(Photo By Flickr User Jim Forest)

Travel website, Expedia, is recognizing the city of Quincy, IL, as one of “America’s most Artistic Towns.”

Arts Quincy said the Gem City is the only town on the list recognized two years in a row. They said in 1947, the Quincy society of Fine Arts was established making it the first American Community Arts Council.

Laura Sievert the Arts Quincy Executive Director said,

“Arts in Quincy drive over $15.6 million in the economic activity sector and another half million dollars in tax revenues, so the arts are crucial to who we are as people and the arts are crucial to who we are in business. When the national community takes notice of that it helps us grow business, it helps us recruit new workers.”

Arts Quincy says the town values all types of arts including, visual, music, performing, humanities and creative writing, and historic sites.

Sievert also said,

“Not every community of our size has so many arts opportunities; how many people can say in a town of 40,000 that they have symphony, an opera company, a beautiful art center, and a theater that puts on these great productions? We really have a little bit of everything. It’s got that big city feel in a small town and I think that’s why the national media takes notice of that.”

(Information Courtesy Of WGEM-TV)