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SUMMARIES
The
Arts Assembly occurred in Charleston as scheduled on
April 2-4 following the program outlined in the grant
request. Both the Clay Center and the Cultural Center
were generous in providing their space and staff to
the Assembly as an in-kind donation. In addition, West
Virginia State University provided a graduate student
intern to handle all registration duties on an in-kind
basis.
The
Arts Assembly was a success; 143 registrants from 26
different counties in every region of the state. Approximately
60% of the registrants identified themselves as artists
connected equally with an organization or business;
23% identified themselves as organization representatives
only; 17% as artist only. Using evaluations returned
from working artist panels, we can determine that the
average career time as artist is about 18 years. Scholarships
were awarded to 66 individuals, many of them working
artists who, based on their responses, would not have
otherwise attended.
The
number of registrants was fewer than expected. Postulated
reasons include an inadequate state-generated mailing/contact
list for notifying potential attendees. The development
of a mailing list from Assembly attendees and an email
list for the Arts Advocacy Website are beginning steps
in rectifying this long term problem.
Attendees
were very serious about learning. More than 300 evaluations
were returned, full of information about what artists
and arts administrators, many of whom are also artists,
want in the way of training.
Two
themes emerged. The arts community is ready for training
and what they want is nuts and bolts information preferably
presented by people who have actually done the task
-- and done it well. They wanted more in-depth training
in virtually every topic presented.
Read
the complete final report in:
.pdf
format
or Word
format
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