Co-Owner of Potencia Projects discusses how Art Walks will use new initiatives to improve downtown through creativity and community

When it was announced in February that Wichita Falls Downtown Development would no longer be putting on the After Hours Art Walks, many members of the community took to social media and began contacting city officials to express concerns on the matter. However, some people’s immediate response to the problem was simply finding a solution.

For Potencia Projects, a local organization established in 2015 that’s focused on elevating Latino voices through cultural and art-focused events, the initial reaction was that they needed to do something to help, for the sake of downtown. Being located downtown and hosting all their events there, Potencia Projects knows firsthand how vital the Art Walks are to the downtown area and to the Wichita Falls community as a whole. Ismael Duran, a co-owner of Potencia Projects, said simply the outpour of concern over the announcement of the Art Walks going away demonstrated just how important they are to the community. He also noted that the Art Walks bring the community together in a way no other event in the city can. 

“I don’t think a lot of people understand the value and the need for having a strong downtown in a city. For cities that thrive and have a great art scene and cultural scene, a lot of it happens downtown,” Duran said.

Duran said he believes what makes the Art Walks so successful in drawing large crowds is that they don’t cater to a particular audience like many of the other events that take place downtown – there’s something for everyone. He went on to point out that art in general has that effect. While Downtown Development did a good job laying the foundation for the Art Walks, Duran explained that they were a small team reliant on volunteers that couldn’t keep up with the feedback or demands of an event that large.

In addition to being a Co-Owner of Potecia Projects, Duran is also the Vice President for the Wichita Falls Arts Alliance, so he’s seen first hand the impact that art has on a community. He said he grew up downtown and has witnessed the many changes the area has undergone, but nothing has had the impact that the Art Walks have had, which is what gives him hope that continuing with the Art Walks and improving them will improve the downtown area. 

“Taking over someone else's event – transferring it over – now that we’re responsible for it, we try to keep it core to what it was and what it’s about,” Duran said.

Duran explained that the city reached out to Potencia Projects for help in coming up with a solution to the possible loss of the Art Walks. Deputy City Attorney James McKechnie, was one of the city officials trying to help find a solution. He said when word first spread that Downtown Development wouldn’t be doing the art walks, he had multiple City Council members reaching out to him and relaying the concerns they had heard from the community. McKechnie explained that the Art Walks have become a part of the Wichita Falls culture – they give residents a reason to be proud and they give visitors a reason to keep coming back.

“The concerns were pretty universal; people were worried that if the Art Walk went away, it wouldn’t come back,” McKechnie said. “Downtown businesses owners were concerned about losing that monthly surge of foot traffic. Artists and vendors who depend on the event were anxious about their livelihoods, and regular folks just didn’t want to lose something they look forward to every month. That kind of response told us everything we needed to know about how much this event means to people.”

Duran said, originally, the city was considering bringing in a contractor to run the event but was concerned that it would create regulations around how the art walks were run, making them less accessible to some artists and vendors. Duran said Potencia Projects had already been communicating with the city about being involved with more events so when the opportunity arose, they offered to take on the responsibility. Since Potecia Projects already had the experience and resources to organize large events downtown, the city decided to give them a chance.

From that point, Potencia Projects began putting together a proposal, with the hopes of keeping the Art Walks on their usual schedule, beginning in April. Duran said that what usually took a month to put together, they achieved in a couple weeks — taking one week to put the proposal together, one week to revise it, and then presenting it to 4B a couple days after that. They ultimately got the approval for the usual 25K budget for the Art walk season, to run from April through December. Duran said writing the proposal relied almost entirely on community feedback. 

“Getting feedback kind of created our proposal for us,” Duran said. “The four main things are gonna be sanitation, safety, art in art walk, and the different types of vendors. Those are the things that kept popping up.”

Duran also has plans to implement more means of getting community feedback to improve the art walks. He said a lot of their approach during the transfer has been focused on just listening to community concerns and preferences. One thing he said people pointed out to him about how the Art Walks were run before, is that feedback wasn’t implemented. As a result, Potencia Projects plans to have designated zones for all artists and vendors with their own assigned liaisons that are around for the purpose of ensuring everyone has what they need, and collecting feedback.

“There were a lot of ideas, but for us, we just sat back and wanted to listen,” Duran said. “It wasn’t a time for us to just start spitting out ideas of what needed to be changed. We just sat back and listened to what was going on – what the community had to say.”

Duran said members of Downtown Development helped in transferring over the Art Walk website and social media pages. Even a few people from the city helped, such as McKechnie, who said he and other members of the city heard the community’s concerns around the art walks and wanted to do whatever they could to help find a solution. He helped to expedite the legal and paperwork process so that the Art Walks could function as normal under Potencia Projects.

“A thriving Art Walk actively drives the health of downtown. It's one of the best economic development tools we've got, and it costs a fraction of what a traditional marketing campaign would.” McKechnie said. “Long-term, the goal is for this to grow into something the community owns and sustains together, not something that depends entirely on city dollars.”

Duran explained that while Potencia Projects is making necessary adjustments to the Art Walks in order to make them more successful for business, artists, vendors, and those who attend all with the simple goal of keeping them going and with the hope that they will contribute to a revival of the downtown area. He said that moving forward, they have plans of utilizing a Sustainability Fund to keep the Art Walks going in the future and hopefully use those funds to offer more enticing incentives for people to attend the art walks. He said they also have plans to “beautify” the zones dedicated to artists to make them a more immersive art experience.

“Communication with people will go a long way in building the art walk and creating something we all can be proud of – that works, that’s safe, and that’s clean,” Duran concluded.

The first After Hours Art Walk will be on Thursday, April 2 from 5:30 - 9 p.m. at 7th Street and Indiana Avenue.