To those who haven’t yet heard, I am excited to announce that Cochrane has a new arts organization to promote the arts in Cochrane. We started last fall and have just recently received word that we are now officially incorporated as the Cochrane Integrated Arts Society (CIAS – pronounced “see-us”). A bit over 30 years ago a newspaper owner, for reasons I will never know, asked a newcomer to town if she would write an arts and crafts column for his paper. Hi. My name is Evelyn Grace Marinoski and thanks to Jack Tennant that was the beginning of my involvement with the amazing arts community we have here in Cochrane. Much to my surprise, within a few months of starting that column, an artisans’ guild was started. Later, I organized the arts businesses to start promoting the arts in Cochrane, and among other things the very popular “See How We Do It” event was born. What I saw back then and have never lost hope or vision for was the idea of creating an arts community that would work together to promote the arts and to accomplish great things here. When my husband and I came back to Cochrane in 2005, I started looking again at the arts and felt that Cochrane still didn’t have an arts organization that would work for all the arts in Cochrane. So, in 2008, I started Arts Cochrane which later became ACFC. Unfortunately for me, my husband’s health took a turn for the worse and I stepped down – for what ended up being the next 9 years. After my husband passed away in early 2017, by last fall I felt I was ready to start looking at our arts scene here again. I was surprised to learn that ACFC had folded because I knew it had done some really great work over the years. I still felt deeply that Cochrane really needs a good arts organization. I see so much great art being done here in so many different and interesting ways, but there is no collective way of promoting the arts here. That’s too bad, because I know from experience that so much more can be done when people work together. So at the beginning of October I launched the CochraneArts.com website and started getting word out. I found I had more things to figure out and do in the process of starting life on my own again than I had expected, so things over this first year have been a bit on the slower side. But we have been making steady progress. We now have about 65 listings in our main directory. We started with a volunteer council in January and have been working on several projects. We applied for society status and are now officially incorporated as the Cochrane Integrated Arts Society. We’re planning a special event for the Alberta Culture Days weekend at the end of September – I will tell you all about that next week. Over the next two months, I will introduce you to our team/council, to the projects we are working on and where we are planning to go in the future. If you are an artist, or know someone who is, I invite you to get your free listing on the website at www.CochraneArts.com. If you’re interested in the arts, join us on our Facebook page – just do a search for Cochrane Integrated Arts Society. For this week, I simply want to extend an invitation to all of those who are interested in the arts in Cochrane to come and join us for a summer social – a picnic/BBQ at the Cochrane Ranche on Monday, Aug. 13 at 6 p.m. Please bring your own picnic/food, drinks and chairs. Come and enjoy a great evening of meeting other creatives and artists, and sharing your thoughts and hopes for our arts community. I’ll take a few minutes to share some updates, but mostly this is a social evening for getting to know each other. I look forward to meeting you.
