Arts Council Takes Pride In Achievements At Silver Anniversary
The following article was submitted by Jane Campbell, a Kailua resident and the current president of the Windward Arts Council.
Windward Arts Council – the Windward Oahu community organization that supports and nurtures arts and artists of the Windward coast – turns 25 years old on April 1 of this year. The milestone will be celebrated publicly March 31 as part of the Paliku Arts Festival at Windward Community College. There’ll be cake – four cakes to be exact – and a promise by the Royal Hawaiian Band to play Happy Birthday, but no speeches!
WAC members will be working the event, providing snack lunches for festival volunteers with a brief hiatus for the noontime celebration, said food chairwoman Jacquie Maly.
The council’s best-known project is the ArtsLetter which is published bimonthly with news of coming arts events in the area. Edited for the past 10 years by Gail Kiefer, the ArtsLetter has been published and circulated among WAC members and Windward community leaders without pause since the 1987 incorporation of Windward Arts Council.
The organization was founded by the late Camille H. Almy in 1987, the outgrowth of earlier Windward community arts efforts. Presidents since Almy have been Daunna Yanoviak, William Meyer, Miles Brubacher (acting president), Anne McKay and Campbell. A.T. “Red” Miller has been treasurer since WAC’s inception.
Windward Arts Council supports efforts of artists of all ethnic backgrounds in music, theater and dance, creative writing, and visual art. Projects and activities are supported principally by membership dues, with help for special projects from Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and Honolulu’s family foundations. Membership is open to all upon payment of dues, and WAC actively seeks to expand membership among all who live in Windward Oahu.
Projects currently supported by the council include Chamber Music Hawaii Windward Concert Series, Prison Writing Project at the Women’s Community Correctional Center, the Windward Community College Star Poets statewide student poetry competition, free chamber music concerts at Pohai Nani’s Bacon Auditorium, the annual spring concert by the professional music community at Calvary Episcopal Church, ushers for Paliku and HPU’s Paul and Vi Loo theaters, Golden Plover Awards for writers and artists of WCC’s Rain Bird journal, and the arts program at Boys and Girls Club of Hawaii’s Windward Clubhouse at Kailua Intermediate School.
