I hope most of you saw the ad in our March 2010 printed version of Carolina Arts on Page 13 asking people to – “Be part of the Greatest Show in town!” by joining the Charleston Arts Coalition – Create. Unite. Inspire. If you didn’t see it – here’s a link to that page.
If you didn’t see our printed version of Carolina Arts – here’s a link to that March 2010 issue.
Carolina Arts became a member about five months ago and we think others should too. You can do it by just clicking this link. If you want to read what I said back then when we joined – here’s a link to those comments.
Who needs to join another organization? Who needs another item in the expense column of your balance sheet? Well, no one does – especially now. But, there are some expenses that are worth making. I’ve decided that joining the Coalition is a worthy one for me, and I’m not quick to jump in the line to join many organizations. I can’t make that decision for you. I can’t determine if this is one of those worthwhile expenses for you – you’ll have to do that, but first you’ll have to address the issue.
First, take a look at their websites – Charleston Arts Coalition, Charleston Culture, and their blog. Take a close look and see if and where you can fit in.
Do you as an artist, gallery owner, artists guild, visual arts organization, art museum, art enthusiast or art patron need another outlet to promote your activities? Could you use a little support by being a member of a group whose goals are similar to yours in these trying times? Do you want to make sure you are up on all that is happening in your field of interest? Are you a wealthy person or corporation which has exhausted your imagination as to where you can make donations of large sums of money to reduce your tax burden? Well, if so – joining the Charleston Arts Coalition just might be for you.
I know which category I fit in – how about you? Do you know where you fit in? Or are you out there in this big cold world all alone? Don’t be a loner – be a joiner and then become a worker.
In retrospect, what have I gotten from my membership in these last five months? Well, truthfully – I’m not sure how to measure that. I’ve been a little busy keeping Carolina Arts above water and this winter has put a funk on my overall attitude about most things – it’s been too cold and nasty to try and separate those feelings from anything else to make such judgements. But there are some results.
We have gotten some things out of our membership. We posted our info at Charleston Culture, which I’m sure has put our paper and related enterprises in contact with folks who may have never come in contact with us. I’ve made some contacts with a few folks behind the scenes at the Coalition, which never hurts – after all I’m in the business of information and contacts = information. Our membership shows that I’m not just a complainer who does nothing but back seat driving. And, the Coalition has provided me another subject for this blog – believe me – it’s not always easy to come up with a subject – you can’t always count on the SC Arts Commission to provide me with fodder. And, at the headquarters of PSMG, located on the eastern shores of Lake Moultrie – you won’t find too many folks hanging around the watercooler talking about the latest issues of the day.
Besides, the Charleston Arts Coalition is still very young – as is our membership. They have a lot of potential, but that potential is limited by the number of people who join with them in making a difference in Charleston’s art community. A community that is not always so user friendly.
Every day there are closed door meetings going on where decisions are being made that will let some people in and leave some people out. In these people’s minds the motto is – the fewer the better. The better for them. They may say they are there for the good of the all, but their actions say something different. And, be sure of one thing – funding – the mother’s milk of the arts is in short supply and shrinking every day. They may invite you to sit around the campfire to share stories, but they are only passing out marshmallows to a select few.
So why not join a group which wants to build a platform all can stand on – where you determine what you get out of it by what you put in. Who can ask for more? And, if you want more, well then you should be ready to do more.
When I joined the Coalition I promised to be a cheerleader – it’s about all I can do in my position. There is no time for me to socialize in Charleston, not much time for meetings or events – I’ve got invitations coming from two states. All I can do is make my pitch to the folks who seem to care about what I have to say and participate in giving my opinions – from afar, offering the benefit of my years of experience in the Charleston art community and keeping an eye on and open mind to what I see going on. I’ll do that as long as it is worth the effort.
Think about joining the Charleston Arts Coalition. Think about helping the Coalition make a difference in this art community. We sure need it.
Leaving the Comments – On or Off – at Carolina Arts Unleashed?
Sunday, March 7th, 2010I’m pulling the plug on my little experiment of keeping the Comments option “on” at Carolina Arts Unleashed – for the reason I never had it turned on – I don’t want to be a blog site administrator.
I don’t know if this happens with most people’s blogs, but from the start we got a boatload of comments – comments designed to make it look like they were comments about what I had written, but were nothing more than a promo for just about anything you can think of. (Is this a real job?) Some were pretty clever in going the extra mile to make you think they read the entry and some were so lame that the exact same wording was used by several people. And, all were very flattering to me and my “wisdom” or the layout of our page – hoping I would leave them up. I left some up for a week to show people what we were getting, but in the end only five people made actual comments and I knew four of those people.
I thank those folks for those comments and I hope they’ll understand why I don’t have time to deal with all the others. It’s a shame that some always want to take advantage of a situation.
Every time I pulled in e-mail I would have several comments that WordPress wouldn’t automatically post – waiting on approval from me to post them – all of them got deleted – you don’t want to know why. Another group would get posted and WordPress was just sending me an e-mail to let me know it had added it to the comments and what was said – most of these got deleted too.
If I left all the comments that WordPress accepted on there it would just look like a lovefest towards me and the layout of the page. No one’s going to believe that. I know I didn’t – our page layout is as plain as can be.
Why only five real comments? I’m not sure.
Was it a touchy subject which people didn’t want to go public on – maybe, but in some cases you wouldn’t know who the person is unless you knew their user name or real name – if it was given. Lots of people looked at the posting – we’ve got a system that can tell us how many people pull up a given entry – by day or for any given amount of time. That wasn’t a problem.
Someone told me I should have stopped posting and left that post up on top for a period of time, but I can’t do that – the blog is now part of the Carolina Arts communication system. There is too much going on to leave one post up for a long period of time. That person also suggested creating another blog for open comments or as a discussion outlet, but again – I don’t have time to manage that. My plate is pretty full now.
So here’s my solution. If you want to comment about anything I say – write it down and send it in an e-mail – like I suggested when I first started this blog. I can post it later. If that gets to be too much of a hassle – I don’t know what the next step will be, but the bottom line is – the printed paper comes first. That’s my job.
Basically, I don’t think a lot of folks want to make comments – real comments – comments that go beyond “I agree with what you said” or “You hit the nail on the head again”. Those kinds of statements don’t really mean much. I know some people don’t want to stand too close to me in a lightening storm – whether they agree with me or don’t. I don’t blame them. At this point I don’t have much to lose, but others do. And, there are some who just like to make their comments behind the scenes – never in public.
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