A vibrant community

The community of Ely continues to impress. Experiencing this year’s Ely Film Festival, which just completed its fourth season, it was hard not to recognize a community that seems to become more cohesive and vibrant every year, and always with a focus on building engagement with both residents and businesses.
This year’s event was exceptional, with huge attendance despite a major snowstorm that came right in the midst of the festival. Despite that, many showings were sold out, and those that weren’t had only a handful of seats available. The community support and interest in the event has been noticed by filmmakers, who are increasingly making a point to not only screen at the Ely Film Festival, but to attend the event as well.
It all helps to generate the excitement that helps a film festival thrive.
As attendance grows, the economic impact of the event grows as well. The timing of the event is held intentionally during a shoulder season to maximize the benefits to area hotels and motels as well as restaurants.
Festival organizers make a point of promoting the community and its businesses, and they schedule nightly after-parties at a rotating shift of local eateries, to ensure the benefits are widely shared.
Many area businesses give back as well, helping to sponsor the event with financial contributions.
That concept of a community working together for mutual support has become a fine-tuned ideal in Ely. It was reflected, once again, in one of the short films shown at the festival, highlighting the tenth anniversary of the Ely Folk School, another now thriving venture sparked by creative Elyites who weren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and make something valuable for the community.
Last June, we editorialized on the years of perseverance by the Ely Area Community Foundation to create the “Community Hub,” just another example of how folks in Ely came together to realize a dream.
The film festival, of course, couldn’t have happened without the understanding by individuals with vision that Ely is a unique place that fires the imaginations of so many people, making its now years-long renaissance possible.
Sitting in Ely’s Historic State Theater, how does one not appreciate the incredible investment made by the Ott family, who turned a closed and crumbling theater into a real masterpiece through a renovation project with a price tag we don’t even want to think about.
It’s just how things seem to work in Ely.
Where there’s a need or a desire, someone just picks up a hammer or pulls out their wallet, and with help and input from their neighbors, makes it all happen. In the case of the theater, the Otts and the nonprofit that now operates the facility, have created a fantastic venue for a film festival and so much more.
We would be remiss, of course, to not mention that many of the short films shown at the Ely Film Festival were shot right here in Minnesota, and grants from the state’s arts and cultural heritage fund made some of those projects possible.
That’s an investment that Minnesota voters made in 2008 that has, since then, directed more than $1 billion to arts and heritage projects around the state.
There’s no doubt that the arts can be an incredibly important part of a community’s success, and there again, Ely shines with organizations like the Northern Lakes Arts Association playing a major role in maintaining Ely’s reputation as a community where the arts are celebrated year-round.
It really all comes together in Ely, and that success builds on itself.
Ely constantly attracts new people, many of whom come initially for the outdoor amenities, but who stay and grow roots because of the community’s vitality and quality of life. That’s the recipe for a community’s long-term success.