Statewide Arts Conference:
Celebrating Our Past and Connecting Our Future!
Keynote Speaker: Donna Walker-Kuhne
Walker International Communications Group
Acknowledged as the nation's foremost expert on audience diversification, Donna Walker-Kuhne has devoted her professional career to increasing the accessibility and connection to the arts by our nation's rapidly growing multicultural population.
Walker-Kuhne has spent the last 20 years developing and refining the principles of audience development with such success as both the Broadway and national touring productions of Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk, as well as transforming the audiences at one of the country's most visible arts institutions, New York's Public Theater. As the former director of marketing and audience development, Walker-Kuhne originated a range of audience development activities for children, students and adults throughout New York City.
Since 1984, Walker-Kuhne has been president of Walker International Communications Group, providing marketing consultation to arts organizations, performing and visual artists, dance companies, Broadway and off-Broadway productions, and nonprofit groups.
Walker-Kuhne's book, Invitation to the Party – Building Bridges to the Arts Culture and Community, describes her strategies and methods to engage diverse communities as participants for arts and culture. The book is a practical and inspirational guide on ways to invite, engage and partner with culturally diverse communities and enfranchising those communities into the fabric of arts and culture in the U.S.
Manager
Tourism Partnership Fund
South Carolina Parks, Recreation and Tourism
Gale Bivines serves as the grants manager who oversees a $4.6 million budget for the Tourism Partnership Fund. This reimbursement grant program is designed to assist nonprofit organizations with their marketing efforts by branding South Carolina as a preferred travel destination.
Cultural Director
City of Sumter
Booth Chilcutt has been involved in arts programming and administration for the past ten years. After 30 years of service with the SC Forestry Commission, Chilcutt made a major career change which reflected his love of the visual and performing arts. Since his retirement in 1996, Chilcutt has worked as technical director for the Sumter Community Theatre, as co-director for Scriptwriters of SC, as a board member of the SC Presenters Network, as executive director of the Sumter County Gallery of Art, as commissioner with the Sumter County Cultural Commission, and currently as cultural director for the city of Sumter.
A career highlight has been working as co-director of Sumter's annual accessibility public-art project. In this capacity Chilcutt has witnessed the project grow from a local grassroots event into an internationally recognized public art exhibition which has featured the work of more than 150 regional, national and international artists. During 2005-2006 Booth attempted to export the "accessibility" concept to Columbia, SC. The Main Street Columbia project received mixed reviews and proved to be an interesting, albeit challenging, public-art experiment.
Vice President of Policy and Research
Randy Cohen is vice president of Policy and Research at Americans for the Arts — the national organization advancing the arts in America. Cohen produced the two benchmark economic studies of the U.S. arts industry — Creative Industries: Business & Employment in the Arts, a research and mapping study of the nation's arts businesses using Dun & Bradstreet data; and Arts & Economic Prosperity, the most comprehensive economic impact study of nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences ever conducted. He established the Institute for Community Development and the Arts, which researches and publishes how the arts address social, educational, and economic development issues; edits the award-winning Monograph series; and publishes numerous reports about local arts agencies, united arts funds, arts education, and public- and private-sector support for the arts.
Cohen worked in partnership with the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities to produce Coming Up Taller — the White House report documenting 225 arts programs for at-risk youth — and with the U.S. Department of Justice to produce the YouthARTS Project, the first national study to statistically document the impact of arts programs on at-risk youth.
Cohen is a spokesman for Americans for the Arts on arts research and policy issues. He regularly appears in arts news stories in publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, as well as on television on the BBC and CNN networks.
Executive Director
Gerri Combs has served as executive director of the Southern Arts Federation since 2005. She joined SAF after a 10-year service as executive director of the Kentucky Arts Council.
After completing her undergraduate studies at Marshall University and graduate studies at the University of Kentucky, Combs began an extensive career in the field of arts administration and education. Over the past 30 years, she has worked as a public school teacher, local arts council director, facility manager, presenter, programmer and consultant.
Combs has held the positions of regional coordinator for the Kentucky Arts Council based in Frankfort, Kentucky; education director for the J.B. Speed Museum, and deputy director of the Galef Institute-Kentucky Collaborative for Teaching and Learning, both in Louisville, Kentucky. She has served as consultant and panelist with the National Endowment for the Arts and other national, state and regional organizations.
Program Director for Contemporary Arts and New Initiatives
David Dombrosky is the Program Director for Contemporary Arts and New Initiatives at the Southern Arts Federation, where he designs and manages both regional and national programs in the visual, performing, media and literary arts. Since 1999, he has led the Federation in its adoption of changing technologies and development of online services.
Dombrosky serves on the board of directors for the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture and writes for the Technology in the Arts blog established by Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Arts Management and Technology. In addition to receiving the 2007 Emerging Arts Leader Award from Americans for the Arts, he is the current Chair of Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Council. He holds a Master of Arts in Communication Studies as well as a Bachelor of Arts in both Psychology and Speech Communications from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Executive Director
South Carolina Association of Nonprofit Organizations (SCANPO)
Hardy serves as the chief executive of the state's only nonprofit association working to serve, support, and strengthen the sector by providing resources, trainings and public policy advocacy.
Hardy raises significant support from local, regional and national sources to develop capacity-building programs for nonprofit organizations. SCANPO is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2007 and annually serves more than 800 member organizations representing some 20,000 staff members and volunteers.
A graduate of The University of the South in Sewanee, TN, Hardy previously served as the executive director of the Tuomey Foundation in Sumter and the Newberry Hospital Foundation where he initiated record-breaking annual giving campaigns and special events and drafted multiple successful grants. In addition to his foundation experience, Hardy has served as the director of public relations for Nexsen Pruet law firm and as a director of government relations for the South Carolina Hospital Association.
Director
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Travel & Tourism Industry Center
International Tourism Research Institute
China Tourism Group
Author, lecturer, research, consultant, and traveler, Dr. Rich Harrill is director of the International Tourism Research Institute at the University of South Carolina, School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management. He also directs the university's Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Travel & Tourism Industry Center. The institute provides both local and international projects and research while the center focuses on U.S. tourism industry competitiveness. His academic and professional experience combines tourism with economic development and urban planning, giving him an uncommon perspective on and familiarity with all three.
A native of Gaffney, SC, Dr. Harrill has conducted research in tourism planning and development, destination management and marketing, and economic development. His professional work includes recreation and open space planning, land use and comprehensive planning, environmental planning, citizen participation, and survey research. Also, he has taught university-level courses on tourism planning and policy; community tourism development; international and national resort development; behavioral aspects of parks, recreation, and tourism management; environmental planning; and planning theory.
Dr. Harrill earned his Ph.D. in parks, recreation, and tourism management and his master's degree in city and regional planning from Clemson University. He holds as B.A. in political science from the College of Charleston. He has published his research in the Journal of American Planning Association, Journal of Planning Education and Literature, and Journal of Planning Literature. In 2003, he authored Guide to Best Practices in Tourism and Destination Management (American Hotel & Lodging Association), with a second volume published in 2005. Dr. Harrill is editor of Fundamentals of Destination Management (American Hotel & Lodging Association, 2005), the first comprehensive textbook for the destination management industry.
Information Technology Director
William MacLeod has worked in computers since 1992. He holds a bachelor of information technology degree from American Intercontinental University, as well as a minor in business with emphasis on Latin America. Formerly, he was a commercial music major at the University of North Alabama.
For the past year, MacLeod contributed his expertise to Southern Arts Federation as the information technology director.
During his career, he has worked in varying technical positions for Delta Air Lines, UPS, O'Melveny & Myers LLP, and as an independent contractor, providing technical consulting for small businesses, law firms and other organizations.
Director of Community Outreach
South Carolina Design Arts Partnership
In her role with the SC Design Arts Partnership, a joint initiative of the SC Arts Commission, Clemson University and Main Street South Carolina, Moore has raised more than $100,000 for community design service programs in the past two years while actively pursuing opportunities to expand the partnership's mission and services. She also directs the SC Mayors' Institute for Community Design, an annual statewide program modeled after the national Mayors' Institute for City Design.
Moore received her Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Arts Management from the College of Charleston in 2001. During subsequent studies at the University of Virginia's Graduate School of Architecture, she earned a Master of Arts in Architectural History and a certificate in historic preservation. She has worked in fundraising, development, and cultural tourism for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and The Preservation Society of Charleston. She also served as one of two historic architecture consultants at the SC State Historic Preservation Office from 2003-2005.
Cynthia Moses NeSmith, MPA, CFRE
Owner and Principal
C.M. NeSmith Consulting, LLC
Cindy NeSmith has over 25 years of experience in nonprofit management, having served as executive director of organizations in Florida, Montana, and South Carolina. She holds a Master of Arts in Public Administration from the University of South Carolina and Bachelor of Arts from Agnes Scott College.
She is owner and principal of C.M. NeSmith Consulting, LLC, a full-service company providing fundraising expertise, nonprofit management, board development, grantsmanship training, and public relations to organizations throughout SC.
NeSmith was the 2005 president of the Central Carolina Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and is a Certified Fundraising Executive. She is active with the South Carolina Association of Nonprofit Organizations.
Director of Local Arts Agencies
National Endowment for the Arts
Patrice Walker Powell is responsible for the application review process and grant awards made to municipal, county and regional arts agencies by the National Endowment for the Arts. Concurrently, Powell serves as director of Challenge America Fast-Track, an initiative that provides small grants to benefit underserved communities for projects in civic design, cultural tourism, and arts programming. From 2001 to 2003, she served as the agency's acting deputy chairman for grants and awards, with annual oversight of more than $30 million in grants and awards reaching all disciplines.
She joined the NEA in 1991, and was soon named director of the Expansion Arts Program, which funded arts programs for ethnically specific, inner-city poor, rural, and tribal communities. Expansion Arts launched the Community Foundation Initiative, which developed arts funding portfolios in cooperation with 26 national foundations. Beginning in 1995, Ms. Powell was responsible for directing several other national initiatives at the NEA, including ArtsREACH, designed to increase the agency's presence in 20 targeted states, and Positive Alternatives for Youth, which funded artist residencies in weekend, summer, and after-school settings.
Powell has held staff positions with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Texas Commission on the Arts. She has worked as an artist representative, media production manager, and an artist-in-residence serving a diverse clientele of artists and cultural programmers. Powell received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Howard University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University's School of Drama.
Associate Professor of Art
South Carolina State University
Leslie Kendall Rech received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, in 1998. In addition to having her work published on the cover of CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Rech has been awarded artist's fellowship grants from the Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York and the Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain. Rech has exhibited site-sensitive installations in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and Michigan. Her next solo exhibition is scheduled at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Center in Fredricksburg, Maryland. She is currently an associate professor of art at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg.
Founder and President
Post No Bills is a promotional and creative marketing firm in Columbia. Started in New York, the first clients of Post No Bills were from the music industry, but the company soon made the leap to major motion picture promotion. Today Post No Bills keeps an impressive roster of movie clients including DreamWorks, Paramount and MGM. Post No Bills also works with various television properties including shows on Cartoon Network, HBO and TNT.
Executive Director
Cultural Council of Richland & Lexington Counties
Andrew Witt was named executive director of the Cultural Council of Richland & Lexington Counties, the local arts agency serving the metropolitan Columbia area, in April 2004. Prior to coming to Columbia, Witt served for 16 years as the executive director of the Arts Council of Northwest Florida, a local arts agency serving as a "chamber of commerce and united arts fund" for cultural groups in several counties.
Prior to his work in Florida, Witt served as executive director of the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities in Colorado, and as managing director of the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, the Fifth Avenue Theatre and A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle.
He has served as a consultant to a variety of arts groups and nonprofit organizations, including the Advancement Program of the NEA, the Foundation for the Extension and Development of the American Professional Theatre, and the Western States Arts Foundation.
He is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut and has a master's degree from the School of Drama at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Director of Touring/Presenting
Vicki Vitiello joined the staff of the North Carolina Arts Council in 1996 as the director of touring and presenting. Her responsibilities grew significantly in 2001 when NCAC was selected by the Wallace Foundation to be part of the START Initiative. Now in addition to overseeing the Council’s Arts & Audiences grants program, the ArtsMarket booking conference, and the production of the North Carolina Touring Artist Directory, Vitiello is the resident staff specialist on the topic of cultural participation.
Vitiello has served on advisory panels for the National Endowment of the Arts, the SC Arts Commission, the Kentucky Arts Council, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, the Mississippi Arts Commission, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Southern Arts Federation. She also served as a US delegate to the International Leadership Development Forum, a three-year program designed to promote the import and export of modern dance.
