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Hancock to host Rural Arts and Culture Forum
HANCOCK -- National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Bill Ivey heads a distinguished list of speakers and presenters for the 2000 Rural Arts and
Culture Forum July 7-8 at the Copper Country Community Arts Center and at Finlandia University (formerly Suomi College) -- both in Hancock. Ivey
will speak at 7 p.m Friday at the Finnish-American Heritage Center.
The two-day gathering of arts and cultural representatives from seven
states will be "Celebrating Sense of Place" in Ivey's own native Copper Country.
Raised in Calumet, Ivey has made arts outreach to
rural areas of the country an emphasis of his tenure since his appointment as NEA chairman in late 1997. A folklorist and ethnomusicologist, who is
also former director of the Country Music Foundation, Ivey has been invited to bring along his guitar for the evening of folk music and dancing
that will follow his Friday evening keynote speech. The musical jam session will be held on the lawn of the Hancock Middle School. These events, as
well as the opening reception from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday, July 6, are open to the public.
This year's focus on "Sense of
Place" will give participants an opportunity to explore their own areas' unique qualities and opportunities for cultural programming by examining
exemplary rural initiatives in Michigan and other midwestern states. Workshops and discussions will highlight how others have collaborated on
distinctive rural projects involving cultural tourism, artists and the community and arts and culture in schools.
Other forum speakers will
be Dr. Robert Archibald of the Missouri Historical Society, author of "A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community" and a
former resident of Ishpeming; Marquette artist Mary Wright; Barbara Carlisle, chair of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Tech
University in Blacksburg; and LaMoine MacLaughlin, director of the Northern Lakes Center for the Arts of Amery, WI, which hosted the 1999 forum.
The forum on rural issues and initiatives, which began in the late 1980s but lapsed in the mid-1990s, was resurrected in 1999 in northwest
Wisconsin. Representatives of arts and/or humanities organizations from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin attended
the 1999 forum.
The Michigan Association of Community Arts Agencies (MACAA) is coordinating and funding Michigan's involvement in hosting
the forum. Additional support has come from state arts agencies in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin; the Michigan Humanities
Council, the Michigan Traditional Arts Program and the community of Hancock.
For more information, contact Carol Thompson at MCACA. Call
800/203-9633 or email her at carolt@macaa.com
- Michele Anderson
July 9, 2000
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