The West Plains City Council awarded two grants to promote tourism in West Plains and heard an update on the West Plains Council on the Arts new heritage-based story tour that the council will screen for the first time for residents on Thursday.
During their meeting on Monday, the City Council first heard from West Plains Tourism Coordinator Melissa Wharton, who introduced the Tourism Advisory Committee’s grant recommendations through the city’s Community Development Grant Program.
Wharton said the program uses funds from the city of West Plains hotel and motel tax to promote tourism and economic development in West Plains.
Any event, organization or project whose objective is to promote tourism and economic development in West Plains was eligible to apply. Wharton said applications chosen during this period must have their event or project completed between April 1 and Dec. 31.
“The tourism advisory council met and has submitted two projects for city council's consideration,” Wharton said. “The first is $20,000 to be awarded to Wayward Son Extreme Bulls, Broncs and Bands.”
According to Wharton, the event will be held on Friday, April 1 and Saturday, April 2, at the Civic Center, located at 110 Saint Louis St. in West Plains.
“A Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association is a sanctioned event with a $20,000 purse,” Wharton said.
“This should ensure that many of the top 40 bull riders and the top 30 bronc riders in the United States will attend this event and compete,” Wharton added.
Wayward Son has a history of producing top-quality and well-attended events across the Midwest. According to Wharton, they have brought rodeos to the Civic Center from 2002 to 2018, with an average attendance of 3,500 to 4,000 people for their event.
“This event not only fills hotels and restaurants but also impacts the community through sales at local stores. This event is also a good source of revenue for the West Plains Civic Center,” Wharton said.
Wharton then introduced the second grant application that the Tourism Advisory Council submitted for council consideration, which was $5,000 to the West Plains Council on the Arts.
“Their project “Ozarks Deep: Watching, Listening, Building” will help fund the administrative needs to formalize an alliance of an arts organization in West Plains,” Wharton said.
The alliance currently includes the West Plains Council on the Arts, the Harlin Museum of West Plains, the Avenue Theatre, the Media Arts Center and the West Plains Civic Center.
“They have plans to invite the Yellow House Community Art Center and Missouri State University-West Plains to join. The alliance will offer collaborative programming such as workshops, exhibits and performances,” Wharton said.
“One of their goals is to facilitate discussions on how the alliance can partner with others to bring energy, vitality and value to the economic picture of West Plains,” Wharton added.
In a unanimous vote, the City Council approved the Tourism Advisory Committee’s Community grant recommendations and then heard from Kathleen Morrissey, of West Plains Council on the Arts.
Morrissey updated council members on the West Plains Council on the Arts story tour of downtown West Plains, which started as part of the organized activities of the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival that takes place in West Plains in June every year.
Morrissey said, “I have another reason to thank you tonight for the second grant the West Plains Council on the Arts will be receiving to continue the work on the first grant they did that actually started two years ago because we had a COVID-19 interruption on this, so it was a matter of some adjustment.”
“But essentially, it is a story tour of downtown West Plains. Our legacy storytellers put this together originally, and the arts council said we need to put this on video because we need to make it a virtual thing and offer it year-round. So it’s not just when we have people coming to the festival, but we can put this tour on several websites and other means of distribution,” Morrissey said.
West Plains Council on the Arts will screen the virtual series “Ozarks Deep: Story Tour” at 7 p.m. Thursday and 1 p.m. Saturday, in the West Plains Civic Center Theater, located at 110 St. Louis St., she said.
“We are going to have big pictures, big sound, we are going to be on that big 12-foot screen. We are going to have a real projection unit. You are going to see this how we intended for this to be seen — theatrically,” Morrissey said.
“Nothing will beat the quality that you will see from a direct file going right into that projector, being shown right on that screen and having all of that extra sound that we spent a lot of time, money and resources recording,” Morrissey said.
She said the West Plains Council on the Arts recorded 30 artists from last year’s heritage festival to create an Artist Showcase to go along with it.
“So you are actually getting two projects for the price of one because we took your grant and we leveraged that with the National Endowment for the Arts. They kind of contacted us. We’ve been grantees with them before. And they said, 'do you have a project you want to put some money into,' and we said, ‘Yes, we have this wonderful tourism project with the city of West Plains, and we have already been funded by the city,’” Morrissey said.
Morrissey said the West Plains Council on the Arts will screen the Artist Showcase for the first time to the public from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday in the West Plains Civic Center Theater.
“It was a no-brainer for them. They gave us matching money, so we leveraged that to double your money, double your product, and hopefully after you see this, it will also give us a step forward for my thing about heritage-based tourism,” Morrissey said.
“It’s been a tremendous experience for me. Everyone in this town is a storyteller. And everybody has contributed to this,” Morrissey said.
