WESTAF Update Notes #77 | October 2013
From Anthony Radich, Executive Director
This is the 77th in a continuing series of updates about the work of WESTAF
WESTAF and Barry’s Blog Host Dinner-Vention
On September 6, 2013, WESTAF’s Dinner-Vention project brought 12 young, influential, and diverse arts leaders together for dinner and a discussion of critical issues facing the arts sector. The dinner took place at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program facilities in Woodside, California. Margot Knight, a former WESTAF Trustee and current director of the Djerassi organization, made the Djerassi location and co-sponsorship possible. The Dinner-Vention was created and organized by Barry Hessenius (of Barry’s Blog), Shannon Daut, Executive Director of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, and WESTAF. The organizers used a small national advisory committee to select the participants.
Participants in the meeting included: Salvador Acevedo, President, Contemporánea, San Francisco; Tamara Alvarado, Director of Community Access and Engagement, School of Arts and Culture, San Jose; Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Director of Performing Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Kimberly Howard, Trust Manager, Oregon Cultural Trust, Salem; Lex Leifheit, Executive Director, SOMArts, San Francisco; Clayton Lord, Vice President for Local Advancement, Americans for the Arts, Washington, DC;  Nina Simon, Director, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz; Devon Smith, Director of Social Media and Analytics, Threespot, Washington, DC; Kristin Thomson, Consultant, Future of Music Coalition, Washington, DC; Margy Waller, Senior Fellow, Topos Partnership, Cincinnati; Meiyin Wang, Associate Artistic Producer, Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, New York; and Laura Zabel, Executive Director, Springboard for the Arts, St. Paul. The gathering was captured via video and will be made available online. Additional information about this project is available at Barry’s Blog: blog.westaf.org.
Updates to ZAPP® Onsite
The ZAPP® Onsite tool, launched last winter, freed art festival judges from toting around cumbersome binders and clipboards when walking booth-to-booth to determine award winners. Now, thanks to a recent upgrade, ZAPP Onsite has made it even easier for art fairs to use the latest technology for the onsite adjudication of art fair artists. The new feature addresses the need for some art fairs to work with intermittent network connectivity. Because many of these fairs are in outdoor settings, maintaining continuous connectivity is often a problem. Adjudicators using the ZAPP Onsite system are now able to load data for a festival and then score the entire festival without connecting to the Internet again until the final scores are submitted. Those interested in learning more about the Onsite module should contact ZAPP Program Manager Leah Charney.
WESTAF Joins Rasmuson Funders Tour
For 17 years, Alaska’s Rasmuson Foundation has brought out-of-state funders to the state to introduce them to Alaska’s leaders and important projects and organizations. This year, WESTAF Executive Director Anthony Radich joined the group, which included leaders from the ExxonMobil Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Paul G. Allen Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Sites visited included projects in Barrow, Bethel, Prudhoe Bay, Sitka, Anchorage, and Napaskiak, an Alaska Native village. The group also met with the state’s Governor, United States Senators, and other political, business, and philanthropic leaders.

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