AFC’s Lunch Dialogue with Barry Hessenius and Shannon Daut

On Friday, October 10th, 2014, Arts for Colorado will sponsor a lunch and dialogue with arts policy wonk and blogger Barry Hessenius and Executive Director for the Alaska State Council on the Arts, Shannon Daut.

The event will be held at Paris on the Platte, which is located at 1553 Platte in Denver. Lunch is $10.00 and reservations must be made in advance because space is limited. The event begins at 11:40 a.m. with informal conversation and lunch. The formal program launches at noon and will conclude at 12:30 p.m., followed by 10 minutes of Q and A. The session adjourns at 1:00 p.m.

To reserve a space at this event, please contact Stefan Runstrom via email at Stefan.Runstrom@WESTAF.org or Daniel Aid via telephone at 303-629-1166.

The Program

During the program portion of this event, Barry Hessenius, the editor of Barry’s Blog (blog.westaf.org)will answer questions posed by Alaska State Council on the Arts Executive Director and former Denverite Shannon Daut. Hessenius will answer questions about arts advocacy, blogging for the arts, the current state of the arts, and other questions posed by Daut. Daut will use her broad experience in the arts field to craft and manage a series of questions that are expected to be both provocative and informative.

The Participants

Barry Hessenius is the editor of Barry’s Blog, a blog with a 10,000+ person subscriber base that is widely read in the cultural policy and cultural administration communities. Hessenius served as Director of the California Arts Council from 2000 through 2005. At the Council, he managed an annual $32 million grants pool and supervised a staff of 54. Hessenius previously served as President and CEO of the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, a nonprofit statewide service provider for California’s local arts councils. He was also the Executive Director of LINES Ballet in San Francisco. Hessenius has served as a board member of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), the California Alliance for Arts Education (CAAE), California CultureNet, the California State Summer School for the Arts, the California Travel Industry Association (CalTIA), the San Francisco Architectural Foundation, and served as a member of the State Superintendent’s Task Force on Arts Education. He is the author of Hardball Lobbying for Nonprofits (MacMillan, New York), and has authored several studies including the Arts Advocacy Handbook, the Local Arts Agency Toolkit, and the Local Arts Agency Funding Study (Aspen Institute). Hessenius holds a law degree from the University of California Berkeley and has many years of experience in the commercial music industry.

Shannon Daut currently serves as the Executive Director of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, Alaska’s state arts agency. Daut also serves on the national boards of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and the National Performance Network. In addition, she was elected by her peer arts agency directors to serve on the board of the Western State Arts Federation (WESTAF). Prior to assuming leadership of Alaska’s state arts agency, Daut served as Deputy Director of WESTAF. In that position, she oversaw work in the areas of cultural policy and technology. She played a leading role in developing several of WESTAF’s successful technology services. In addition to her work with WESTAF, she served on and co-chaired the Create Denver advisory committee. She has been a juror for numerous film festivals and was chair of the Museum of Contemporary Art|Denver’s 2005 Film Biennial. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Communication/Film Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a master’s degree in Communication from the University of Colorado, Denver.