Kentucky Creative Industry Summit Agenda

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Dec. 6, 2019

Clay Community Center
Mt. Sterling, Ky.

Need to register? Click here.

 

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Agenda

8-8:30 a.m. Registration and networking

8:30 a.m. Opening comments

8:45-10:15 a.m. Not Your Typical Diversity and Inclusion Workshop
Carmen Mitzi Sinnott, Artist, Facilitator, All Here Together Productions
Performing artist, educator and activist Carmen Mitzi Sinnott will ignite our opening plenary session with some of her interactive activities she’s facilitated across America. She uses personal narrative as a route for understanding cultural differences, guiding participants to embrace conversations about race, gender, physical challenges, socio-economic status, and more. In this session, participants will engage as community member as well as leaders. Mitzi’s approach of using Art & Heart support organizational goals of normalizing challenging conversations as a route to achieving positive change. Activities are designed to strengthen one’s diversity-equity lens and enhance understanding and connectedness among participants by observing intersectionality as a bridge to others.

10:30-Noon – Workshops

Session A – Let’s Talk: Furthering the Conversation on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Carmen Mitzi Sinnott, Artist, Facilitator, All Here Together Productions
Take a deeper dive into your cultural assumptions and how they may impact your leadership style and expectations. In this workshop you will examine obstacles, challenges and choices, through writing movement and discussion. These modalities, along with open dialogue, are Mitzi Sinnott’s method of digging into the layers that show our common ground is rich soil to plant seeds for acceptance and growth.

Session B – Ideas to Action: Taking the Fear out of Arts Advocacy
Jennifer Reis, Creative Entrepreneurship Educator, Teaching Artist, Curator
Learn the basics of arts advocacy in this action-oriented workshop! Participants will learn about arts advocacy at the local, state and national levels, as well as participate in hands-on exercises and activities intended to empower individuals and organizations to influence arts policy and funding. Session facilitator Jennifer Reis has advocated for the arts in the U.S. Senate, in Kentucky and in her previous hometown of Morehead, Ky.

Session C – Foodways and Music Traditions at the Mt. Sterling Small Town America Festival
Anna Kline, Allen Blair and Tracy Pearce, Community Scholars
Learn how three Kentucky Community Scholars put their unique skills to work at the 2019 Small Town America Festival. These scholars share how they collaborated with and presented music, songwriters and local foodways, and advanced the goals of the festival. Learn how the artists and audiences responded to the programs and about Mt. Sterling’s ideas for future festivals.

Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co. fosters arts, traditions, recovery and employment in Knott County
Doug Naselroad, Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co. Director
Master luthier Doug Naselroad outlines his pathway toward establishing a musical instrument manufacturing company in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky. From teaching and documenting eastern Kentucky instrument-making techniques, history and culture, to building partnerships and connecting resources, the Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Co. is now poised to put regional tradition to work, advancing positive social and economic change.

Noon-1 p.m. Lunch

1-1:55 p.m. Workshops

Session A – Unlearn Fear + Hate: A Worldwide Effort for Inclusion
Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova, Artists, Professors at Transylvania University
This presentation will focus on Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova’s cycle of artworks Unlearn Fear + Hate, initially inspired by a need to address growing American tensions around racism and nationality. Unlearn Fear + Hate has sought to promote public dialog around contemporary issues of identity and belonging through interactive engagement. The artists will address some of the ways Unlearn Fear + Hate has allowed them to connect with a variety of ethnic and religious communities, fostering connections between them, and challenging long-standing forces of discrimination and exclusion.

Session B – Social Media: 101 Things That Could Maybe Work
Shawn Saylor, Mediocre Creative Partner
While a social media presence is important, letting metrics and analytics dictate your every move can be tiring. Not all strategies work for all people, and that’s okay. We’ll look at how sharing work you’re passionate about begets more work, finding a balance between quantity and quality (in both followers and posts) and how to keep your finger on the pulse without going insane.

Session C – You Have the Power to Change Conditions for Artists to Thrive
Heather Pontonio, Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation Senior Program Director
This workshop uses the burgeoning Artists Thrive tools as framework for an interactive workshop focused on the POWER categories in the self-assessment surveys. Together we will discuss issues, barriers, and successes that will help participants locate a network of allies and partners in their work.

About Artists Thrive: Artists Thrive aims to identify the things that help artists pursue their vision and to enable communities to benefit from the arts in all aspects of life. Resources and tools within Artists Thrive help artists, arts organizations, and other groups that work with artists collaborate and craft meaningful stories about why art-making matters. Artists Thrive is driven by a leadership team of artists and diverse collaborators from different sectors and communities across the country and is supported by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

Session D – Imagining the Worst Case Scenario...Then Doing Something About It
Leah Hamilton, Independent Arts Consultant and Researcher
The popular disaster podcast "The Big One" has helped communities be more prepared by highlighting what artists and arts managers already know: powerful storytelling is the greatest motivator for action. This workshop will engage participants' imagination through detail-rich crisis narratives and provide tangible, practical steps for starting a disaster plan.

2-2:55 p.m. Workshops

Session A – “I Was Here”
Marjorie Guyon, Artist, and Patrick Mitchell, Photographer
“I Was Here” is a highly collaborative and community engagement-focused work that creates a memorial to those who were sold into slavery and seeks to use art to heal wounds of the past. Initially installed in the Cheapside district in Lexington, where slaves were once bought and sold, the project has garnered interest across the country. Hear from nationally recognized and acclaimed artist Marjorie Guyon and photographer Patrick Mitchell about the project, its origins, impact and what the future holds.

Session B – Pricing Your Art & Craft
Tim Glotzbach, Artist
Visual and craft artists with questions about how to price and value their work won’t want to miss this session. Artist and former director of Berea College Crafts Tim Glotzbach discusses how to accurately price work for the wholesale and retail market place, while insuring fair compensation for artists.

Session C – Grow Your Local Creative Economy
Beth Flowers, director, AIR Institute of Berea College; Vallorie Henderson, Kentucky Small Business Development Center
Get pre-certified for Kentucky Arts Council funds to bring AIR workshops to your community. This workshop will include hands-on planning for your first workshop including partner identification, event planning and marketing so that you can access existing funds available to host and implement creative placemaking projects for your community.

3-4:30 p.m. Closing Plenary

Equity in the Arts: Knowing and Communicating Your Value
Elaine Grogan Luttrull, CPA-PFS, AFC®, Founder, Minerva Financial Arts
Building equity in the arts starts with knowing your value... and being able to communicate it effectively. In entrepreneurial terms, we call that a “unique value proposition.” But all that really means is being able to describe your work clearly in a strong, empowered way. In this plenary session, we'll spend some time building unique value propositions together, and then put them into practice as you advocate for your work — and yourself — effectively.

For more information, contact:

Emily B. Moses
Executive Staff Advisor
emilyb.moses@ky.gov
502-892-3109