Blog
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Urban League Education Luncheon Thursday, September 16, 2010
Next Wednesday, September 22, we’re hosting an exciting and informative luncheon for Urban League of Greater Chattanooga here at 55. E Main Street. After an 11:30am lunch, there will be an in-depth discussion focused on the Urban League’s Equity and Excellence Project featuring informed voices from across the nation.
“The destiny of our people, our community, and in fact this nation depends on all children reaching their greatest potential, especially as it relates to post-secondary success,” says Warren E. Logan Jr., President & CEO of Urban League of Greater Chattanooga and a presenter at next Wednesday’s luncheon. “As Common Core standards are being rolled out, we need to engage ourselves in the hard work of interpreting, communicating and designing strategies to achieve community understanding to ensure that the promise and intended impact is fully realized.”
The luncheon will also feature presentations from Dr. Michael Nettles, Senior Research Director of the Policy Evaluation and Research Center in the Research and Development Division at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, NJ; and Dr. Edmund W. Gordon, the John M. Musser Professor of Psychology, Emeritus at Yale University, Richard March Hoe Professor, Emeritus of Psychology and Education and Director of the Institute of Urban and Minority Education (IUME) at Teachers College, Columbia University.
This is a free event, but please RSVP by September 20 to Keesha Marshall at kmarshall [at] ulchatt [dot] net or 423-756-1762. Other sponsors include Tennessee Urban League Affiliates, Educational Testing Service, National Urban League, and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Posted by in Education
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The fourth annual Glenwood Jazz Festival Monday, September 13, 2010
For the last few years, Chattanooga’s Glenwood neighborhood has celebrated its heritage with the Glenwood Jazz Festival. They’ll continue doing so this year on Saturday, October 2 from 1:00 pm – 10:00 pm with a variety of professionally staged performances complete with expert lighting and sound. This year’s jazz festival is free to the public and will feature local Chattanooga jazz artists as well as artists from Atlanta, Birmingham, and Knoxville.
The Glenwood Jazz Festival is hosted at a safe and secure site just behind the Parkridge Medical Center on Ivy and 5th Street (between Derby and Lyerly Streets) with plenty of free parking available. In addition to professionally staged jazz performances, this year’s Glenwood Jazz Festival will feature several food venders and plenty of room for picnic baskets, coolers, and lawn chairs.
The musical line-up features local favorites such as LaFredrick Thurkill & Co. and Dexter Bell & Friends; return performances by Kelle Jolly from Knoxville and Tim Crump from Calhoun, Georgia; a visit from Latin Jazz artist Sasha from Atlanta; and a final featured performance by jazz trumpeter Melvin Miller.
Glenwood is one of Chattanooga’s oldest neighborhoods and one with a very rich history rooted in the Cherokee exile of 1838. Less than thirty years after the exile, Glenwood became an established neighborhood with a Neighborhood Association finally forming in 1970. Glenwood continued to make history by being the first neighborhood in Chattanooga to use the “Neighborhood Unit” concept, which later became a neighborhood planning standard for many American cities.
The Glenwood Neighborhood Association presents the Jazz Festival as part of their four-year strategic plan developed with Community Impact to help raise awareness of Glenwood as a historical “jewel” in Chattanooga.
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City Love for Detroit Friday, September 10, 2010
For a few days in November, the CreateHere team is uprooting from their Chattanooga home and trekking up to Detroit, Michigan to help an excited group of hopeful and helpful Detroitians catalyze civic pride. The event is called Detroit Civic Intervention and it will include up to thirty urban innovators—Detroit locals and out-of-towners—gathering to explore ideas, share experiences, and actualize solutions.
“We’ve been to a lot of gatherings of emerging urban leaders that have been show-and-tell not show-and-do,” says Josh McManus, Co-Founder and Creative Strategist at CreateHere. “The most powerful ideas come about when we have a lot of horsepower in one place and people actually doing something.”
Symbolic of the devastating effects of Detroit’s recent economic downturn is the privately owned and entirely emptied Michigan Central Station. Sprawling out in front of Michigan Central Station is Roosevelt Park, the largest of many semi-defunct parks that now dot the landscape of the once great Motor City. “Detroit government has said that parks must be abandoned because of lack of funds,” says McManus, “but parks don’t go away. Sadly, few people in Detroit even think of Roosevelt Park as a park anymore.”
Participants in the Detroit Civic Intervention will gather at Roosevelt Park for 48 hours in November to tackle the problem of city park closures and cutbacks. “What we want to see come out of this is a tool kit to help citizens across America engage in park maintenance and upkeep,” says Helen Davis Johnson, Co-Founder and Creative Strategist at CreateHere. “Detroit citizens may not be able to take back Michigan Central Station right now, but they can take back and take care of their once-great public spaces.”
The work has already begun in Detroit. Civic pride is marginal, but proud citizens are taking risks to boost Detroit’s economy by starting businesses and finding in their success a city itching to connect, innovate and grow.
A month ago, many of these bright emerging leaders flew down to Chattanooga for two days of sight seeing and to hear Chattanooga’s story first hand—a story whose beginning sounds very similar to their own. Like Detroit, Chattanooga once lay ravaged by the flight of industry. From this, Chattanoogans learned about civic reinvention—a practice that Detroitians are eager to learn about and enact.
Says Josh McManus, “We’re inviting innovators from many different cities to go make some change in Detroit with the idea that they can bring that change home and scale it for their own place.” This November’s Civic Intervention is for Detroit and put on with the help of Chattanooga, but it is part of a vision for place-based change that expands well beyond those cities and into the hearts of any citizen who believes that change begins when individuals take action for the betterment of their communities.
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October 5: Malcolm Gladwell Comes to Chattanooga Thursday, September 09, 2010
In just a few weeks, Malcolm Gladwell will address the Chattanooga community as the opening speaker in the 2010-2011 George T. Hunter Lecture Series. A New York Times Bestselling author, journalist, and staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, Mr. Gladwell is known around the world for his unique ability to dissect complex ideas and retell them in a readily understandable manner using stories, illustrations, and clear, accessible language.
We’re particularly excited for Malcolm Gladwell’s Chattanooga visit as his work has had a profound influence on the way we do things at CreateHere. To prepare for the lecture on October 5, we’ve gone back and looked at Mr. Gladwell’s three acclaimed bestsellers (The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers) with increased awareness of his bold adherence to the notion that it is the little things in life that often make the biggest difference.
For example: one of Gladwell’s most influential ideas is that when it comes to information sharing, the actual information being shared with an audience is far less important than the way it is presented and the context in which the audience hears it. The most successful ideas aren’t always communicated best through huge, sweeping campaigns, but often through the influence of a well-connected person or a someone with a widely respected opinion.
Another one of Gladwell’s most potent observations reveals how subjects commonly relegated to the field of social science—“little” things like personal thoughts, perceptions, and habits—are actually pivotal points of interest for businesses and communities and are often catalysts for larger waves of change. For Gladwell, instantaneous reactions—a “gut feeling” about something—can be just as valid as a lengthy analysis.
Malcolm Gladwell has challenged the way we think about our city and ourselves. We hope you will be take advantage of this rare opportunity to hear an engaging, enlightening, free lecture from one of the world’s most influential minds.
When: October 5, 2010 at 7:00pm
Where: The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the Roland-Hayes Concert Hall
Cost: FREE (space will be limited; overflow seating will be available)A live Twitter feed will be active during the lecture to capture audience thoughts and reactions. Bring your smartphones!
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AVA presents Gallery Hop on September 11 Friday, September 03, 2010
Our friends over at The Association for Visual Arts (AVA) are presenting the fifth annual downtown Chattanooga Gallery Hop on Saturday, September 11, 2010 from 2-9 pm. Free and open to the public, the Gallery Hop is one of the best ways to discover distinctive and intriguing artwork in Chattanooga.
As always, the Gallery Hop is a time for the public to meet local artists, watch live art demonstrations and learn about the creative processes of different artists at their studios. With several new galleries and artists added to the roster since last year, The Gallery Hop will feature more than 30 galleries and studios, all open to the public for this one-night collaborative celebration of Chattanooga’s acclaimed arts community. Participating galleries will have special exhibitions on display and refreshments will be provided at most venues.
A brochure featuring a map and detailed gallery listing is available for download and will also be available at all participating galleries. This specially designed guide lets gallery hoppers create their own route during the event and can also be used by visitors to Chattanooga throughout the rest of the year. A free web and mobile-friendly map has been provided by Chattarati so that patrons can map out their own hop on their smart phone.
Here’s a taste of some of the special events featured at this year’s Gallery Hop locations.
ASSOCIATION FOR VISUAL ARTS
Opening reception for FRESH, an annual exhibit to help young and emerging artists gain valuable professional experience and exposure for their work. This competitive, juried exhibit is designed to feature artists that display artistic promise, commitment to their work, and fresh ideas.CHENOWETH - HALLIGAN STUDIOS
Formerly Two Oaks Studio, Chenoweth - Halligan Studios will celebrate the grand opening of their new studio during the Gallery Hop. Since 1997, when Roger Halligan (sculpture and drawing) and Jan Chenoweth (sculpture and painting) combined their studios and formed Two Oaks Studio, both artists have pursued the evolution of their own fine artwork as well as collaborations for public and private clients. This summer’s move to new studio spaces brings about a change in name and new opportunities.THE GALLERY
The Gallery is pleased to present a group show by an international group of sculptors associated with the Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum in Solsberry, IN. Their work is in cast iron, aluminum, fabricated steel and hand-carved wood. The Gallery will host a kick-off reception from 5 until 8 p.m. to welcome this new show. In addition to displaying sculpture at The Gallery, the artists will be operating a traveling foundry and will be doing an aluminum pour in the parking lot from noon until 8 PM. If you would like a relief sculpture to take home, you can participate by pre-purchasing a mold from either The Gallery or at Area 61 on Main Street for $25.HANOVER GALLERY
Hanover Gallery will be offering special drawings each hour from 4-8 pm. Prizes include a “Sassy Lady” tile by Ling Lee; 11X14 “Pear” painting by Melissa Peirano; Happy Clay bowlette; and handmade copper earrings by Cheryl Van Dyck.IGNIS GLASS GALLERY & STUDIO
Glassblowing demonstrations from 4pm on.RIVER GALLERY
Meet artist Anne Bagby, watch her mixed media/painting demonstration on, and enjoy refreshments until 9 pm.RIVOLI ART MILL
The Rivoli Art Mill will have an “art show” of many artists on display during the Gallery Hop: ten Rivolians, plus other artists. There will be an Art Party beginning at 6 pm with food, drinks, and live music!SHUPTRINE’S
Shuptrine Fine Art Group / Gold Leaf Designs is pleased to announce a special juried exhibition of the Tennessee Watercolor Society. The theme, “Americana~Freedom”, will celebrate artists’ representations of nostalgia and patriotism, Americana, and what freedom means to them. Shuptrine’s will also have a children’s art workshop from noon to 2 pm where kids will have the opportunity to create hand-painted Americana-themed items with the help of professional artists. The cost is $30 per child and pre-registration is mandatory!TOWNSEND ATELIER
Townsend Atelier will be conducting life drawing sessions from a live model. The demonstrations will be done by regular participants in the studio’s Thursday evening open life drawing studio. Some of these artists will also have drawings available for purchase. Also, Gallery Hoppers will have a chance to win a beautiful figure drawing done by Stan Townsend just by stopping by putting their name in the hat. One winning name will be drawn at the end of the evening.UMBRA ESSENCE
Umbra Essence will be hosting an artist reception for silk artist Traci Batchelor on their garden terrace.
