Delaware’s arts and culture scene is far larger than most people realize, including many Delawareans. Residents and visitors alike often look to Philadelphia or Baltimore for cultural experiences, rarely recognizing the depth of what already exists right here at home.
Yet as the First State, Delaware has fostered creative work since before the nation was founded. Its cultural offerings are distinct and varied: fine arts, performing arts, deep history, and working artisans, all situated within easy reach of the broader Mid-Atlantic.
The data shows the audience is already showing up. “In the latest report from 2025, we saw that 50% of visitors visited a cultural destination, whether it was a museum or a festival or an event around arts and culture,” said Jessica Welch, Director of the Delaware Tourism Office. “And the US norm is 31%, so that’s almost 20% higher.”
Delaware’s tourism industry is already the fourth largest in the state. “If we can tap into that a little bit and get those visitors spending money on artwork and on experiences that support artists,” Welch said, “that’s huge for our economy. It’s huge for the artists, it’s huge for the industry.”
Yet the old narrative persists, even among Delawareans themselves.
“I’m a native Delawarean and I’ve heard my whole life: there isn’t anything to do in Delaware. There’s no arts and culture in Delaware,” Welch said. “I think that it is so important for our state. We’re missing so many opportunities because of that narrative, not only with visitors but also with residents.”
This year, the Delaware Arts Alliance set out to address that disconnect directly, bringing together state and local tourism offices, economic development partners, and arts organizations around a shared core message. Neil Kirschling, Executive Director of the Delaware Arts Alliance, led the effort to bring those groups to the table.
“There’s been so much great collaboration over the years between tourism partners and arts partners,” Kirschling said. “This has really just been a way to formalize some conversations that have been happening over the years, and put on paper for the first time some next steps that all of these partners can take to help one another. It takes an awareness of how we’re all part of this ecosystem together — how tourism benefits the arts, how the arts benefit tourism, and how all of these things really help Delaware as a whole.”
For Welch, bringing tourism leaders and independent artists into the same room is the only way to build a brand that lasts.
“The Delaware Arts Alliance is doing a really great job bringing two groups together who maybe have worked in silos in the past,” Welch said. “Our tourism industry folks — the convention and visitor bureaus, the hotels, the restaurants, the museums, the art galleries — work really well together. And then you have the arts industry, the artists themselves, working on their own. Now the Arts Alliance is bringing us together, creating a consistent message.”
That message starts with consistency. “You think about New York City being the Big Apple,” Welch said. “But we know it’s the Big Apple because it’s been called the Big Apple for 30 years. So we need that brand in Delaware, something that we all can use and repeat it over and over and over again.”
DAA built the shared script to make that kind of repetition possible: a messaging playbook for tourism partners to use in their own materials.
“We’re excited to put forward some next steps that tourism partners can latch onto, like a messaging playbook — concrete branding you can use on your website and in your materials when talking about Delaware out of state,” Kirschling said. “It’s exciting that for the first time we have this very concrete language, and we’re all singing from the same songbook.”
The story that language tells, Welch said, is that a small state doesn’t mean small options.
“Delaware’s cultural tourism story is one of accessibility, diversity. You can spend the morning at an art gallery, have lunch at a restaurant owned by a chef who you can see behind the kitchen,” she added. “And then in the afternoon go to a festival, or see a live performance. You can squeeze all of that into one day. And we know that our visitors come back: about 85% of Delaware visitors are repeat visitors.”
For Itzel Aguilar, a muralist and 2026 Delaware Division of the Arts Individual Artist Fellow based in Georgetown, that same brand needs to reach beyond New Castle County’s galleries and museums, into Sussex County communities that don’t always make it into Delaware’s tourism story.
“Since we are the corridor to the beach, we would love it if we have tourists come by and support the local businesses there, and to take pictures and learn about the history and how we are just as important as any other demographic,” she said. “I want people to say, oh my God, we’re going to Georgetown. We’re going to go to this really great Mexican restaurant. I want people to feel excited.”
But turning that visitor interest into direct support for local artists remains an ongoing challenge. The CREATE Plan found that 78% of Delaware creatives and 75% of cultural organizations reported low reliance on tourism income, even though 25% of attendees at Delaware’s nonprofit arts events already come from out of state.
To bridge that gap, DAA built a discoverability guide to help artists get listed on platforms like DelawareScene, publish basic social content, and collect customer data.
Leah Beach, founder of the Developing Artist Collaboration, stresses that gathering those insights is the key to turning a one-time purchase into a lasting audience relationship.
“If I was an artist at an art show, I would constantly be asking: how did you hear about me? Where did you come from?” Beach said. “Because then it tells me a lot of information. A lot of businesses in general just don’t collect good data.”
That data is what turns a single sale into a relationship. “When you meet that awesome customer who just bought your print that’s from Baltimore: ‘Hey, so you obviously like to support art like mine, where else do you go and buy art?’ ” she said. “That’s a connection.”
Capturing out-of-state visitors is only half the equation, however. Welch emphasizes that local residents are equally vital to driving that word-of-mouth momentum.
“Our residents can play a huge part in being ambassadors for the arts and culture industry,” Welch said. “They can encourage friends and family who live out of state to come here, visit, and support our arts and culture.”
Kirschling sees that grassroots momentum as something the state can build on.
“We can build on this branding success and think about additional investments in tourism and arts specifically,” he said. “The state has made incredible steps in supporting sports tourism, because a turf facility that draws lacrosse tournaments means people coming to Delaware, staying in our hotels, eating at our restaurants, shopping at local stores. That same economic case can be made for the arts.”
The CREATE Plan lays out the blueprint, but establishing a lasting brand requires ongoing coordination. What comes next is building the infrastructure to support it: putting the discoverability guide directly into artists’ hands, capturing data that proves cultural tourism works, and ensuring that creative communities across all three counties are fully empowered to share in that story.
“I’m really hoping that people will finally see Delaware for what it is,” Welch said. “We’ve had a scene for, you could argue, hundreds of years in Delaware. It’s just getting the word out more.”