Just in case you missed it, last week the Madison Area Arts Alliance received great news from the Indiana Arts Commission that Madison has been named to the State Cultural Districts Designation Program. This designates us as an official cultural district, joining cities like Nashville, Bloomington, Carmel, Columbus and Lafayette. We all know we more than belong on that list.
As a board member on the Madison Area Arts Alliance, I was able to read the amazing application for this designation put together by Kim Nyberg and other members of the board. If you’ve lived in Madison long, you’ve probably noticed that per capita, we have quite a lot of creative people around. You can’t walk down the street without bumping into an artist of some sort. The application meticulously catalogs that creativity and reading it kind of blows you away.
The Madison Area Arts Alliance (MAAA) and the cultural designation include all kinds of artistic expression: fine arts, culinary arts, theater, writing, photography, music, writing and artisan/folk art. One of the goals of MAAA is to help artists in the area connect, network and foster community, so we’ve been hosting roundtables with artists in these eight different areas. I went to the writer’s roundtable at Village Lights and it was so great to be able to sit in a room full of local writers. We talked about the writing life in general, but also about what might be helpful to folks in the writing community here in Madison and the surrounding area. As a writer, building community is sometimes hard, and it’s great to have an organization helping to facilitate that.
MAAA is a relatively new organization, but when you think about all the creativity in our town, the possibilities are endless. I’m excited thinking about the places we might go and proud to have our community officially recognized for just one of the things that makes it great.
The website for MAAA is still in progress, but if you’d like to get involved, you can find their e-mail and phone number, here. Also, follow them on Facebook to keep up-to-date on art events in Madison.
Speak Your Mind