Cultural Council

By City Clerk at 8:43 am, Mar 13, 2025 September 10, 2024 6:30pm-8:30pm ​ Usually Meets 1st Tuesday of Every Month WELCOME 6:31 pm Ann and Sally welcomes everyone at 14 Cedar Street.Call to order. AJ does the ROLL CALL: Members Present: Aimie , Ann Johnson(AJ), Amy Vander Els, (AV), Sally Nutt(SN), Laura Kozlowski (LK), Rachel Wallace (RW) )Brian Riley(BR) Margaret Leahy(ML) Absent: Madison Barnes(MB) John Moynihan(JM) resigned. Public Attending: Catherine Debrocke (Cat) visiting Artist along with Bailey who lives near and one other artist Mike are interested Approval of August minutes: AJ seconds MB, unanimous Public Comment: Mike and Cathy Cochran visiting. 6:35pm Treasurer report (AV): 27,682.55 gift need to pay expenses: pride stairs, merchant ads, boom lift, open studios, 8683.53 left to spend in our account. (doesn’t include what we are going to take in) 10340.27 in our Grant account. 3200 requested for grants. 6:36 Marketing Report: connected to Open Studios. Grant Marketing, should we do anything besides social media and the Merchant? Shall we do flyers? ML will print flyers from the Chamber. Smart Simple shall have the total we have to give out to grants, someone needs to check this for us. State has allocated more to the MCC this year so we may be receiving more? 6:41: Grant report: (AV): LiveWell Festival, and Maudslay happened this weekend. Oct 12 Indigenous Peoples day in Newburyport, Cat is here visiting and tells us she is about to make an order to purchase clay, has a great group of 10 middle school to help with the process. A mural design will be edited along the way. During open studios, she would like to have a public tile making workshop. She works at River Valley School, and wants to engage with people in both communities, art for the people made by the people, students, families, kids. Engaging with students in Amesbury in January so kids can get excited to see their artwork. 1.​ Sponsors: Mel for the Trolley, Barbara for this building and Tradesmill, Stoneridge, Bakehouse,  Apricot Lane, Crave, Farm and Sea, Looks by Lopez, are a few of sponsors, new and old. Deb at Alchemy and Art, can’t do a whole stop but her and Hempire will do Friends of the Tour. Spoke bicycle repair and Farm and Sea may join together, City Hall last year was sponsored by ACC, Costello Building is sponsored by Gould Insurance. We are looking good. 2.​ Artists: 9 (Costello) 9 (CH-room) 7(Cedar St) should be closing Costello registration center soon(can fit 10 in this space), not sure we are doing live music there. It would cost 1000 for the two days to cover live music. Someone will reach out to the woman who wanted to recycle art materials. 3.​ We did get 2500 from MCC. Hopefully we will receive it sooner than later. Institution for savings and Newburyport bank, asked for donations, no word yet. 4.​ Publicity: A lot of flyers for Save the Date were dropped at the Wellness Fest, and Cedar St. Oct 31 for the Morning show will have an interview in Newburyport. Take a sign inventory but may need more printed and with banners. We had 2 banners and 14 coroplast signs, 1680.00 last year for printing. Guess is that this is less signage budget be 1000 try to keep it under or at this. Brochures for 1000 cost 1495 will keep this. Rachel Wood, offered to help design the brochure. Online directory she charge 37.50/hour to do it a few years ago. If we give her a set fee, does 800.00 sound reasonable? Margaret will do the copy/edit for Rachel. Bailey, offered to help out with some design work . Motion to pay RW 800 for designing the brochure for 2024, and 1000 for the brochure printing, 3400 for marketing MB, Seconds:SN,Unanimous. MB going to ask Daily News to put something in there for us and get a list of media outlets to advertise. 5.​ Volunteer Status: SN putting together a list of names for volunteers. Would be great to have committee chairs to get a crew of volunteers for each task. One person to manage CH(SN) One for Costello(RW), One to be Trolley both days, or one to be music person,to take charge of these roles. Will map out and tape the spots on Friday. Going to look into who wants to volunteer after this meeting. LK will organize the musicians. Costello center just have an iphone playing. Reach out to Zach Fields. Need someone for Silent Auction and will set up in hall to auditorium. Trolley Car were going to ask city councilors to be speakers on trolley. MB will reach out to Mill 77. Ask Svilaticus how they want to be involved(AV). AJ will reach out to Mcacao. Billies always signs up as a sponsor (AJ) will ask. 6.​ Other: T shirts may be something we print this year for volunteers. Going to look into cost. 7:45 Art at City Hall: AJ : Chain Bridge collection is up until December. Need to pick the next call /Theme and this will go out for the new show in January. City will purchase new clips. New home for the Chain Bridge at Carriage Museum. A few need new backings, new glass….. 7:47pm Public Art: AV: Pride stairs:Paint has been purchased, account at Amesbury Industrial. Just over 1000 for the paint. All at the Cultural Center right now until when the stairs are ready to paint, maybe in a month or so with the student group ready to paint! Mural has started at Amesbury industrial. Started on Monday, priming the space. Has a boom lift. Greg is excited for it on his building. Historically accurate to show what has been manufactured in that mill. Did an info A frame near her while she is painting. Was also approached by other businesses to see if she can paint their spaces. She will be painting all month. Should have an “reveal” party when it is ready! Fundraiser at Flatbreads on October 8th. Maybe try to coincide with this? We can discuss it during the Oct meeting. 7:53pm Poet Laureate: (BR) in Limbo, trying to get a meeting with Ellie and Lisa. Trying to see whether we need a committee? And what the connection is with Whittier Home. Bubble bar would be great for a poetry reading/open mic sometime. Some want to keep it in Amesbury, but others want to expand and this is dividing the group. 7:59pm New Business: A. August 22 Merrimack Valley Cultural Council and planning board 125,000 grant to look at how to bring the Lccs together with the buses through Essex county and Merrimack Valley. Interactive media above the driver where it can be updated with events going on to get more publicity out there to the bus users. Maybe ask to use the MEVA buses next year? Invite the MVC to come to open studio and MEVA to see the open studios to spark interest. B.NEFA “making it public” the artist or municipality to take a class to help communities to jump start art commissions in cities. Is there going to be an enforced timeline to spend the funding? Biggest challenge is staff, we have the ideas, and funds, but we don’t have the staff to help make this process faster. Aimie is trying to get ACC more staff. Ie. we could use a project manager for ACC and the library can use someone to do adult programs. For 6 months 6500.00 for salary. January - June position. Use all the stats from this position to move forward to do a budget ask. That person could help spear head public arts programs. Combine funds from library grant, and from our open studios to fund this temporary trial position! 8:07pm Dates on the Calendar : Sept 27 Art Summit, all day hosted by ECCF at Cabot ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Mixer for Open Studios IHC, usually 3rd week in Oct. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ * Wednesday October 23, 24,30 if any of these dates work. Sept 30 deadline business sponsor Oct 1 our next meeting Oct 8 Flat Breads Fundraising Public Comments: none ​ ​ 8:10pm Motion to adjourn AJ, AV seconds…Unanimous. Laura b. Kozlowski