Creating & Cultivating Belen’s Arts & Cultural District

The soulful singing of Daniel Solis got people dancing during the third annual Music Walk in August.

The whimsical and deliberate brush strokes of the paintings brightened the eyes of visitors during the Belen Art League’s Fall Art Show in September.

Dioramas and other models of what a proposed pocket park underneath the iconic Belen Water Tower were also displayed at the BAL art show.

Scary and silly costumes adorned the sixth annual Scarecrow Festival on Becker Avenue last week.

These are just some of the events and activities that have been happening in the Belen Arts and Cultural District over the past several months.

While the Hub City might not have the same aesthetic allure as Santa Fe or Taos, it’s well on its way to becoming the next art destination of New Mexico.

Home to a number of art galleries as well as many local creative endeavors, the emerging Belen Arts and Cultural District embraces and enhances artists and others working toward generating economic vitality for the community.

The Belen MainStreet Partnership — which is working to change its name to the Belen Historic Downtown Partnership — board of directors has been planning to formally establish the Belen Arts and Cultural District for a number of years and, by the beginning of 2025, they are expecting to acquire the requisite state designation.

“Our vision is a vibrant arts and entertainment destination for residents and visitors that is anchored in our local heritage and builds upon 400 years of developing our unique cultural assets ...,” the organization’s economic plan states.

While a couple of galleries in the Hub City have closed in the past year or so, Kathleen Pickering, the director of the Belen Public Library and Belen Harvey House Museum and one of the coordinators of the district, said the community is ready and elated for the future of the district.

“Arts and cultural districts are defined by the MainStreet America federal program,” Pickering said. “Because Belen is a New Mexico MainStreet city, we’re eligible to be designated an arts and cultural district.

“The benefits are that your promotions automatically go to New Mexico True, and we’ll be able to promote ourselves, our events, within the magazine every month,” she said. “It elevates us to a state and regional level. It also has some tax implications for being within a historic district, such as double tax credits for having property within.”

Pickering explained the former city administration wanted the area to be designated an arts and cultural district but there were too many hoops and ladders to go through.

“They had informal meetings — maybe 10 people at a meeting,” Pickering said. “Then two years ago, we started our formal plan to become the Belen Arts and Cultural District by following the guidelines of MainStreet America.”

There are a lot of moving parts that go into forming an arts and cultural district, and different state agencies are involved, including the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, which lives under New Mexico MainStreet, the NM Arts and the State Historic Preservation Office.

“It’s generating a track record that these entities can look at that shows there is an actual legitimate movement here; that it’s community supported and is focusing on what New Mexico MainStreet is leveraging local assets for economic development,” Pickering said. “The track record is there, and now the final piece — producing this cultural economic plan — has four goals.”

The goals, include:

• Enhancing existing local events

• Support existing, and attract new, creative industries and cultural enterprises to the district

• Support district revitalization and historic preservation through community collaboration and public private partnerships

• Leverage public investments in the district through creative and cultural programming, creative placemaking and vending opportunities for economic impact

Once the local program is officially recognized by the state, Pickering said they can then start on the three-to-five year plan. They’ve already sent out hundreds of emails, hand delivered hundreds of letters about having input in the district.

“We want everybody’s voice,” Pickering said. “It’s been a lot of work but it’s been a lot of fun, too. The process is what’s important to me. We learn from the community, and we have the opportunity to collaborate with people who they never thought they would.”

One of the people who has been collaborating with the project is Paula Castillo, a renowned public artist and art teacher.

“We’ve generated these goals over the last four years,” Castillo said. “We’ve had a lot of small meetings, a lot of big meetings — we’ve had a lot of meetings — and they’re not over yet, but we’re getting closer.”

Jo’l Moore, with the Belen Art League, who is also a BACD coordinator, said they’ve been working with the city of Belen for a number of years to enhance one another’s events.

“When the city has an event, we try to join with them and help them enlarge it and bring in more of the arts,” Moore said. “For example, the Belen Art League will stay open late or hold an open house for a number of city events held downtown or on Becker Avenue. People will have all day to stop at different places to shop or eat.”

PHOTOS: Belen’s Arts & Cultural District

The Belen Art League was established in 1958, and has been in the current location on Becker Avenue since 2003.

“Everyone likes to hang out with the wrong kind of people. Artists like to be together,” Moore said. “It’s one thing to do art in your cold, drafty attic, but we like to be with friends and starve together. We inspire each other, and that’s one thing that the art league does is give everyone a sense of community. It also gives them a place to show their craft, and we also provide classes and children’s programs. Our goal is to just paint the town. We want to be an important asset.”

Collaboration has been crucial in the BACD efforts, which Castillo said has been the best part of the whole endeavor.

“I’m really fascinated in engaging community and building resilience, both mental and social resilience,” Castillo said. “We developed great friendships and started doing these collaborations. Instinctively knowing that if you leverage existing humps that you get more engagement and it’s a better process and more activated and includes more community members.”

She said the children, too, have worked on several projects and exhibitions together at the Belen Public Library, and are thrilled to have a voice in the future of the district.

“I call the library more of the city’s convention center because it’s really a resiliency hub,” Castillo said. “Libraries are not just places where you can check out books; they’re places that people can engage a lot of different offerings for economic or social reasons.”

One project that people are talking about and getting excited for is a proposed pocket park underneath the Belen Water Tower.

Castillo, who is also a sculpture, has been heading up the meetings and conversations, appealing to the community’s sense of place.

“The Belen water tower is such a structural wonder and it’s an amazing visual asset to the city. Anyone you talk to are really enamored with it as a beacon to our town. A lot of people have a deep connection to it,” she said.

Castillo said it was interesting talking to the community and other artists about public art and the genre of art in general. She said it’s not just an artist working alone in their studio.

“It has such great potential for community engagement,” she said. “A public artist’s job is to corral all of it and it’s not just about the finite of that day, but it’s about all the befores, all the currents and all the futures and how to coalesce all that information into a visual piece. It absolutely includes how people feel at the moment about the community.

“It puts everything into perspective that community is not a static thing. It changes over time, and it has — I’ve witnessed it. It gives the community a profound connection with a particular place.”

Those involved in the Belen Arts and Cultural District have worked to engage the community and make sure that everyone is involved and their voice is heard and appreciated.

As for the proposed pocket park, Castillo said she hopes it will come to fruition in 2028, the 100th anniversary of the water tower.

“The idea of the pocket park came to be a devise to talk about public art and to include a deep community engagement about it,” she said. “Public art is such an important aspect in our culture — it’s a site of investment. With this investment, it’s much more achievable. This is our place, we can identify with it.”