Asheville Wordfest History

Asheville Wordfest 2010

ASHEVILLE WORDFEST MAY 7 - MAY 9, 2010

ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND STATEMENT

Date organization was incorporated: June 1993

MAIN's mission statement:

MAIN is a nonprofit community network using integrated media technologies to expand the local public sphere
and to support:
> participatory democracy
> citizen access to media
> independent journalism
> local cultural and artistic expression
> locally-owned businesses
> social and economic justice
> and environmental stewardship

Organization overview:

In June 1993, The Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN) and Land-of-Sky Regional Council was formed to create a grass-roots, public-access computer network linking communities across Western North Carolina. The network enables citizens of Western North Carolina to access local information resources such as libraries, the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service, government databases, social services, employment and economic development information, health information, weather data, historical archives, and more. MAIN's goal is to build the blue highways connecting our rural mountain counties to the global information superhighway.

Asheville Wordfest History A group of Asheville poets created the idea of The Asheville Wordfest Media Outreach Project in the Spring of 2007. Three were a part of the popular performance poetry movement that drew weekly poetry audiences in the early 1990's. Recognizing the potential in Asheville for a vast poetry audience, the poets, led by Executive Director Laura Hope-Gill, designed a festival that would attract a variety of demographic and aesthetic communities. The driving question of our planning was, "What does the ideal poetry festival do?" For all of us,
that answer was "Bring people together." On the weekend of April 24-27, 2008, the first Asheville Wordfest took place. MAIN made the content available via webcast on its website, public radio, online radio, and public access TV.

MAIN embraces Asheville Wordfest’s integration of poetry and technology as a means to expanding the audience for poetry in North Carolina. By providing public access tv poetry programming, our goal is to draw television viewers to this potent form of citizens expression.
Wordfest’s strategy for drawing a diverse audience is simply: present diverse poets and poetry genres. Asheville Wordfest 2008 featured poets from Iranian, Native American (Pueblo-Acoma and East Band Cherokee), Irish-American, African-American, Appalachian, and Northern United States cultural backgrounds. Jewish, Muslim, and Christian poets shared their work. More than one thousand people attended the weekend-long offerings. The festival was offered free to the public and publicized in local arts and mainstream publications such as Mountain Xpress and the Asheville Citizen Times. People who could not attend in person, due to distance, age, childcare issues, and disability, watched the events live on their computers.

Donate and Sponsor a Poet

Sponsor individual Poets with a quick $25 contribution by visiting http://brwm.org/ashevillewordfest/

Make a contribution towards Festival Expenses (supplies, publicity, space rental, website, etc.)
in lump sum format using the PayPal secure server by clicking below:

If you prefer to mail your tax-deductible donation,
please make your check payable to Asheville Wordfest/ MAIN and send to:

Asheville Wordfest
c/o Laura Hope-Gill
101 Christ School Road
Arden, NC 28704

This project is made possible in part by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.