Wyoming Arts Council

WAC announces keynote speakers for Oct. 12-14 Wyoming Arts Conference in Jackson

Featured News, Program News | August 5, 2013

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The Wyoming Arts Council has announced its keynote speakers for the Wyoming Arts Conference in Jackson on Oct. 12-14.

Randy Cohen, Vice President of Research and Policy at Americans for the Arts in Washington, D.C., will open the conference on Saturday, Oct. 12, with a 5 p.m. presentation at the Center for the Arts.

A staff member of Americans for the Arts the staff since 1991, Cohen stands out as one of the most noted experts in the field of arts funding, research, policy, and using the arts to address community development issues. He publishes The National Arts Index, the annual measure of the health and vitality of arts as well as the two premier economic studies of the arts industry — Arts & Economic Prosperity, the national impact study of nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences; and Creative Industries, an annual mapping study of the nation’s 905,000 arts establishments and their employees.

Cohen led the development of the National Arts Policy Roundtable, an annual convening of leaders who focus on the advancement of American culture, launched in 2006 in partnership with Robert Redford and the Sundance Institute. In the late 1990s, he collaborated with the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities to create Coming Up Taller, the White House report on arts programs for youth-at-risk; and the U.S. Department of Justice to produce the YouthARTS Project, the first national study to statistically document the impact of arts programs on at-risk youth.

A sought after speaker, Randy has given speeches in 49 states, and regularly appears in the news media—including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and on CNN, CNBC, and NPR.

Randy has been a policy specialist for the National Endowment for the Arts, founded the San Diego Theatre for Young Audiences and served as its managing director.

Delivering the closing luncheon keynote at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 14, is author and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams. It will take place in Cache Creek B at the Snow King Hotel.

Williams has been called “a citizen writer,” one who speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. “So here is my questions,” she asks, “what might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?”

Known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, Williams is the author of the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; and When Women Were Birds. She is a columnist for the magazine, The Progressive.

Williams is the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah. She and her husband, Brooke Williams, divide their time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Jackson Hole.

Register for the conference at http://wyomingarts.org/booking-conference

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