ABIMGDON, VA- Governor Terry McAuliffe announced that William King Museum of Art received $10,000 from the Virginia Tourism Corporation Marketing Leverage Program grant fund. In total VTC awarded $927,000 for 43 tourism marketing projects across the state to help increase visitation and revenue for Virginia's localities through tourism.
The grants are designed to help local and regional tourism entities attract more visitors by leveraging local marketing dollars, and impact at least 159 other statewide tourism entities. The local organizations match the state grant funds by a minimum of 2:1 in order to support marketing projects. This funding cycle, the local partners will match the VTC grant dollars with more than $2.3 million, providing more than $3.2 million in new marketing to increase visitation to Virginia.
William King Museum of Art received a $10,000 grant for its Abingdon Arts in Profile project. WKMA partnered with the Abingdon Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Arts Depot, to supply $10,000 in matching funds for the project, which will result in a series of fourteen 30-second marketing videos that will be employed by WKMA, ACVB, and TAD-both online and on television-to raise awareness of the visual arts on offer in Abingdon. Twelve of the videos will profile each of the in-house studio artists who work on site at WKMA and TAD; one video will highlight Abingdon First Thursday, the monthly community art crawl; and another will serve as a general promotional video for the WKMA.
"We are always looking for creative ways to partner with our key tourism attractions," says Kevin Costello, director of tourism and economic develop for the Town of Abingdon. "This collaborative project will help us to showcase Abingdon artists and art venues which in turn will help us to draw more visitors into town to experience all we have to offer."
