By FRED McCARTHY

On Tuesday, June 30, the city hosted a half-day meeting at the Langley Methodist Church with ArtsWA Executive Director Karen Hanan and Communication Director Glenda Carlino. Forty-seven local artists and art patrons attended the meeting to network, hear of community efforts to promote arts in Washington, and provide input on future projects for the Langley Arts Commission.

Violinist Talia Toni Marcus greeted guests with her enthusiastic welcoming selections. Ten artists displayed and later introduced their sculptures and paintings placed around the periphery of the gathering. A metric that the state uses to measure how impactful the arts are in the life of a community was introduced by the guest speakers. It is called the Creative Vitality Index (CVI). The state averages 1.0. All of Island County came in at 0.72. The measurement for South Whidbey was quite good at 1.61. A local participant, Peter Morton, classical pianist and WICA board member, asked if the measurement could be run by ZIP code? “Why yes! We can do that with any ZIP code!” was the defining answer. So Peter asked them to run the Langley ZIP code. The results were “off the charts!” Our rating was 3.06.

The arts are a major economic force in the vitality of Langley and we now have more data to prove it. The workshop ended with Keys to the City pins for our honored guests/state presenters and a Mayor’s Excellence Pin for Langley resident Frank Rose, chairman of the Langley Arts Commission.

Respectfully,

Fred