The 21st century has not been an easy one for arts organizations in Napa County.

“Oh, gosh,” sighed Michelle Williams, executive director of Arts Council Napa Valley. “Just between late ’04 and early ’06, we lost 12 organizations,” including repertory-theater and dance troupes.

The real trouble began in 2003, when the state ended its practice of providing operating funds to regional arts councils, which used the money to leverage local contributions and help support local groups.

“It was a really good model, and then it all went away,” said Williams, who took over her Napa job on a bright July day during that dark budget year of 2004. By then, Arts Council Napa Valley — founded in 1980 — was down to just two staff members working, between them, a total of 42 hours a week.

“They were trying to still do open studios, trying to still do arts-in-education,” recalled Williams, citing two of the council’s core programs.

“It was a little desolate,” she continued. “People were saying the Arts Council would go away.”

Keeping the council’s doors open was a “real struggle” for the first couple of years, Williams said. Meanwhile, local arts groups were also striving to fill seats and fund their programs — and many failed.

In 2006, Williams and Terrence Mulligan, president of the Napa Valley Community Foundation, joined forces in an effort to stem the wave of closures among local arts organizations.

“We pulled together all the different arts leaders and basically asked them ‘What does this arts community need, and is there a function for the Arts Council?’” Williams said.

What emerged from those meetings was an ambitious, valleywide campaign to discover what Napa residents value about the arts, and how the county and its municipalities can foster a cultural community that both enriches locals’ experiences and attracts art-minded visitors.

The Arts Council conducted scores of individual interviews and held a series of moderated town-hall meetings in every city — plus Angwin — to gather comments from hundreds of county residents before issuing its Community Cultural Plan (online at www.artscoun cilnapavalley.org, where you can also request a hard copy by mail).

Intended as a road map for the arts in coming years, the plan is an ambitious one, calling for the participation of businesses and governments as well as local artists and art lovers. But Williams sees in it a blueprint for success.

“I’m incredibly optimistic,” she said. “The arts have a whole new awareness with our elected officials: The fact that the county board of supervisors elected to fund a lot of the cultural planning process really speaks to their belief in the investment of the arts.”

Barbara Nemko, the county’s elected superintendent of schools, “believes really strongly in arts in the schools,” continued Williams, who sees the opportunity to broaden exposure to the arts among children by partnering with Nemko’s County Office of Education.

Williams cited another promising signal that Napa’s cultural scene may be renascent: “I think it’s fantastic to see art exhibits again in Copia,” she said, looking happy.

Napa’s cultural czarina smiled again when asked about the path that led her to this rural county. A self-described “carny” with an honors degree in musical theater — “I was an A-plus tap dancer” — Williams sang and danced onstage in New York City, living in lower Manhattan and working in restaurants between gigs.

Then came Sept. 11, and the song-and-dance woman found herself pulled toward public service. She became an emergency medical technician, trained in disaster relief.

After a summer job as a volunteer EMT on a National Geographic-sponsored trek through the public lands of the West, she moved to the Napa Valley at the invitation of her father, conductor Richard Williams, who is cultural affairs director at Meadowood.

“Even before 9/11, I knew there was something else I was meant to do in the world,” said Williams. Stints at a winery and in the wine program at the CIA showed her that, much as she loved wine, the arts were still foremost in her heart, so when she was tapped for the Arts Council job (by New Level Group’s John Heymann), “it seemed like a perfect fit.”

Four years later, Williams is happier than ever in her first nonprofit management job: “It has ended up being the great blessing of my professional life,” she said.

Asked why the arts are necessary in today’s society, Williams had a ready answer.

“With the economy as it is and the world as it is, I think more than ever we can make the case that it’s important more than ever to support the arts,” she began.

“To continue to be competitive in the world at large, we need creative thinkers.

“We need problem solvers; we need team builders.

“We need people to think very creatively about how to solve the world’s problems.”

Not only is the need for creativity, and for partnerships between artists, businesses and governments, greater than ever; the arts bring people together when modern technology tends to keep them apart, Williams said.

“More than ever, those experiences that allow us access to each other are important as the world gets more and more digitized and global.”