Frisco City Council formally adopted the plan during a March 4 council meeting with a 5-0 vote. Council member Laura Rummel was absent from the meeting.
Investing in the arts and culture spaces can help them become solid bases in Frisco’s tourism scene, provide business opportunities, foster nonprofit development and help encourage a sense of community in the city, said Civic Arts Executive Director Lynn Osgood said.
Civic Arts is the consulting firm hired by the city to bring the master plan to life.
“People here talk in Frisco, talked about arts as social infrastructure,” Osgood said. “They want to connect to each other through the arts, through festivals, through music, through dance. This is how they want to meet each other. This is how they want their kids to know each other. This is how they want to grow as a community.”
The overview
The master plan offers four strategic goals to push Frisco toward a more dynamic cultural ecosystem:
- Position Frisco as a cultural and economic hub through events, partnerships and tourism initiatives
- Use public art and urban design to create spaces reflecting community identity and fostering connection
- Support arts-related businesses, cultural tourism and mid-sized arts organizations to drive economic growth
- Promote cultural inclusivity and local pride through diverse programming and community engagement
The document also maps out where to find the arts and culture offerings that already exist in Frisco. This includes events like the Frisco Festival of Colors or Frisco Arts Walk and Run.
“It's just this next chapter of the Frisco renaissance, the fact that we can actually now have some data to show what we're missing, what we need to do to attack it and help it to grow and fill in the total creative economy and the creative place making,” council member Tammy Meinershagen said. “It was really fascinating, because when you think about our city and the demographics changing so much as well, that the arts can serve as a way to unify our community.”
Zooming in
The final master plan document was a years-long undertaking for the city. The Cultural Affairs Division of Play Frisco finalized a five-year plan in late 2021 and kicked off an arts and economic prosperity study for the city in mid-2022.
“As these two initiatives were wrapping up, we realized there was a need for a more robust Cultural Affairs Master Plan,” said Michelle Norris, Play Frisco’s Cultural Affairs manager.
Funding for the plan was approved in the fiscal year 2023-24 budget, Norris said. The city was then able to hire Civic Arts in winter 2023 to spend the next year working on it, which included multiple community input sessions and studies on Frisco’s current arts and culture offerings.
“Staff is very appreciative of being able to have this opportunity to meet with our community and get their engagement in this process,” Norris said. “More than anything, we're very excited about the future for the arts and culture here in the city.”
While creating the master plan, city staff and consultants realized there was a “missing middle” in Frisco’s current arts and culture scene, Osgood said.
“It's that nonprofit sector,” Osgood said. “Usually in a cultural economy, you have a few large institutions, a lot of little guys, and then a robust nonprofit sector that can really help with the daily life of giving classes to kids, of having small theater performances, of having gallery exhibits, of fostering business development and training. That doesn't exist so much in Frisco.”
Osgood said it is normal for cities that grow as fast as Frisco to have a smaller nonprofit sector. Many of the master plan recommendations revolve around filling in the “missing middle,” she said.
“What's needed for the cultural sector is not just to give a fish, so to speak, metaphorically, but to help the people of Frisco, creatives in Frisco, develop that middle nonprofit sector and teach them how to fish,” Osgood said.
More details
The creative sector has seen “tremendous economic growth” across the state, Osgood said.
A recent study from the Texas Cultural Trust found there was an over 63% growth in the cultural economy of Texas in the last decade, she said.
That cultural economic growth generated $7.3 billion for the Texas economy and nearly $459.1 million in state sales tax revenue, according to the study.
The study also found 1 in 14 jobs was culturally related and that 1 in 4 tourists who visit different places in the state take part in cultural tourism, Osgood said.
“We know it's incredibly important to the economy of Texas,” Osgood said. “We also know that it's very important for the economy of Frisco.”
The arts in Frisco have come a long way, Mayor Jeff Cheney said.
The term 'creative economy' was not even in my vernacular, I'd say, seven years ago," he said. "Now it's interwoven in almost every conversation that we have."
The Frisco Center for the Arts is included in the plan as a potential future venue the city can continue fostering, according to the plan.
The arts facility has not yet officially been approved. It is a projected $340 million project shared between Broadway Across America and Broadway Dallas, Prosper ISD and Frisco and would provide a space for local theater and touring Broadway performances.
It will appear on the ballot for Frisco voters in May as two propositions related to authorizing $160 million for the project. A final decision on the project is expected to come after the election.
