Thanks so much to Candy Holliday for planning and implementing a great event! Thankfully, the weather was great for a fall day. Lots of individuals and families came and had a great time. Thank you to the event sponsor Penn State Altoona for their support! Thanks to the food trucks, the vendors, the artisan demonstrators, the musicians and the dancers who all participated. A big “Thank you” to the Ward Hearts & Hands who were there for most of the day to help out with whatever needed to be done! Thanks also, once again, to the guys from Pyramid Healthcare who helped with the early set up on Thursday (under the always great direction of our board members, Ken Decker and George Sackandy) and came back for tear down and clean up between the day time and evening activities.
A big thanks to board members Angie Yasulitis and Dutch Brennan (and his wife Cindy) who staffed the admission table for the evening concert in The Sanctuary. Thanks to Candy’s friend Danielle for helping at the ArtsAltoona information table, along with Candy, Leah (and me for a while) during the day. Thanks also to Christian Douglas, who is one of our CareerLink workers. He provided the sound equipment and tech for all of the performers, including his own band, Skyline Drive. We are also thankful to the dancers from Pauline Baker Rogers and to #IIGOTHEGREAT1 for performing. We very much appreciate Half Tempted and Jack Squat for being the first ever performers in our “Listening Room” The Sanctuary – you are now forever a part of our history! Thanks to City Beverage for working with us to provide the adult beverages.
A huge thanks to Leah Klevan our AmeriCorps member and Director of Community Relations – as Candy says “Leah was an absolute blessing the whole time in my planning and created some amazing promos.” She was also there through the day and evening and was ready to do whatever she could to bring people there and make sure they had a good time!
HUGE thanks also to Candy who deserves so much credit for creating her first ArtsAltoona event – which we plan to make as an annual happening! She recruited all the vendors, performers, food trucks, etc. She headed up the publicity campaign. She made sure we were “legal” with the City. She created the masterplan for the layout and made sure everyone got set up at the beginning and cleaned up at the end. She coordinated everyone and everything to assure a successful event. Thank you so much Candy!!
Thanks also to all of you who attended. Please give us your feedback on how you think we can make this an even bigger and better event next year! Just email us at info@artsaltoona.org and let us know your thoughts – and especially let us know if you would like to volunteer to help us with our future events!
Chipotle Mexican Grill Fundraiser
Don’t forget, we have our next fundraising event scheduled with Chipotle at 1600 Osgood Drive for Saturday, October 17 between 4 and 8pm. Check our Facebook page for the flyer and more information, or email info@artsaltoona.org and we can email it to you. Chipotle now has an option to order online for pickup to remain COVID safe. Make sure to let them know you are supporting ArtsAltoona and we will get 33% of the sales!
Learning Pods and Scholarships
Thanks to our very generous donors, we are able to offer partial scholarships for working parents to send their 6th, 7th and 8th grade students to our ArtsAltoona Learning Pods. We now have a nice mix of full pay students and partial pay/scholarship students, but we still have open slots in the lower level of the Education Building. Please help spread the word – some families may have been trying to juggle everything and now may be realizing that having their adolescents in a safe, social, nurturing atmosphere may be advantageous! We intend to continue the program for as long as the students are attending school virtually.
We have posts on our Facebook page that you can share on your pages or in any groups to which you belong. Thanks for your support and for spreading the word about this important service.
Planning for the Future
We are beginning to plan for our After School Arts Programs (ASAP) so that we are ready to implement the classes once students start attending school in their classrooms. Do you have ideas for what sorts of art experience youth might want to participate in? Remember, we define the arts broadly – visual arts, music, dance, theater, literary, etc. Do you teachers who may want to be involved?
Now that we have the space, we would also like to begin some classes for adults or mixed groups of adults with children – what do you want to do? Do you have any special skills that you would like to teach others? Please let us know. We want our ArtsAltoona Center to be alive with people enjoying learning and participating in activities. What can we do for you? What can you do for us? Let us know at info@artsaltoona.org.
Thanks for Supporting the Arts!
Donna Gority
President, ArtsAltoona Board