
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 28, 1994                   TAG: 9403290006
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BLUEPRINT 2000

"ARTS AND cultural life" is an awkward mouthful, but one with a purpose. To speak simply of "the arts" in the Roanoke Valley is to run the risk of implying that such contributors to Roanoke Valley life as the Science Museum of Western Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Transportation are being overlooked. In the "Blueprint 2000" project, they weren't overlooked.

But while the project properly adopted a broad understanding of what comprises cultural life, its geographic scope is relatively narrow, focusing principally on the Roanoke Valley and much less on the larger region that surrounds the valley.

There's a reason for that, too: Time and funds were limited; you have to stop somewhere.

The project did go outside the valley on occasion - for example, to tap expertise at Virginia Tech - and "Blueprint 2000" does recognize an arts-and-culture interdependence between the valley and the areas around it. Not only do people in nearby counties depend on Roanoke for much of their arts-culture life (check out who visits Center in the Square sometime), but there is considerable activity in those counties as well, with Tech and Radford University offering conspicuous examples.

That was recognized by a task force on the region's image; its members recommended that a marketing plan sell the region as a whole. One sign of the difficulty, though, is how they had to split the image difference: In national marketing, they suggested the Roanoke Valley might be a more readily identifiable term than the Blue Ridge Region (which could mean anywhere from Winchester to Asheville, N.C.).

It would be a mistake to let the project's limits - and the difficulties in naming, let alone defining, our place - keep from sight the arts and cultural importance of the Roanoke Valley to the surrounding region and of the surrounding region to Roanoke.

by CNB