REGISTER now for the 20th Cultural Congress - next April 22 to 24 in Yakima!
Spread the word - invite your colleagues - artists, cultural administrators (arts, heritage, education), arts workers, etc.
Learn what's on the Program.
REGISTER now for the 20th Cultural Congress - next April 22 to 24 in Yakima!
Spread the word - invite your colleagues - artists, cultural administrators (arts, heritage, education), arts workers, etc.
Learn what's on the Program.
Read on for session descriptions or download Workshop Sessions (PDF) for the session descriptions and bonus presentor biographies! Check out the Schedule and additional Program information.
Presenters: Charlie Rathbun, 4Culture; Shelley Brittingham, City of Bellevue; Eric Taylor, 4Culture; Keri Healey, Artist; Lucia Neare, Lucia Neare's Theatrical Wonders.
The site-specific program, facilitated by 4Culture, creates partnerships between artists, arts organizations and King County local arts agencies as well as businesses and other public agencies. Now in its 7th year the program has supported more than a 100 new projects reaching every King County community and resulting in hundreds of free performances for thousands of King County residents. A panel of local arts agency leaders will share successes and challenges of facilitating this innovative program that brings artwork to audiences where they work, live and play. For all Cultural Congress attendees who are interested in engaging artist in activating and enlivening public spaces and introducing residents to art in unexpected new ways.
Presenter: Lillian Pitt
Presenter: Sam Read, Theatre Puget Sound
This session is designed for Executive Directors, Program Directors, Marketing Staff, Board Members, and Artists. As budgets are squeezed and staff sizes are reduced, the benefits of partnering with fellow arts groups and community organizations are undeniable to increase regional and cultural impact. Now is the time for innovative approaches to audience engagement by unifying our regional arts communities around common goals such as engaging community, creating access, inspiring creativity, and building arts participation. In 2010, Theatre Puget Sound launched an innovative new program called Arts Crush ‐ a month‐long, region wide, multidisciplinary arts festival aimed at giving the arts back to the audience. Arts Crush has engaged thousands of people in hundreds of traditional and non‐traditional arts events by offering accessible programming aimed at providing new experiences and encouraging active participation in the arts. This session will detail the tremendous work that goes into organizing a festival of this magnitude, best practices for achieving success and samples of innovative events. Through both example and discussion, attendees will explore the benefits of partnering with local service organizations, other arts groups, and local businesses to increase regional impact through a large-scale collaborative marketing and audience engagement platform.
Presenters: Bill Moskin and Katie Oman
This session is designed for current and emerging leadership of cultural organizations that are addressing various issues surrounding generational transition. Are you a mentor or are you being mentored? This is for you. How did we get here? How is knowledge transferred between the old guard and emerging leaders in the arts? Through presentation and discussion, participants will gain a more complete understanding of the issues, as well as practical steps forward for individuals and organizations. Issues discussed will include, but not be limited to, the transfer of knowledge between generations, understanding what each generation has to offer going forward, the future of existing managerial and organizational forms and what needs to be discarded. How do we address new sensibilities in our funders, in our audiences, and in our volunteer leadership? Attendees will be encouraged to share their experiences, and to pose questions that will encourage and equip the attendees to move forward successfully.
Presented and facilitated by Katie Oman and Bill Moskin
This session is designed for all conference participants seeking a practical way to better understand and successfully implement sustainability initiatives within their organizations and communities. Issues of environmental sustainability are inherently multi-generational and cross-disciplinary, encompassing topics of management, governance, advocacy, operations, and even programming. We invite advocates, managers, policymakers, and practitioners to join us and share experiences, questions, challenges, and successes.
Many arts organizations are interested in “greening” their facilities, their operations, and their programs. Given the surfeit of information available on this topic, many remain unsure of where to begin, or how strategies may apply to arts and culture. We will look at ecological sustainability from an arts-specific perspective, analyzing the issues at multiple scales. What is ecological sustainability anyway? As nonprofits, how do we analyze and communicate the relative cost/ benefit of becoming greener? Do we harvest the low-hanging fruit and skip the red herrings? How can we modify our facilities and operations to minimize our environmental footprint while still running efficiently and within budget? How can we capitalize on grants and incentive funding available for green improvements? This session will explore a variety of sustainability approaches through presentation and discussion, and will strive to provide session attendees with practical, implementable actions that can be taken at individual, operational, organizational, and community levels.
Presenter: Libby Gerber, Program Manager, Artist Trust
Artists create our cultural legacy. This interactive and informative session will appeal to visual and literary artists and to the arts administrators who support them. Archiving and documenting works can seem tedious compared to its creation, but artists actually benefit greatly from this practice. With easy access to their own oeuvre, artists can seize opportunities. For example, they can:
• Respond to inquiries by curators, gallerists, publishers, etc.;
• Create high-quality work samples for grants and other competitions;
• Access images of art works for publishing and artist talk opportunities;
• Improve their capacity to accommodate studio visits;
• Inventory works in preparation for estate planning.
Artist Trust's Creative Career Center offers artists of all creative disciplines the support to launch and sustain successful careers. Through a comprehensive suite of career-training workshops and resources, artists are provided the relevant and necessary skills to achieve their career goals. Artists learn best practices in the business of being an artist, increasing their confidence and entrepreneurialism. While facilitating peer support and exchange among artists, the Center trains artists to be self-reliant and proactive in developing their arts career. This session is a preview to our new program: Creating a Lasting Legacy.
Journey Stories: Community Engagement Through the Arts & Humanities
Presenters: Ellen Terry, Humanities Washington; Sylvia Imbrock, Tieton Arts & Humanities; Ernesto Silva, Tieton resident; Pat Biggers, Tieton resident; Lynda Mapes, Seattle Times.
This session will focus on how a collaboration between Humanities Washington and Tieton Arts & Humanities created opportunities for cross-cultural sharing and outreach to the Latino and Anglo communities in Tieton. Participants included artists, writers, scholars and local business owners who created exhibits, public programs and shared oral histories. Hear about what worked and lessons learned from these partnerships.
Presenters: Kristin Barsness, Ph.D., CFRE, The Collins Group; Kara Hefley, Director of Development, Tacoma Art Museum; and Rock Hushka, Director of Curatorial Administration & Curator of Contemporary & Northwest Art, Tacoma Art Museum
When the Tacoma Art Museum leapt brought the exhibit, “Hide/Seek” to the museum, they knew it would raise some eyebrows within the community. “Hide/Seek”, debuted at The Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in 2010, is the first major exhibition to address the question of how gender identity and sexual orientation have dramatically shaped the creation of modern American portraiture.
In this interactive panel discussion, participants will learn how to anticipate, plan, and react to artwork deemed as edgy or controversial for its community, no matter the size or location of that community. The Tacoma Arts Museum staff shares how they prepared to advocate for the exhibition with donors, the media, and the greater community – all while in the middle of a multi-million dollar fundraising campaign.
Presenter: Jill Linzee, Northwest Heritage Resources
This session is for anyone interested in the ways in which arts & culture can serve to enhance (or partner with) economic development in local communities. The presentation of two different models for how arts & culture can be paired with economic development will be followed by a question and answer segment with the audience.
1) Arts & Culture and Local Tourism - This first model will explore a 15 year project that has involved multiple partners in the development of cultural heritage audio tour guides to different regions of WA state. We will provide an overview of how the project began, who the various partners have been over time, how the project was funded, how the cultural heritage audio tour guides were produced, and marketing and distribution.
2) Arts & Culture and Local Community Building & Economic Development – The second model has grown out of our Building New Audiences for Traditional Arts in Washington’s Underserved Communities project. It has partnered our organization with non-profit organizations located in small, largely rural communities in both eastern and western WA. The economic development mission of this program has several components:
a) To provide economic support for small underserved communities by providing them with free arts program series that are currently not available in their communities. Local non-profits receive new funding through admissions to art performances at their venues. Local hotels & restaurants get a new source of revenue from artists traveling to their towns to perform, and audiences who travel from out of town for the events. Opportunities are created for other local businesses to participate;
b) To provide artists/performers with new and expanded audiences for their art – often in communities who have previously been unfamiliar with them or their art;
c) To enhance the quality of life in the underserved communities where performances and arts events take place by providing them with arts events of exceptional quality.
Moderator: Jim McDonald, Paul Allen Family Foundation. Panelists: Laura Hopkins, Town Hall Seattle (other panelists to be announced soon).
In an era of unprecedented challenges and accelerating change, some cultural organizations are faring better than others. Following the release of a 2012 research report by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and the Helicon Collaborative, this session will explore the characteristics of organizations that are adapting successfully and the fundamental principles these organizations possess. In addition, through specific case studies and examples, the session will explore the strategies and behaviors of these organizations that may be replicable.
Creating Masks with Lillian Pitt
Presenter: Lillian Pitt
Presenters: Aili Schreiner and Courtney Yilk, The Confluence Project.
Panelists will present a brief overview and update of The Confluence Project - with 'before and after' photographs of each of the Confluence sites. We intend to show how art and environmental restoration in public places makes an enormous difference. In addition, the presentation will include information about the educational program, “Gifts from Our Ancestors”. This is a two-year art education program led by the Confluence Project and local artists and educators to engage students at Celilo Village, and neighboring schools in both Washington and Oregon. The multi-media arts program focuses on recognizing and embracing traditional art as practiced by Native Americans along the Columbia River and in special recognition of the cultural importance of Celilo Falls.
The goal of the project is firstly, to educate local students about the rich heritage practiced among the indigenous people along Columbia River and at Celilo Falls for over 10,000 years, and up to the present day. “Gifts from our Ancestors” builds a solid foundation for the future of the Celilo community by transforming arts education. Arts education is severely limited, or non-existent, in regional school districts. The heart of this initiative is to strengthen art lessons to emphasize abilities such as critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, respect, and collaboration. “Gifts from Our Ancestors” recognizes the vital role arts play in building a successful community through civic engagement, cultural planning, tourism, economic development, and creative industries.
Presenters: Royal Alley-Barnes, Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center; Jacqueline Moscou, Artistic Director, Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center; and Tony Innouvong, ILLAPHANT.
This session will focus on how to engagement discussion on strategies to identify, support and create authentic pluralistic arts environment for grassroots artists on the local, national and global levels. It is n is designed for emerging and experienced arts professionals who want to share ideas and challenges around pluralistic grassroots arts advocacy.
Military Veteran Painted Uniforms: Catalyst for Community Dialogue
Presenters: Rick Lawson and Valery Tolle
To introduce The War Experience Project’s “inFORMATION”, an arts program created by an Iraq War Veteran that engages other military veterans in painting onto camouflage uniforms and exhibits those in a 3-dimensional installation resembling a military formation to reveal aspects of their experiences, otherwise unseen, to the public. This program has been successful as a model for reaching first-time, artphobic art-makers. It also engages not just participants but the community as a whole moving them to care about the voice of those non-traditional artists and thus see art in a new way themselves. This program is a new paradigm in the way we view, treat, and relate to veterans. The wisdom our veterans return from service with will help our society move in a new and positive direction if we support them in that role. This requires a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we interact with them. Arts programs such as ours will help in making that transition.
Presenter: Liz Heath, Sound Nonprofits Consulting
Leading a nonprofit these days is more challenging than ever before, and the risk of problems in a nonprofit organization can be directly related to the effectiveness of the board of directors. It is essential that those responsible for board leadership have the right mix of knowledge, skill and manner of interacting that fits with their nonprofit. In this session, participants will learn the elements of Strategic Board Recruitment™ and effective development of the board team.
Support for the 2012 Cultural Congress comes from: |
| Our members |
| The Boeing Company |
| The Washington State Arts Commission |
| The 4Culture |
| Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs |
