June Letter from the Board

The work of ArtsAltoona continues at a breathtaking pace!  Make Music Day Altoona! ART JIVE TWO! Numerous grant applications! Website/calendar/Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/YouTube ArtsAltoona Talks/Newsletter/WRTA’s The 11th Hour with Doug Herendeen. ASAP – After School Arts Program. Studio Arts Center. We’ve been very busy and we can use your help!

Huge thanks to Mike Holzer and Shasta Langenbacher for their work on behalf of ArtsAltoona to organize this  event for the first time in the area. Make Music Day is an international free celebration of music. There are more than 1000 communities in 120 countries participating annually on the Summer Solstice, June 21. The concept is to make any sort of music available to anyone and everyone. Thanks to the venues who participated – the Altoona Area Public Library, the Bellwood Area Public Library, the Hollidaysburg Area Public Library, Green Bean Coffee House, the Buccinese Club, Lakemont Park, the Lutheran Home and Heritage Plaza in downtown Altoona (tied in with the PA Roundhouse Rally). Thanks also to all of the performers, especially the Allegheny Ukulele Kollective who did three different performances in two different locations! Please check the website for the complete listing of all who performed.

The planning is well underway for our upcoming big fundraiser thanks to Angie Yasulitis and Chuck Prijatelj our event co-chairs and their whole committee of volunteers. The date is Sunday, August 18th from 5 to 9pm at Heritage Plaza and on Eleventh Avenue like last year. A single ticket is $85 and a pair of tickets is $150. The theme is Paint the Town so wear your most colorful outfit and come to enjoy the food, drinks, entertainment and art. If you would like to help with the event, please reach out to me and I will put you in touch with Angie.

We have been hard at work over the past couple of months writing numerous grant applications. We applied to the United Way of Blair County for $2500 to fund a session of ASAP, our After School Arts Program. We have been informed that we will receive $1000, so we will need some sponsorship funding to supplement the grant dollars. We submitted a similar application to the Central PA Community Foundation but were just informed this week that they received a very high number of requests and we will not receive any funds from them for this year.  We also submitted applications to Sam’s Club/Walmart, M&T Bank and Operation Our Town for ASAP. More recently we made a proposal to the PA Rural Arts Alliance for funding for a stART here type event for next Spring to be planned and produced in partnership with the Sheetz Fellows. We are now finalizing a Letter of Interest to the PA Council on the Arts new Creative Communities Initiative. It is a very exciting opportunity for ArtsAltoona and the area.

Our newly updated website is being finalized. Please check it out and let us know what you think. Big thanks to Michael DePiro and his staff and our Marketing Chair, Kim Aboud for their great work to make this happen. Have you noticed that there are a LOT more events on our website calendar (also attached to this newsletter)? We have had a wonderful assistant, Makala Doyle, a Penn State Altoona Sheetz Fellow, who has been harvesting events from numerous arts, culture, history and heritage sites and posting them on the calendar to maximize its use and effectiveness.

Thanks to Doug Herendeen and the management at WRTA radio for making an hour time slot available to us on Doug’s show the 11th Hour each month to promote our work and to interview an artist or a representative of an arts organization.  Our visionary leader, George Sackandy, is usually the ArtsAltoona host, but this month I had the opportunity to participate in interviewing Marie Little, President of the Hollidaysburg Area Arts Council. Marie and I have known each other for 40 years in many different capacities in the community.  Their Arts Council sponsors many concerts and events in Hollidaysburg. You can find their info at www.hollidaysburgartscouncil.com  Watch our Facebook page for a link to the interview. Speaking of our Facebook page, we now have over 2500 Following us! Please invite your friends to Like and Follow us.

Thanks, as always, to Tiffany Stuckey for her interviewing skills in our YouTube channel shows ArtsAltoona Talks. Thanks also to Draper Brown who is our videographer for his very professional work on our behalf. Kim Aboud puts in a lot of time “herding cats” to get everyone scheduled at the same time and place! Please follow our channel and/or watch the interviews on our website www.artsaltoona.org.

Thanks to Annie Bickel our Education Committee Chair and KT Huckabee, Instructor, the Art in Motion session of classes wrapped up with a small reception with the program planned by the students. All who attended very much enjoyed the performances. Those who had seen these students at the beginning and the end of the session were very impressed with the growth in the individual students’ ability and behavior! Congrats to all!

Up next is a Summer Camp at Evergreen Manor for 5th to 9th graders. It is to take place July 8th to 12th from 10am to 12:30pm. Our Instructor for this session is Jenn Binus. We are working closely with Shannon Moyer, Service Coordinator at Evergreen to recruit the students.

Clean out work is continuing at the former Kress building slowly but surely. We have potentially secured funding for summer youth employment through CareerLink, but unfortunately, the couple students who had signed up initially failed to complete the necessary paperwork. If you know of any young people looking for summer work who would be interested in tearing out walls, please have them contact us at info@artsaltoona.org.

Help wanted and most welcomed

If you would be interested in helping us with any of these projects, please get in touch with us at the email above. We have a lot of great volunteers, but we can always use more!

Enjoy your summer!

Donna