Lexington, KY - As Business Lexington continues this series of interviews with arts-friendly businesses, I'd like to welcome David Smith, managing director of Stoll, Keenon & Ogden Law Firm. Stoll, Keenon & Ogden is not only the $10,000 sponsor of LexArts' Gallery Hop for the calendar year 2009, but also a pace-setting corporation with their recent contributions to the Campaign for the Arts.
Could we begin with a general description of Stoll, Keenon & Ogden's support of the arts in Kentucky and in Lexington?
DS: Well, the arts are very important from our perspective for a variety of reasons. This firm, through its legacy firm Stoll, Keenon & Park, has been in Lexington for a century and now has offices in Lexington, Louisville, Frankfort and Henderson. For years, we have been devoted to public service and support of important community organizations and efforts, and the arts are deemed to be one of the most important. When our marketing director brought the opportunity to sponsor LexArts' Gallery Hop to me, it seemed like a wonderful way to support the arts, support the community, and important for the firm from a business development perspective.
How are the decisions about sponsorships and community contributions to the arts made in your firm?
DS: The firm has a marketing director, Vitale Buford, who is generally in charge of not only requests for support, but also to formulate ideas of things that we might take an interest in. She would then bring those to me as the managing director and to our executive committee, which is made up of five people including myself. We try to very systemically work through at the end of each year a budget for the upcoming year, for all of our expenditures of this nature under a marketing/business development umbrella, of which the arts are a component.
Stoll, Keenon & Ogden has been ranked third in the large-size employer category of the Best Places to Work in Kentucky 2009 competition that was sponsored by the Kentucky Society for Human Resource Management and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. Is there a direct link between your support of the arts and the workplace environment?
DS: I'm sure there is. We participated in the Best Places to Work in Kentucky competition three years ago for the first time and finished 20th; last year we finished eighth and this year third. We emphasize the strength of our culture, and a part of that is supporting the arts. We have a committee that deals with community involvement, and we make an effort to get all of our lawyers involved in one or more community organizations with, again, particular attention paid to arts organizations. So I'm sure while the strength of our culture that results in things like the Best Places to Work award is a function of many different components, I don't think there is any question that the arts piece of that is important.
Let me then turn to a concept that's been stirring in the community - that the production and consumption of art, in other words the creativity that's necessary for making art and experiencing it, are really essential components of a vibrant and forward-thinking community. That art, in other words, needs no support, but supports. How should this concept, in your opinion, impact the business community?
DS: Well, first of all, I think that's a true premise. I was involved with an arts organization here for about a decade, and I was always struck by the fact that, while arts groups obviously have to have a certain amount of financial support and we have to pay - particularly large, important institutions in the community like our firm - have to pay attention to that, but at the end of the day, that's not the most important thing, frankly.
I fell in love with orchestral music about the time I graduated from Georgetown College, and that led me, among other things, to join the board of the Lexington Ballet Company, and I think it was 1987. I was on the board for 10 years, served as president for five of those years and really just fell in love with it. I had a great passion for ballet (and) that still remains my favorite performance art, even though I'm not quite as plugged into that as I was then. And I think that brings up an important point that I've made in talks to various forums here in Lexington, and somewhat going back to your point about the support for the arts, that the money is not necessarily the key thing... By that, I mean I don't think it's enough for businesses in Lexington to spend money and just contribute to the Campaign for the Arts. For example, I really think that you've got to have people in those organizations that are passionate about the art form and actually want to be involved in the art forms, because I think if you just have a sterile cash nexus, as it were, between business and the arts, they're not going to flourish. In fact, they might not even be sustainable in that environment. And until you get people who have an appetite, a personal affection and understanding for dance, music, visual art, whatever, you're not going to create the thriving culture, ... as you suggested earlier, that actually supports business and supports the community.