SCOPE for Wednesday, December 17. The Voice of the Cultural Community in Missoula

Today is Wednesday, December 17, and at 10:35 on this morning, 100 years ago, Orville Wright, achieved the first sustained motorized aircraft flight. He piloted The Flyer, weighing 605 pounds, on a 12 second flight that covered 120 feet a few feet above the sand dunes at Kitty Hawk NC. Brother Wilbur did a little better on a second flight that day. Wilbur died in 1912 and Orville sold their aeroplane business but tinkered on in Dayton OH where he did some aeronautical work while helping develop a racing airplane, a guided missile, an automatic record changer, a toaster, and children’s toys. He died of a heart attack while fixing the doorbell at his home in 1948, three years after a 65-ton B-29 Superfortress had flown a 3,000 mile round trip in 16 hours as high as 31,000 feet altitude from Tinian Island to Hiroshima where it delivered a 9,000 pound atomic bomb, another aviation “first.” You can relive the Wright’s achievement at http://www.first-to-fly.com or review a century of flight history at an exhibit in the Missoula Public Library.

General Interest items

#1a – John Hampton, a Portland industrialist, arts patron extraordinaire, and winner of the 2003 Business Committee for the Arts National Leadership Award, is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the January 16 awards luncheon hosted by the Missoula Cultural Council. Appearing with him will be Judith Jedlicka, President and CEO of the national BCA, with which MCC is now affiliated. In addition to its annual Cultural Achievement Awards, MCC will present the first awards to several Missoula businesses that have compiled outstanding records in their support of the arts here. The event will again be held in the Conference Center at St. Patrick’s Hospital where over 200 civic and cultural leaders gathered for last year’s awards program when a former National Endowment for the Arts chairman presented a keynote address on how culture strengthens a community. Tickets for the luncheon are $20 and businesses will again be invited to sponsor tables of seven places. Each attendee will receive a hand-decorated “culture kit” filled with information about Missoula cultural organizations, free tickets, and various “goodies.” Reservations can be made at 721-9620 and [email protected]

#1b – John Hampton, who heads a family-owned wood-products company that did over $700 million in business last year, made a $1 million contribution to the Portland Opera. But that’s not why he won the coveted national BCA leadership award and it was only one of many gifts to cultural organizations. He played a key role in establishing the Governor’s Task Force for Cultural Development and the Oregon Cultural Trust. The latter is expected to produce $90 million in new funding for cultural initiatives by 2011 and to build an endowment in excess of $100 million. He served as the Chair of the Oregon Community Foundation and on the boards of numerous arts organizations including the Portland Opera, Oregon Symphony, and The Pearl Arts Foundation. MCC will have more information on him posted on the MCC website, along with pictures of him receiving the coveted national BCA award in New York. To learn how the Oregon Cultural Trust operates, click on http://www.culturaltrust.org/

#1c – The notion that art in the workplace is not essential or “merely decorative” has been dispelled by a recent survey of more than 800 employees working for 32 companies throughout the United States that display art in their workplace. The national Business Committee for the Arts reports that a large majority of employees value workplace art for reducing stress, increasing creativity and productivity, enhancing morale, and broadening employee appreciation of diversity and encouraging discussions.

#1d – First Night Missoula makes its tenth annual appearance on Wednesday, December 31, with over 100 arts events from 1:00 p.m. until midnight in 35 locations throughout downtown Missoula, on the UM campus, and at Southgate Mall. There’ll be performances and activities for all ages and interests, including musicians, thespians, dancers, jugglers, magicians, clowns, puppeteers, visual artists, speakers, writers, and many others. Admission buttons are on sale at 20 Missoula locations at $9 for the entire event and a special family package. Over 400 volunteers are needed that day to serve as hosts at venues and to assist with set-up and tear-down of the event. For more information call 549-4755 or visit http://www.firstnightmissoula.org

#1e – Santa’s helpers at the Parks and Recreation Department will be calling children in Missoula today from 5-8 PM to find out what they‘d like for Christmas. You can find a form to arrange a call at http://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/parksrec and you can take part in the annual Christmas Ever Green recycling program by bringing your household Christmas tree off at Spartan Pool, McCormick Pool, Fort Missoula Softball complex and EKO compost, December 26 through January 12.

#1f – Arts Council England is the national development agency for the arts in England where increased public investment is being channelled into the arts according to a clear set of national priorities. Arts Council England has adopted a more modern definition of the arts and is working with artists, organizations and agencies across the country to maximise growth in the arts and to facilitate partnerships, both within the arts sector and between the arts and other disciplines.

#1g – Correction: Several readers noted SCOPE’s error in referring to the former Central Grande School building as a High School. It was an Elementary school, across the street from where Emma Dickenson conducted Missoula’s first public school. It had the only “shop class” in the city and all grade schools sent students there for woodworking classes.

The Art Scene

#3a – The MCC sponsored cultural tour to New Zealand tour that begins March 26 will include visits to various Maori art and cultural centers, including those in Palmerston North, Missoula’s Sister City. “Maori art is inseparable from Maori culture. It is like a living organism that exists in the spirit of our people and drives them toward wider horizons and greater achievement.” That’s the creed of one of those centers you can visit online at http://www.maoriart.org.nz/

#3b – As part of the Rocky Mountain Ballet Theatre’s December 31 First Night performance at 2 p.m. in the University Theater, the original painting created by Missoula artist Melanie Alvarez for the RMBT production of Les Bonnes Filles will be raffled. Tickets are available now at L.A. Design at 337 E. Broadway and RMBT studios at 2704 Brooks.

#3c – The Downtown Arts Committee is working on a weekly art gallery listing in The Entertainer to assure continuous coverage. A modest charge will provide listings that include business name, phone number, address and approximately 30 words about your event. For additional information contact Jacque Walawander at 523-5334 or [email protected]

Musical Notes and Stage Cues

#4a – A New York Times article yesterday takes note of new advances in the use of music in palliative health care. Herbert Spencer, the British philosopher and sociologist, said, "Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts — as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare." Recent advances in basic neurobiology research have established a close link between the brain’s hearing and emotional centers according to a neuroscientist at the Harvard Institute for Music and Brain Science, who notes that the effect of music on emotions may influence autonomic and immunologic systems in ways that affect and help the body’s natural responses to disease.

#4b – For 64 years the Metropolitan Opera has been broadcast on radio every Saturday afternoon — including KUFM in Missoula — while the company was in season. But this season may be the last. The broadcasts have been a cultural lifeline for generations of listeners, both those who live in places far removed from any opera company and those who may live just a subway ride from Lincoln Center but can’t afford to attend. They are carried by some 365 stations in the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, South America, 27 European countries, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, reaching, according to the opera company’s most recent survey, an estimated total of more than 11 million. The Met has been unable to obtain a new sponsor to pick up the annual $7 million cost of the broadcasts, an amount that even the most middlin’ baseball or football “star” can command.

Cultural Tourism Directions

#5a – The Garnet Preservation Association has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant in Local History for the creation of an endowment fund. The grant provides for a 50/50 match of $120,000 over 3 years. The mission of the Garnet Preservation Association is to protect, preserve and interpret the Garnet Historic District, and to assist the Bureau of Land Management in their management of the site, which you can visit online at http://www.garnetghosttown.org

#5b – The National Park Service recently announced that eighteen Montana communities and Tribes were selected to host the Corps of Discovery II traveling exhibit that tells the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Missoula will have it June 21-25 in 2006, just prior to the July 6 date when Meriwether Lewis came through present-day Missoula on his return journey. Starting on May 6 in Wolf Point, the 2005 route will take wander westward through the state and arrive in Lolo on September 8.

The Creative Community

#6a – All the seats were filled again at the second Missoula Creative Clusters Roundtable last Friday with participants from half a dozen communities present to learn how Missoula is implementing the economic development plan adopted by the state of Montana following its economic development summit last May. The Missoula Cultural Council, which is collaborating with the Montana Associated Technology Roundtables in organizing the monthly sessions, has created a Creative Community section on its website where you can post comments and questions about how the creative cluster concept can work in Missoula. You can also post your business card to let other creative types know your interests and resources. Take a look at http://www.missoulacultural.org/PBLang/

#6b – While Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class is the bellwether of the movement to use community cultural assets as a means of economic development, the work of Dr. John Eger at San Diego State University has broader applications. As noted some months ago in SCOPE, he has published The Creative Community: Forging the Links Between Art, Culture, Commerce & Community, which recognizes the importance of art and culture to a vibrant economy and society, and that creativity must manifest itself in all its forms — in the workplace, in the schools, and in our communities — to create a learning, caring society. You can get his manifesto at http://www.smartcommunities.org/

#6c – The December 11 New York Times headlined an article “On a Hunt for Ways to Put Sex in the City.”

It was about the continuing efforts in Memphis TN to draw the “Creative Class” to that community. “To help recruiters, volunteers from Mpact Memphis take visiting job applicants or summer interns around the city — not just to the tourist mecca of Beale Street, but to ethnic restaurants, art galleries and other less obvious spots. To encourage entrepreneurs, the city helped finance a business incubator called Emerge Memphis, where 21 startup companies receive subsidized rents and free professional advice. The incubator is near the arts district. The city also adopted plans for greenbelts and bike trails along the Mississippi to appeal to active young adults.

#6d – Clearwater FL is one of the many communities scrambling to join the Creative Community movement and recently created a cultural affairs department within its city government. A staffer called MCC yesterday to get an update on what’s going on in Missoula. She’ll now get SCOPE weekly.

The Cultural Environment

#7a – The B-29 bomber mentioned above is one of 200 historic aircraft in the new Smithsonian aviation museum. After it flew to Hiroshima 42 years after Orville Wright first flew at Kitty Hawk, the Enola Gay became something of a cause celebre for all sorts of people. There was a ruckus when parts of it were exhibited at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Some objected to the heavy emphasis on the destruction it had caused. The new exhibit is drawing fire from those who say it doesn’t emphasize that point. At the same time the historic aerobatic plane that carried a Budweiser beer logo on all its flights is the object of protesters who regard it as a sudsy endorsement of commercial product, and a bad one at that.

#7b – As to the annual purge of anything religious in public Christmas displays, there’s no room here to get into that topic.

Finally, as a parting thought pundit Eleanor Clift in Newsweek magazine wrote that “Cultural issues have animated our politics for the last forty years.” Wow! What a great discovery! What a profound observation!

MARK at MCC