Advisory Council gets creative for future

The Longboat Key Center for the Arts, a Division of Ringling College of Art and Design, has launched an Arts Advisory Council, which will oversee and innovate the future advancement for the center.

The group consists of professional leaders of various backgrounds to assist the Ringling College administration in creating programming, advocating the arts and creativity and helping in strategic planning to encourage economic development opportunities.

“This incredible group of volunteer leaders represents a multitude of professional backgrounds and a wealth of experience that the college and LBKCA is tremendously grateful to have,” said Dr. Larry R. Thompson, Ringling College president, in a press release. “We expect the combination of business and creativity in these new council members will act as a springboard for ideas we have yet to imagine.”

The council members are: Tom Aposporos, David Brenner, Ed Brickman, Muffie Cabot, Carol Camiener, Thomas Carabasi, Ed Chiles, Christine Eisner, Claude Engle, Robert Gault, Mary Lou Johnson, Ron Johnson, Barbara Kerwin, Susan Landau, Christine Meeker Lange, Dianne Muir, Christopher Osborne, Joan Partridge, Drayton Saunders, Larry Thompson, Andrew Vac, Lisa Walsh and Michael Welly.

The group kicked-off its duties with a two-day creativity retreat led by Ringling’s newly formed Center for Applied Creativity and Innovation. This is a start-up group aimed at businesses, non-profits and other organizations to jump-start creativity among individuals through applied learning. It works with executives and their employees and teaches them how to tap into their creativity using a studio-based arts approach — much like the retreat the Longboat Key Center for the Arts Advisory Council underwent.

The group was challenged to think outside the box. The members participated in group brainstorming in many different ways, such as hands-on artful thinking using paint and canvases with Kyu Yamamoto, and think-tanking with Sylvie Geneau of Cirque du Soleil.

“Through this retreat, there were (ideas) that came up for future programming, in that the programming needs to be quality-based and unique in order to attract the audiences — not only of Longboat Key but around the region and elsewhere,” Arts Center Executive Director Jane Buckman says.

On Thursday, there will be a community meeting to discuss the site plan as a continuation of the 2003 plan for the Arts Center.

“It will be more about the vessel and less about what will be going on inside of the vessel itself,” says Buckman.

The goal of the meeting is to gain feedback from the surrounding neighborhood and town residents.

The public is invited to attend the meeting from 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, at the Longboat Key Center for the Arts, a Division of Ringling College of Art and Design, 6860 Longboat Drive S. For more information, call 383-2345.