Uptown Partnership has been awarded a $5,000 grant from the Virginia Tourism Corporation (VTC) for a marketing campaign to promote tourism in Martinsville-Henry County. The project, called SEARCH(S)—Sharing the Excitement of Arts, Recreation, Culture, History and Sports in Martinsville and Henry County, will be implemented in partnership with the local government offices in Martinsville and Henry County. “We are extremely excited to receive the VTC grant in partnership with the City of Martinsville and Henry County,” said Kathy Deacon, Executive Director of Uptown Partnership. “From the Virginia Museum of Natural History to Piedmont Arts to Philpott Lake to the Martinsville Speedway, Martinsville and Henry County has an array of valuable assets. With the help of this grant, we will get to share the importance of these assets with our neighbors and this sharing will allow us to generate more tourism opportunities for our community.”
The two partnering localities will work together to produce a video series named “MHC Cribs” which will constitute the in-kind matching funds for the grant. The series will highlight various attractions in the area to be promoted throughout communities in regional markets such as Danville, Roanoke, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, and points in between.
“The ‘MHC Cribs’ series gives the City of Martinsville and Henry County an opportunity to highlight our community through a collaborative effort,” said Kendall Davis, Public Information Officer for the City of Martinsville. “Not only will it be informative for visitors, it’ll also be an entertaining way to introduce aspects of our community that could be overlooked by lifelong residents.”
“The video series is inspired by the 2000’s television show ‘MTV Cribs’ where celebrities would let the audience into their homes to showcase how wonderful of a place their homes were to live,” said Brandon Martin, Public Information Officer for Henry County. “So, through this series, we will be letting people into our home—Martinsville-Henry County—to show them that this is also a wonderful place to live, work, and play.”
Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced on May 2 that VTC awarded more than $2.7 million for 259 local and regional tourism marketing programs across the state to help increase visitation and revenue for Virginia’s localities through tourism.
“These grant funds provide an important opportunity for communities across the Commonwealth to accelerate recovery efforts and continue with their best-in-class marketing initiatives to attract new travelers,” said Rita McClenny, president and CEO of Virginia Tourism. “Increased visitation translates directly into revenue generation, underscoring tourism’s important role in stimulating economic growth and expansion.”
The VTC Marketing Leverage Program is designed to increase visitor spending by leveraging limited marketing dollars, stimulating new tourism marketing through partnerships, and extending the “Virginia is for Lovers” brand. Under the grant program, a minimum of three Virginia entities had to partner financially to apply for a grant. The partners needed to consist of Virginia cities, towns, counties, convention and visitors bureaus, chambers of commerce, other local or regional destination marketing organizations, private businesses, museums, attractions, cultural events, and other tourism-related businesses.
