economic impact] is growing,” Janssen said.

Janssen arrived at TAP in January 2022 via big markets like Washington D.C. and Chicago. He’s accustomed to associations of arts organizations banding together to create a strong voice for the arts.

“To have a combined arts and humanities organization [like PAHA] is not unheard of, but it is unique,” he said.

We think so, too – as unique as Door County – and we hope you enjoy hearing from these one-of-a-kind organizations through December. 

Meanwhile, if your organization would like more information about becoming a PAHA member, contact Jacob Janssen at [email protected].