Regional Arts and Culture Plan

Rockford excels as an ACE community–hosting a vibrant Arts, Culture, and Entertainment sector: The Rockford Region hosts eight Community Theatres; a full spectrum of music opportunities from the Rockford Symphony Orchestra to the nationally celebrated Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps, to the high-level instruction of the Music Academy of Rockford; Rockford hosts 10 museums, 15 art galleries, and 10 public library branches. Additionally, Rockford, the Forest City, is often referred to as ‘the City of Gardens’–boasting Klehm Botanical Garden’s 150 acres, the world-class Anderson Japanese Gardens, and the freshly installed, riverfront, Nicholas Conservatory.

The Rockford Area Arts Council, in collaboration with the City of Rockford and Transform Rockford, are developing a process to identify and leverage our community’s cultural resources, strengthen the management of those resources, streamlining the unnecessarily complicated process of registering and hosting arts and culture events, and integrating those resources across all facets of local planning and decision making. The regional arts and culture plan will be the filter through which simple, and complex, decisions are made that impact the lifeblood of our city.