Laurel Arts Council (LAC) Minutes for Virtual Meeting – Sept 13th at 6:45 pm

 

Minutes of Virtual Meeting – September 13th at 6:45-8:20 pm 

Preliminaries: 

In Attendance: LAC: Melissa (chaired the meeting), Alonté, Anjali, Angie, Bharati, Inka, Kayleigh 

City: Bill Bailey (Dir, Dept Parks & Rec, or DPR),  Cesar Cucufate (Dept of Economic & Community Development Coordinator). 

 

Minutes from June 2022 meeting were approved.  

 

Business 

September Election: New Officers votes /announcements; Term dates: Oct 2022 to Sept 2023. 

Chair: Kayleigh De La Puente ([email protected]),  

Vice Chair: Inka Patel ([email protected]) 

Secretary: Angie O’Neal ([email protected]).  

Treasurer: Melissa Holland ([email protected]) 

 

Non-elected officer: Outreach & Social Media Coordinator: Alonte’ Cross ([email protected]) 

 

Thank You!! Melissa Holland and Bharati Dhruva for your outstanding dedication and service as Chair/Vice Chair from 2018 until October 2022. 

 

Housekeeping – Organizing ourselves, Projects-vs- Committees, Archives, Google Drive access, Internal communication.  Update provided on Keri Fuller, who suffered a medical emergency. She is recuperating and has relocated with relatives in Virginia. 

 

City updates – Bill Bailey provided an informative update on City matters, current events; 

• Introduced Laurel's new Economic & Community Development Coordinator, Cesar Cucufate. 
• Saturday Sept 24 festival at McCullough Field is canceled. 
• Pride Festival October 8 – point of contact is City Council Member James Kole.  NOTE: LAC provided the art for a successful fundraiser for the event.
• Main Str. Festival October 15. Laurel Board of Trade (LBoT) has vendor booths for purchase.
• Farmer’s Market Lot (aka Quill Lot) – City CRA (Redevelopment Authority) has installed shade structure and picnic tables. LBoT is working on resuming a farmer’s market 1 day/ week starting spring; will offer the area for public concerts and performances. Could accommodate sculpture potentially. Refer to July minutes for details. 

Cesar Cucufate provided an overview of his new position. Added that he will be helping to

to shape future Art Walk events (see July minutes for details). He encouraged everyone to attend the Board of Trade networking meeting on Wednesday, September 14^th, as a source of information about local business endeavors, and for exchanging of ideas. Is seeking to discuss ideas for the Quill Lot.  He felt that collaboration between the LAC and the LBoT could lead us towards some very exciting events. He has reached out to BoT’s Director, Ms. Jody Broughton, to propose potential ideas for Economic Development Week in October. More to follow. 

 

Cesar also said that he is looking into obtaining an official state designation for Laurel’s Arts & Entertainment (A&E) District. His contact in the Md. State Arts Council is David Mitchell.

 

Outreach and Social Media –

Alonté provided an overview of our Social Media presence on Instagram and Facebook and proposed updating and refreshing our LAC logo/look.  For the latter, he showed an updated logo that preserves the original two tones of blue but uses a more modern font, into which he incorporated a forward pointing arrow. He proposed push notifications and more “share with us” prompts to increase community engagement, especially among youth.

 

Internal Communications –

Alonté showed a demo of Slack to organize our LAC email: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wjmH5qL3Ms. Here are the animated versions, he showed: https://youtu.be/nG-C-3dTjXA,  https://youtu.be/aqQjIdvFSNY 

 

Upcoming Events: 

• · 9/10 -Laurel Sustainability Day at Farmer’s Market Lot, Main Street 
• · 9/18 - Love Life Café' to host the LAC Paint-n-Sip Fundraiser, hours 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. 
• 10/15 – Main Str. Festival:  Angie will represent LAC as a parade judge.

Project Talks continues regarding Fiscal Year 2023:  

• · From FY23 city budget: 
• · $5,000 - Graphic Arts Projects  
  
  • Utility Box Wraps:  Kayleigh reported that the number of boxes available for art wraps has been reduced from 5 to 2, because of planned city construction around 3 of the boxes. She proposed looking at state-owned utility boxes -- which are in high visibility, city gateway areas -- as sites for 3 additional design wraps. She also proposed speaking to a second vendor with specific experience in installing utility box wraps.
    • Once costs are decided, a Call for Artists would be issued to solicit wrap designs, and an evaluation panel convened.  

  • Crosswalk painting: awaits further discussion. Refer to July minutes for early details. 

• · $6,000 - Community Promotions (neighborhood festivals, sculpture garden, wellness etc.) 
  
  • Anjali discussed ideas for a spring Wellness Day, continued from prior meetings.
    • Bill advised scaling back the event duration to half a day or less. He also cautioned about the expense of a site like McCullough Field, which calls for closing streets and having police and EMTs on standby, as well as requiring city clean-up. He advised LAC to piggyback on city events already planned.
    • Members inquired why the previously scheduled September Community Day in McCullough Field, at which LAC was invited to do a wellness event, had been canceled. Bill mentioned that the unforeseen high costs of a previous city festival ruled out a September festival.
    • Melissa offered to speak with Pat Haig, City of Laurel Emergency Management, about whether she plans a city health fair, as was held in January of 2018, 2019, and 2020.  Possibly LAC could coordinate a wellness event with her.

• · $2,000 – Youth Arts (School Art exhibits, etc.  It was agreed that Angie and Melissa would contact schools about projects.

Other Projects: Music for all – Tony to discuss at our next meeting:

• Holiday sing, all choirs in area - (Tony has funding for Pallotti and other schools/organizations to participate) 
• Pallotti Master Class Series – free for community, will involve nationally recognized musicians.  
• Arts Academy – music lessons will be free for 1-2 graders who cannot afford private lessons. 

Next Meeting:  Live, Oct 11, Gude