Event at the Art Association of Harrisburg. Photo courtesy of Art Association of Harrisburg

Carrie Wissler-Thomas can’t say for sure how the family of tourists from Ohio found their way to the Art Association of Harrisburg.

They had visited Hersheypark and the usual suspects around town, but they wanted to see a gallery, and the Harrisburg Arts District now has an app for that.

“They visited what was going on in the region, and they saw us and they came,” Wissler-Thomas said. “Maybe it was because of Google. I like to think it was the Harrisburg Arts District.”

Opinions differ on whether Harrisburg needs an arts czar, but the new app from Visit Hershey & Harrisburg does some of that coordinating. The app puts the Harrisburg Arts District in the palms of hands, whether those palms belong to visitors or locals looking for a new scene.

With its walkable array of galleries, performing arts groups, murals, shopping, and food and drink, the Harrisburg Arts District was just made for an app that helps patrons customize their own experience. 

Critical Mass

The Harrisburg Arts District spans the city’s downtown, Midtown and riverfront. Created by Visit Hershey & Harrisburg, the district now has an app for digital-age relevance. The new app allows visitors to search by categories of murals, performance venues, events, museums, galleries, monuments, shopping and food and drink.

App users can customize their itineraries, curating and mapping the walks that deliver the experiences, sights, sounds and tastes they crave. They can play concise audio narrations describing each of the Sprocket Mural Works’ pieces they’re pausing to see, perhaps learning how Ryan Spahr drew inspiration from the surrounding city for the colorful butterfly of “Arise,” or how the dramatic “Bruja” from Ecuadorian artist Vera Primavera celebrates female empowerment.

A Creative Communities Grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts funded development of the app. Dauphin County tourism grants are helping support ad campaigns promoting the arts district.

The creative sector contributes $30 billion to the Pennsylvania economy, according to PCA Executive Director Karl Blischke. A defined arts district gives that sector a place, he said, and “place is the driver of decisions that are made about where we want to live, where we want to visit.”

The app adds momentum to a growing arts scene that’s contributing to Dauphin County economic development, tourism and a record number of hotel rooms booked, county Commissioner George Hartwick said at the app’s launch in July.

“Sometimes, we don’t even know what’s in our backyard,” he said. “This is an opportunity for us to reacquaint ourselves with all the great assets we have as well as help visitors from around the country have that opportunity.”

Susquehanna Art Museum Executive Director Alice Anne Schwab credited the changing look of Midtown Harrisburg, including a new cocktail lounge going where a saloon once stood, to the “critical mass” of activity in the Harrisburg Arts District.

“More and more, things are happening in this area because people want to be connected to the arts,” she said. “Yes, it drives money, but it drives something that’s even more important—all those feet traveling to our door, to Whitaker Center, to all of the performing arts organizations.

Mural by Sprocket Mural Works

Finer Things

The Harrisburg arts sector comprises organizations and artists who are dynamic enough to thrive on their own without a city arts director or umbrella organization adding bureaucracy, said Art Association of Harrisburg Executive Director Carrie Wissler-Thomas. But the Harrisburg Arts District does need VHH’s cross-promotional marketing, amplified by the app, to attract visitors, audiences and participants, she said.

“It’s hard to reach an audience beyond our own constituency,” Wissler-Thomas said. “All of us share so many people that like the finer things in life—the theaters, the galleries, the art, the fine food and breweries—and this widens our audience.”

Harrisburg-based artist Reina “R76” Wooden watched in dismay when the pandemic wiped out the area’s small galleries. As showcase spaces dwindle, she found her home in a studio at the Millworks, an app presence in Midtown Harrisburg.

Wooden told TheBurg that she has been “barking every four years in the mayoral race” that the city of Harrisburg needs an office of arts and culture. Creation of the Harrisburg Arts District helped fill that gap, she believes.

“Clearly, something has been happening behind the scenes,” she said.

The app is “a great start” and a powerful megaphone for artists and performers promoting their work and their presence, she added. Going forward, she hopes to see more inclusivity, with the addition of smaller galleries, music and spoken word, and a footprint that expands into other parts of the city, including Olde Uptown and Allison Hill.

“If you are going to say ‘Harrisburg,’ it has to be beyond Midtown,” she said. “There are staples in the art world that we as a creative community know, but you want the people who are traveling from outside because they like to find those quirky, small, unique spaces where it’s not just all about, ‘Please buy my food, please buy my beer.’”

Visit Hershey Harrisburg App

The Beginning

The idea for the app originated with Harristown Development Corp. President and CEO Brad Jones, who approached VHH about developing it. The app sticks to downtown, Midtown and the riverfront because research by the VHH director of experience development found that the key to successful arts districts nationwide is walkability.

“We asked if someone is coming and wants to park their car and doesn’t want to move it around, what does that footprint look like?” said VHH Director of Communications Allison Rohrbaugh. “It’s not every arts-related business in the city of Harrisburg. It’s that walkable footprint that says you can come here, and you can spend an entire day or weekend visiting something that’s really accessible and really close together.”

Listed sites and venues also needed a physical presence with reliable hours and established websites to help visitors unfamiliar with the city “easily understand where an arts organization is, when it’s open, and what they can do,” she said.

Some of the listed organizations are VHH partners, but VHH membership is not a requirement, Rohrbaugh said. The list of sites “is always going to flex and grow a little bit.”

City Director of Economic Development Jason Graves called the app “just the beginning of what could be happening” to bring more people to the community.

The app and its direct links to the websites of listed organizations is “very cool,” said Wissler-Thomas.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s a miracle. It gets the word out there for all of us. All the culture groups do such wonderful things. There’s no denying that it’s hard just getting the word out to people beyond our members. It’s now reaching people beyond that.”

For more information, visit www.visithersheyharrisburg.org or just download the app.

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