Finally, the First "Actual" Meeting

A) Objective Description
Overall the first meeting with Steve (the membership chair) went well. We discussed a lot of different ideas and concepts about the Vermillion Area Arts Council and their organization. We met at the Heart and Soul Fitness building, which was very shocking at the beginning it’s basically a room with fitness equipment and not that “friendly” of an atmosphere. We met with Steve, he was very nice but the meeting was far from what I had expected as far as what I would like to think of professional. Which I do not feel is a bad thing, but I was just expecting something more professional. We first asked about the their mission statement and he was actually unsure of what their mission statement was and had informed us that it had just recently changed, but still basically meant the same as it did before, just different wording. Steve discussed that they have a lot of short term projects. They have a ready, set, draw project that is for smaller kids around the ages of 7-8 years. They have a pottery open studio that is 1-5 Saturdays and it is semi- supervised. This project is designed for adults that are interested in the arts and is really cheap to provide after you have the equipment (they got the equipment they use donated). They also have summer art camps that are 2 weeks long and there are 60-80 slots they can fill. They are just finishing an art block that the schools will be implementing in the classrooms. It will start in the spring. Its main idea is to bring arts into the schools and they will bring people into the classrooms to teach so this isn’t something that is going to set the classroom teacher behind. Also Micah their “branding” person brings small bands to the art center he has around 2-3 shows a month with 1-5 bands playing. These concerts bring in a wide range of people he mentioned that there are sometimes 5-100 people that attend these shows. Steve mentioned it is very hard to work with USD because people always ask “Why should I donate money to you guys, when there is a university art center that I could donate my money to that is much greater?” We also talked about fundraising with Steve and his first words were “It’s much unorganized.” It was state funded but now it is not he told us that banks used to donate around $1000 each and now they barely donate $100. They are receiving grants for the building and he said those are helping, so they use the grants to pay for building repairs. They were going to have a Chili blues cook-off over D-Days in the VAAC which is all volunteers- there is no paid staff and this brings in some money for the organization. He sounded very interested and excited for the cook off and encouraged us to come but I was out of town. We also discussed their membership packages for the VAAC. He mentioned basically if you donate money, you are a member there are no special ties necessary. For an artist it is $15 a year, for a family it is $40 a year, and for an individual it is $20 a year. With this membership you can receive discounts to the activities held at the VAAC. Yes, we did discuss a lot but after we finally set up a meeting we wanted to get as much information as we possibly could.

B) Self- Critical Response to Visit
At the meeting we discussed possible project ideas, but Steve was very unclear of what he wanted from us. We actually gave him ideas and bounced off of those to see if we could all meet in the middle and find something that we could help them with. I would have enjoyed this meeting a little more if he was in charge but we basically lead the meeting and asked as many questions as possible to get a little bit of background knowledge. We mentioned putting together a packet of possible ideas for the VAAC to use and he said that would be a great idea. We decided that we would be most helpful in the area of the membership base and expanding on that idea. We would also help find people that are interested in the arts and explain to them the benefits of being a member. And help them get the name of the VAAC out in the community to elementary, middle, high-school, and college students to show them that if they are interested in the arts they will enjoy being a member. Overall all of the ideas we came up with would all help the VAAC because as of now, they honestly sound like they have nothing going for them. He explained to us that they are very disorganized and unsure of what directions they were actually trying to go. Our meeting was all over the board and that was very frustrating for us at first but then we realized that this is the project we have been assigned and we must make the best of it in-order to be successful. After the meeting my head was in the air I was very confused and wasn’t sure where to go with all of the ideas, but I think after our group meets on Tuesday we will have a better understanding on where we are going to go with this project, then we are going to send Steve an email and see what he thinks of our ideas. Overall I still think this is going to be a good experience working with different non-profit organizations, it is going to be difficult and open my eyes to all of the different struggles you can face when working with outside organizations.

C) Connecting the Dots
As for connecting the dots with the classroom content I still understand that this is going to be a very long and difficult, but interesting assignment/task. These organizations are non- profit so therefore they do not have any money to give us to help them out. Steve explained that there is no money to even make the VAAC run basically. I think it would be very hard to work for a corporation that can barely sustain it. At the beginning of the class you mentioned that it is going to be hard to keep in touch with these people in- charge of these organizations because they do not work for money, so this is probably something that is on the back burner for them, their main job comes first. And this is understandable, but also frustrating for us students as well. When we discussed items that are good, fast, and cheap I can relate this with the VAAC because of their financial issues. They will be willing to use any idea that is good, fast, and cheap to get this organization running properly. It is hard to think of advertising ways that are good, fast, and cheap that we can help them with because they do not have any computer usage, so the advertising would have to come straight out of our pockets and I know that broke college students cannot afford to donate money to organizations, even though we want to help them as best as we can. When we talked about non- profit organizations we mentioned that they have an unmet need and that it is our assignment to let them benefit from our help. I agree with this statement it is just hard to do. There is a lot of brainstorming and ideas that our group needs to discuss to make this project a success. Overall I think the class discussions have been very interesting but I cannot make the connections I want yet because we have not gotten far enough into the project yet. I can tell you I do understand the obstacles of meeting with our clients and trying to figure out what our client actually wants of us.  Iwant to be able to help out this organization to the best of my ability because I am interested in the arts, and I feel that there is a lack in all areas of art in communities and the first part to correcting this problem is to get people that are interested involved.

First Meeting Attempts...

First Meeting Attempts…

         Overall it has been a struggle to contact the Vermillion Area Arts Council (VAAC). It has been very frustrating not only when we didn’t receive any emails back from Norma, but then when we contacted Micah and we did not hear back from him, so we tried a third time and we finally heard back from Steve a week after the email was sent. After we’ve went through three different people that are associated with this group, we have finally received an email back from Steve, which was a relief. We had a meeting set up after multiple email contacts set for Tuesday October 6, 2009 at 1:30 at the Heart and Soul Fitness in Vermillion. But when I opened up my email the next day I received an email from Steve stating that he now cannot meet on Tuesday and would like to reschedule the meeting for Wednesday, which does not work for me, so after all of these contacting I cannot make it to the first initial meeting. It has been very frustrating not only when we didn’t receive any emails back from Norma, but then when we contacted Micah we did not hear back from him, so we tried a third time and we finally heard back from Steve a week after the email was sent. This has shown me the importance of following through with your work when you are not the only person involved. It is very hard to get four college students to meet together with different schedules, but then you add in another person that has shown to be not very reliable it makes the whole group frustrated. I hope the VAAC comes through at the meeting on Wednesday and has ideas that they would like us to look as so we can start our project since we are already behind the rest of the class. I know that my other group members are bringing an idea in case they are not prepared so we will have something to fall back on. After our meeting with John Grayson it is now clear that we can bounce ideas off with the Yankton Area Arts Council, so that is also another relief. These two councils have many similarities and many differences that will play an important role in our client projects. When I took a look at our client organization and our class I now know that these people are not working for profit and that they must have many other obligations that come before meeting the needs of the IDEA 410 class. This shows that these organizations do need a lot of help and I hope that our group can bring a great deal of knowledge to this organization and help them become more organized, so other groups do not have this problem in the future. Overall it is hard for me to connect the information from the class to my organization because I have not met with my organization yet, but overall I am still excited to meet with the Vermillion Area Arts Council and get the ball rolling.