Culture Builds initiative wants to pin down what’s unique about Tuscaloosa County

By Mark Hughes Cobb Staff Writer December 09, 2007

What is Tuscaloosa? What is the city’s culture? And why should anyone want to live here?

Those broad questions of identity are chief in the thoughts of the area’s leaders in business, government, education and arts, those who have stakes in the Culture Builds Tuscaloosa County initiative.

“People ask, ‘Can this be anything but a football town?’ I think it’s not an either/or,” said Sara Anne Gibson, executive director of the Kentuck Association. “Culture is those things that make a community unique. Culture is the Westervelt-Warner Museum, the Crimson Tide and Kentuck.

”Culture Builds is seeking to know how people can find the arts as involving and accessible as the gridiron.

The Culture Builds initiative is an effort co-sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama, the cities of Tuscaloosa and Northport, Tuscaloosa County and the University of Alabama. It seeks to bring area institutions, neighborhoods and amenities — from the symphony to the Crimson Tide, the bluegrass pickers to the poets — under its umbrella. More here.