Forwarded (with permission) from Melanie Ohm, founder of the now defunct Arizona State University Herberger College Partnerships office:

June 11, 2007

Dear Linda,

Life speeds on in wonderful ways. It was great to meet you in California last fall. I’ve been dealing with the transition in my life – so it’s taken me awhile to reconnect with people – but today is an unscheduled Friday to pick up the “pen” and write.

Among the buzy-nesses of life these days have been the essential tasks of getting TWO businesses up and running: the visioning, the marketing, the websites, setting up all of the procedures…my life path has well-prepared me for this day, however. I have two partners in Concepts Consulting Group, Inc. to feed my need for collaboration. We are doing organizational and community development work with educational institutions and the social sector.

The opportunities have been rich in this short time, including a green building community center project with a K-8 school district and the start of coalition building with the Latino arts and cultural community in the greater Phoenix area. Duo Braziliana, my other career as a mezzo-soprano with Brazilian pianist Rúbia Santos is also officially launched. We are dedicated to the performance and research of Brazilian art song. That website will be up in 5 weeks or so. See the “mini-poster” enclosed from our recent performance with master class and lectures at Utah State. And the doctoral plan had to be rearranged to deal with university IRB issues, but I am now on track to be done by December – at last! So, I am having a year of “birthing,” and know how blessed I am.

I want to share a recently completed project with you. This linked document [http://www.artscare.org/program.book.pdf] was to have been the result of a forum did not happen due to the closure of the ASU Herberger College Partnerships office. You’ll recall that I founded that program 10 years ago this month. The information, however, was too powerful not to be shared, so we put together the funding to produce it. Most of the narratives were structured around the CAC’s “Nine Guiding Practices for Community Arts,” the creation of which was a community process. If you have the opportunity, take a gander at a recent CAC community event: Peace – What is in a Word? An invitation to dialog and paint [http://www.artscare.org/peace.event.01.shtml]! The images are stunning. My life is so full of writing for doctorate, businesses, conferences and my volunteer commitments that I’ve not sat down to finish some articles for CAN. We’ll see how the next couple of months go. We have some exciting information to communicate about Arizona, so the writing needs to happen!

My husband Jeff and I have decided to remain in Phoenix for the foreseeable future. It’s an amazing transitional time here. This community of cultural workers is in a dynamic place, and I have work to do! I do plan to stay engaged with the national community arts movement. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you have done to connect scholars and practitioners to each other and the wide world. The field would not be so advanced without your outstanding work. Hope you are having a fabulous summer!

Warm regards, Melanie
____________________

Melanie Ohm
modinha (at) cox.net
480.580.6257
Cultural Arts Coalition: http://www.artscare.org/cac.intro.shtml

The Mission of the Cultural Arts Coalition
Identifying, supporting, promoting, celebrating, and documenting community arts practices that stimulate social awareness and honor diverse cultural values, and develop the critical thinking skills necessary to be creative and solve problems. As a networking group, the coalition strives to provide a safe place for persons of all ages and backgrounds to gather and achieve a sense of belonging and respect within a larger community and to explore arts-related skills in a facilitated environment.

   

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