Thank You, City of Scottsdale, for Investing in Arts, Culture, and Tourism

 

Thank You, City of Scottsdale, for Investing in Arts, Culture, and Tourism

For FY 2026/27, Scottsdale is budgeting approximately $22.3 million in direct support for its principal arts and tourism partners, about $6.3 million for Scottsdale Arts and approximately $16 million for Experience Scottsdale—alongside additional City-administered investments in events, destination marketing, public art, and tourism development.

I am deeply grateful to the City of Scottsdale for its continued leadership in recognizing arts, culture, and tourism as essential civic and economic assets. The City’s approval of tourism-grant support for the 2026 Arizona Indigenous Culinary Experience reinforces an investment that benefits residents, local businesses, visitors, and Arizona’s cultural landscape.

I was honored to appear before Scottsdale City Council yesterday as the Arizona Indigenous Culinary Experience received final approval for a tourism grant supporting this year’s event, taking place November 21 at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West. The timing and setting feel especially meaningful.

Earlier in the meeting, Joseph Specter, president and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, spoke about Taliesin West’s history, its future, and its standing within the Frank Lloyd Wright 20th-Century Architecture UNESCO World Heritage property. For me, listening, his presentation underscored the importance of convening a contemporary Indigenous cultural event at a site so closely tied to Arizona’s architectural, cultural, and global heritage.

The Arizona Indigenous Culinary Experience will bring together Indigenous Arizona fashion, Native food tastings and foodways practitioners, chefs, cultural knowledge-bearers, and the Miss Indian Arizona Association. It is a gathering designed not only to celebrate Indigenous creativity and culinary traditions, but also to invite visitors and residents into a fuller understanding of the people, histories, and living cultures that shape this state.

As one of my favorite Master Gardener instructors taught: “Right plant, right place.” In that spirit, this feels like the right event, in the right place, at the right time.

A Record of Collaboration

My appreciation for Scottsdale’s tourism and cultural leadership is grounded in years of firsthand experience. While working with the Scottsdale Gallery Association, I produced its Gold Palette ArtWalks under a tourism grant designed to increase foot traffic and visibility for Scottsdale’s galleries. The work demonstrated how targeted public investment can activate local businesses, animate public spaces, and create meaningful cultural experiences for residents and visitors alike.

Over the years, I have also worked with Experience Scottsdale to promote Indigenous Arizona and Scottsdale in NYC with Condé Nast, Bon Appétit, and many other national and international journalists. I also work with them locally to support visiting and hosted journalists writing about Scottsdale and Arizona. These relationships matter because destination marketing, at its best, tells a community’s story with depth, accuracy, and respect while connecting cultural organizations, artists, hospitality businesses, restaurants, retailers, and visitors.

The Arizona Indigenous Culinary Experience is also a hybrid, year-round tourism and cultural initiative—not a single evening of programming. Its reach includes sustained media engagement, journalist outreach, strategic partnerships, and public-facing storytelling. This year, through work with the Arizona Office of Tourism, including a Native chef tasting at the Arizona Indian Festival, the initiative is projected to generate more than 23 million media impressions over the campaign and event cycle.

Why This Investment Matters

Scottsdale’s investment sits within a substantial visitor economy. Tourism generates approximately $75.8 million annually in City revenue. Recent reports also found that every $1 Experience Scottsdale spends on advertising produces an estimated $214 in visitor spending and $7 in City tax revenue.

Arts and culture produce economic value in their own right. Nationally, nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their audiences generated $151.7 billion in economic activity in 2022, supported 2.6 million jobs, and generated $29.1 billion in government revenue. Those effects are felt locally through spending time at restaurants, hotels, galleries, venues, shops, transportation providers, and other small businesses—as well as through the less easily quantified but equally important benefits of community connection, public pride, cultural continuity, and a more vibrant public life.

For an event such as the Arizona Indigenous Culinary Experience, the impact is both economic and cultural:

·        It brings visitors to Scottsdale’s hospitality, dining, retail, and cultural economy.

·        It creates paid opportunities and public visibility for Indigenous chefs, designers, artists, cultural practitioners, and youth representatives.

·        It broadens the public narrative of Arizona beyond a generic visitor experience by centering the state’s living Indigenous cultures and foodways.

·        It connects a globally recognized cultural site, Taliesin West, with contemporary Indigenous creativity and community leadership.

·        It strengthens Scottsdale’s identity as a place where heritage, innovation, hospitality, and cultural exchange can meet with intention.

Appreciation

I extend my sincere thanks to the City of Scottsdale, the Mayor and City Council, City staff, Scottsdale residents, local businesses, Experience Scottsdale, Scottsdale Arts, and the many people whose work and tax support make investments such as this possible.

Thank you for recognizing that arts, culture, and tourism are shared community infrastructure. They create economic opportunities, bring people together, encourage visitors to stay longer and engage more deeply, and help make a city memorable—not only for what it offers, but for what it values.

I am honored that the City of Scottsdale is supporting the Arizona Indigenous Culinary Experience for a third year, and I look forward to welcoming the community to Taliesin West on November 21 for an evening that celebrates Indigenous Arizona through food, fashion, culture, and connection.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey

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