The Calistoga Arts Center may lack a physical headquarters, but its vitality as an organization was evident last Monday when about 30 people in Napa County’s northernmost city joined a “town hall” discussion aimed at drafting a county-wide cultural plan.

Many of those who met at the city’s community center — most of them artists, educators and business owners  — said they’d been reminded to attend by Arts Center members who wanted to ensure a solid turnout for the gathering organized by Arts Council Napa Valley.

City Council member Placido Garcia and city manager Jim McCann were also on hand for part of the two-hour session, the fourth in a series of six traveling meetings that began in American Canyon last month and concluded in St. Helena last night.

At each gathering, facilitator Morrie Warshawski gently moderated a series of discussions on community character, the cultural landscape, residents’ wish lists and possibilities for action.

Calistogans at the Sept. 29 meeting seemed bemused and slightly wary that an agency from down south in Napa would trouble with their cultural needs.

“We feel disenfranchised from the rest of the valley,” said Kerry Eddy, who moved to Calistoga six years ago after two decades in Napa.

Arts Council director Michelle Williams reassured the group that the cultural-planning process — funded largely by the Community Foundation of Napa Valley — is for every city, valley-wide, as well as for the county as a regional whole.

Arts lack a permanent home

A translator and “whisper machines” have been available at every meeting, but in Calistoga, as in the other cities, Spanish speakers have chosen to participate in the language of their adopted home.

Arts Council staff learned that the “Casa de la Cultura” program, an offshoot of the Calistoga Arts Center, is helping connect Latino children and families with the arts through classes at the Calistoga Elementary School on Berry Street.

And Casa de la Cultura has big plans to live up to its name — House of the Arts — by acquiring its own facility, said Irais Lopez, president of the school’s parents group and a member of the Arts Center board.

“Multiple classrooms for music, dance, painting, ceramics — that’s our vision,” Lopez told the group, as her young daughter sat nearby with a tiny kitten sleeping in its carrier.

Trudy Bouligny, coordinator of the Calistoga Community Learning Center, said she’d like to see Casa de la Cultura expand its offerings to older children as well.

Right now, though, Calistoga artists of any age “beg, borrow and steal space,” in the words of Betsy Strebe, to create and display their works.

The need for permanently available studio and performing space is one that has cropped up in every one of the Arts Council community meetings; Strebe added that both children and seniors need arts programs.

Getting the word out about performances and exhibitions is also a challenge, Calistogans said.

The community center is useful for meetings; but as a practical matter, the one place nearly everybody goes is the Cal-Mart on Lincoln Avenue — a bulletin board there, devoted to the arts, could help bring locals out, they agreed.

Sally Manfredi recommended enlisting the Calistoga Chamber of Commerce. “They have a new director and a lot of new energy,” she said, but “we have to help them help us.”

Doug Cook, of the Brannan Cottage Inn, urged Calistoga artists to use viral marketing to attract visitors Upvalley, the way American Canyon and Napa residents networked in support of their recent open-studios tours.

“Tell five friends, and have them (each) tell five,” he said.

A crash course in Napa County

The city-to-city tour of cultural-planning sessions — which also stopped in Angwin last week — has given Arts Council director Michelle Williams and her staff an unparalleled opportunity to hear from the very different arts communities that make up Napa County.

“It’s been so fascinating to observe the different kinds of energy, opportunities and needs” in each part of the valley, said Williams, who added that the listening process has taught her “about the love of place people have for their communities.

“It’s neat to have my own eyes opened about why people live here,” said Williams, who moved to Napa four years ago.

At each meeting, the Arts Council group has displayed an increasingly colorful, interactive banner made from butcher paper, on which participants were asked to describe their most meaningful art experience using markers.

Blank when it was first unrolled in American Canyon Sept. 17, the banner is now crowded with drawings and comments, including reminiscences of “Working with Christo” and “Having my drawing ‘Cats in Space’ printed in our local newspaper when I was 8.”

Now that all six community meetings have been held, with Williams taking careful notes, Arts Council will digest the results and release a draft cultural plan some time this winter.

The public will have plenty of time to review and comment on the initial plan before it is finished next year. For more information about Arts Council Napa Valley and the cultural planning process, visit www.artscouncilnapavalley.org or call 257-2117.