History of New Haven Arts 1987

The Arts Calendar was the predecessor to what became in the following years and decades, New Haven Arts. 

I introduce the history of this publication as a way of sharing how the development of this local Arts Newspaper became a central factor in the development of New Haven as a thriving Arts Community. 

Let me start by sharing the image of this two-sided single sheet poster size publication dated March 1987. 

In 1983-84, I began as a board member of the Arts Council. I was young and quite unknowledgeable about the workings of a non-profit organization. 

At that time I was apprenticing and then co-directing the Papier Mache Video Institute and needed to better understand the organizational workings of a non-profit. PMVI had been a recipient of an early Arts Award from the Arts Council. It made some sense for me to look to that organization for support and development of PMVI. 

I joined the board and then four committees, which committees I am not sure of at this moment. The one committee I was not allowed to every join was the Audubon Street development committee. The rest seemed open to having me join them. 

I believe I spent a year attending board meetings and committee meetings. Bitsie Clark herself a new executive director supported my learning and corrected me as I navigated the closely followed policy and operations guidelines for the organization.

It was about a year later that I was hired onto staff as a PR director. this staff position was offered to me by Bitsie as a result of the success I had with my personal artist organizing work which culminated into the large audience I was able to assemble for the "First Show of 1984" in Nov of 1983 at the Clockworks building on Hamilton Street in New Haven. She herself attended and felt that I could be helpful as a staff member in the office. 

After delivering my first Press Release to the New Haven Advocate, I was informed as to what the job of a PR person was, I realized that I was both uninterested in doing that job and did not believe that type of work was in the best interest of the organization itself. I wanted to form a communications department instead. I wanted to transform the monthly calendar publication into a local informative Arts Paper with a wide free distribution. I envisioned it in stacks next to the several other free monthly alternative publications in highly trafficked local businesses, galleries, and government and office buildings. In my mind this was how we were going to get the message out that New Haven had a thriving local arts community. 

There was a basic problem that needed to be overcome for that to happen. The calender was used as a membership benefit. Once a month these rather expensive 17"x 22"  double-sided printed on glossy paper were printed in small runs and mailed out only to Arts Council Members. The concern was if we made this publication free, why would people join the AC. Membership was an important part of the organization's annual budget.  

It took several years in committee to slowly begin to develop the leadership and the vision to move beyond this thinking and to significantly increase the number of these monthly calendars and begin to make them available to the broader public free of charge. 

This all happened in the formal structure of the communications department. As head of the communications department and former board member, I developed the skills to put a supportive board committee to work towards these goals. With the cooperation and visionary support of Board members Rick Camp (marketing director of First Federal Bank of Connecticut) and artist, photographer, and teacher at Educational Center for the Arts the Communications Department committee was on its way to creating a sustainable direction for the Arts Council's flagship publication, serving local artists and arts organizations.  

The calendar morphed over the years into an important monthly publication with important articles focusing on the local arts community.