Future of the arts in the Chippewa Valley topic of forum at UW-Stout - WEAU

MENOMONIE, Wis. (WEAU) - Chippewa Valley arts leaders and community members gathered in Menomonie on Saturday to discuss the future of the arts. The forum center around how the pandemic affected the arts.

The open community panel discussion was called called ‘Creating the New Normal: Chippewa Valley Arts in a Post-Pandemic World and was held at UW-Stout.

“This is the first of hopefully many efforts to bring together leaders in the arts, creative community, to share ideas with each other about how we can continue to be creative,” Uw-Stout Associate Professor, Jerry Hui said.

Hui was one of the organizers of the event.

“Everyone is finding, obviously, it is very difficult to move forward from the pandemic,” Hui said. “The question is, how do we help each other out? How do we move forward in a way that we all want to see?”

Hui says in addition to leaders of the arts, people from the community who have an interest in the arts and other professors from Uw-Stout and Uw-Eau Claire also attended. The chancellor of UW-Stout participated as well.

“Menomonie theatre guild, Menomonie singers and also Chippewa Valley Symphony Orchestra,” Hui said. “We had folks from the Pablo Center and the Mabel Tainter here.”

Arts Wisconsin Director, Ann Katz, says conversations like the one held Saturday are important because it raises questions on how to add creativity in all aspects like schools and the community.

“Ways to revitalize our community and especially as the pandemic hopefully is finally over we’re also looking for ways of coming together,” Katz said.

Hui says a barrier many encounter is a lack of resources.

“We’re trying to find out what resources are lacking, is there a way for different groups to start sharing information about our events like a calendar that everyone can come to,” Hui said.

Katz says this conversation is the start of bringing out the arts for the whole community to embrace and enjoy.

“There’s a huge amount of creativity out there and this effort is sort of like the beginning of helping it explode,” Katz said.

Hui is hopeful more conversations like this one will be held in the future.

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Future of the arts in the Chippewa Valley topic of forum at UW-Stout - WEAU
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