In 2024, Marion Voices is proud to be launching the Cultural Heritage Assets Mapping Project (CHAMP): a participatory, community effort to map & share our prizes cultural, arts, & heritage resources, to collectively write the blueprint for future culture-sector investments locally, & across the wider region. Join the Marion Cities and Suburbs session at McKinley Park on June 15th!

Marion Voices‘ Cultural Heritage Assets Mapping sessions are open to anyone of any age; no previous experience or special expertise in culture, arts, or heritage is required. Sessions last for two hours, with an optional third hour that is a focus group for working community artists, as an accompaniment to Marion Voices’ Making It: Arts Livelihoods & Arts Economies in Marion County countywide artists’ survey. A stipend pool is available for both segments of the session, & will be divided by all participants who attend the full session & participate actively. Marion Voices’ values your time & this stipend reflects our enthusiastic acknowledgment that cultural resources planning is valuable labor.

Together, Marion Voices and community members will ask questions like:

• What important cultural, arts, & heritage resources did we used to have in our community; & what happened to them?
• What cultural heritage assets in our community are currently threatened; & what would protecting them look like?
• What cultural heritage resources or amenities do we not have in our community that other communities do have? What barriers exist to their existence here? What might building them require or look like?
• What cultural assets define our sense of place & help make our community & local landscape distinct from other communities?

These sessions will be held on weekends in June: mostly in open-air, outdoor park shelterhouse settings for accessibility. To facilitate discussion, concentration, & the camaraderie of a stable CHAMP cohort, plan to stay for the entire CHAMP session. You are welcome to attend one or several CHAMP sessions. Please note that each sessions will focus on the particular geographic or cultural/identity community described.

• Saturday, June 15th, 9AM-12PM: Marion City & Suburbs || McKinley Park — Y Men’s Shelterhouse
• Saturday, June 15th, 1-4PM: LGBTQIA+ Communities || McKinley Park — Erickson Shelterhouse
• Sunday, June 16th, 3-6PM: African-American Communities || MLK Park Shelterhouse
• Saturday, June 22nd, 10AM-1PM: Eastern Marion County ||Terradise Nature Center Lower Parking Lot
• Sunday, June 23rd, 3-6PM: Southern Marion County || Prospect Community Park — Good Shelterhouse

Note: If dates/times/locations change, they will be updated on Marion Voices’ website!

Marion Voices will produce a graphic-designed, illustrated “zine”-style report from each CHAMP session; & then will aggregate those reports into a larger Marion County Cultural Heritage Assets Plan: which will be presented back to participants, as well as to key stakeholders like municipal leaders, non-profits, & business organizations, along with a shortlist of Recommendations for Marion County Arts, Culture, & Heritage-Sector Investments over the next ten years. Results of the CHAMP process will also be used to inform Marion Voices 2025-2030 Strategic Plan.

This project was funded in part by an Ohio Humanities Ignite Grant.

Curious about other grants? Visit our calendar or browse our list of grantees!