Having returned from this year's 6th Annual
Art at Work Month Symposium November 19 and 20 at University of Puget Sound, sponsored by the Tacoma Arts Commission over the weekend I'd like to give a loud and hearty thank you and shout to three superlative presenters on this year's program namely: Andy Fife of
Shunpike and consultants
Miriam Works and
Gigi Rosenberg.
The quality of this trio of professionals in an equally impressive field of speakers is of such caliber that if the local and regional art community were to have organized an Olympics-type competition, each of the three aforementioned professionals would have taken down all comers in their respective professional brackets and departed with multiple strands of gold!
Self-taught artists, scholars, arts community supporters and arts volunteers of any era are too long familiar with the long litany of public platitudes about the importance of the arts in our culture from leaders in government, business and other areas of the community in times of abundance followed up by irregular commitments, spotty appropriation of public funds and almost too common endless dry spells when the economy begins to contract.
Combine with a historically too short list of easily identifiable, qualified yet affordable resources, arts organizations can point only too many up/down histories of organizational anxiety as they try to navigate and make sense of more current and contemporary pathways.
The City of Tacoma, her governors, educators, businesses and citizens all can be immensely proud that the caliber of their art community, art businesses and support industries, has been so rich to offer attendees to this year's Art at Work Art Symposium such close and personal access to this stellar assemblage of three.
Shunpike's Fife has lit the enthusiasm of national audiences garnering recent attention on
Entrepreneur Magazine online for his work nurturing over 2,500 arts-related businesses and arts organizations in Washington State with solid financial foundations according to an
article posted by Randy Woods, October 25, 2011
.
It is a credit all citizens of Tacoma, WA that support for the arts, for opportunities to nurture innovation, creativity and richness of among residents of all ages have been deemed both a worthwhile and necessary component of community life. Kudos to the
Tacoma Arts Commision and its leadership from who only too keenly understand how an informed populace and a viable arts community slip seamlessly into the larger framework of a developmentally rich and innovative metropolitan future.
