Brainstorming with the Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council

Lorie Hoffman, Executive Director
Shoreline - Lake Forest Park Arts Council

By Donna Hawkey

The Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council held its first of four community outreach conversations and brainstorming sessions on Saturday, January 26th at the very cozy Café Aroma in Shoreline's Ridgecrest neighborhood.

Residents from both Shoreline and Lake Forest Park, along with Arts Council Executive Director Lorie Hoffman and board members, talked about the unique needs of artists and the financial strains on arts funding overall.

The arts provide many ways to social connections, and it helps define who we are at a given time in history. It is easy to imagine how dull the world would be without artists to cheer us up, to make us think deeply, and to surprise us and to excite our senses in some way.

It is also a well-known fact that the arts are an integral part of a child’s education and imagination development. In some of the early grades, the Shoreline-LFP Arts Council is providing the only exposure to arts in the schools.

Conversation at Café Aroma centered around all these topics and more. A pot full of ideas from this meeting and future ones will be stirred around to help create a steaming new plan going forward.

And the Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council is also gathering thoughts to dream-up a new name for the current long-winded one. So it all sounds like a new logo will be unveiled one day as well!

Community members from artists to art-loving residents will have another chance to join this continuing and dynamic conversation.

For convenience, future sessions are held at various locations with the next one on Saturday, February 16th at 4:00pm at Richmond Beach Congregational, or on March 2nd at Third Place Commons or March 16th at Hopelink Shoreline.

You can reserve your spot today through evite

Donna Hawkey can be reached at dhawkey@comcast.net