By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The one of the first events Grounds for Thought hosted after the coffee shop’s founding 30 years ago was a concert featuring Indian music on violin and tabla. The beat has gone on ever since.
Whether its art created by Wicks’ mother, Sandy, who started the shop with her husband, Jerry Wicks, or art exhibited by community artists from pre-schoolers to elders, the walls and windows have showcased the community’s creativity.
The shop has served as a venue for musicians of all styles, from free form improvisations to bluegrass to psychedelic rock. Poets, fiction writers, and journalists have all said their piece in the place.
That support has literally spilled out into the streets — members of the Wicks family were key players in starting and nurturing the Black Swamp Arts Festival, and Laura Wicks, Kelly Wicks’ wife and shop co-owner, was one of a group of downtown female business owners who launched Firefly Nights Summer Festival series last summer.
The shop sells used books as well as the newest publications by local authors. It sells used records, as well as new vinyl releases recorded in house by some of its favorite acts.
That Grounds is an epicenter of the arts is well recognized locally. Now a national arts group Americans for the Arts has taken notice of what locals have long known, and honored the coffee shop with a 2019 Arts and Business Partnership Award.
The family-owned business is honored along with Nokia, Omaha Steaks, Warby Parker, and Northwestern Mutual. Previous years winners include corporate behemoths Microsoft, Hallmark, Scholastic, and Walt Disney World Resort.
The award recognizes businesses “that have mutually beneficial, innovative, and sustained partnerships with the arts,” the Americans for the Arts’ announcement of this year’s winners stated. “These companies set the standard for excellence and serve as role models for others to follow.”
Wicks said he was proud that Grounds was the only company from Ohio recognized this year, not to mention the smallest by far.
The award is not just recognition for the coffee shop, he said. “It really speaks to all the great art there is in the community. If it wasn’t for all the poets and musicians and artists that are right here in our own backyard, a lot of things Grounds has done wouldn’t have come to fruition.”
The Wicks family first heard about the award a several months ago. Declan Wicks, the owners’ son who now has a hand in running the shop, filled out the application. It covered the gamut of the shop’s arts collaborations. All the while, Kelly Wicks said, they were aware of “the heavy hitters” who had been honored in the past.
They made the cut as finalists, and then about a month ago were informed they would be honored at the gala to be held in New York City on Oct. 3. But they had to sit on the news until the formal announcement was made.
Still, he said, Grounds’ 30 years of supporting and presenting the arts isn’t about gaining recognition.
The family has a strong personal interest in the arts, demonstrated by Sandy Wicks’ ever changing projects, recycling old books or coffee sacks from the shop.
Grounds often hires musicians, writers, and artists, and students from the Bowling Green State University School of Art and College of Music as baristas.
“Arts are great for the community,” Wicks said. “It’s a part of the foundation for a good community. …
Creativity is good for the economy.” He points to the Black Swamp Arts Festival, a 72-hour event that “brings in millions and millions of dollars for business, artists, and musicians.”
Even he’s surprised when he looks at the figures. “When you start to examine the positive economic impact it has on a community … when you start to break down the numbers, you realize the huge impact the arts can have.”
