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City hosts creative conference
Gallery 842, a community art project launched by the Huntington Art Collective in affiliation with Create Huntington, held its grand opening earlier this year in downtown Huntington.
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HUNTINGTON -- Huntington will be the epicenter next weekend for discussions about ushering West Virginia's economy into the 21st Century.
That's the focus of the third annual Create West Virginia conference, which kicks off Sunday, Oct. 18, and runs through Tuesday, Oct. 20. The conference is expected to draw hundreds of business leaders, educators, government officials, artists and community volunteers from across the state to talk about how they can build a creative economy.
That means fostering a community that embraces creativity, innovation, technology, research, diversity and the arts, said Jeff James, chairman of Create West Virginia.
"The traditional economic development folks continue to look for companies to place in an industrial park," he said. "We've boiled our mission down to say that talent is the fuel of the 21st Century. We have to attract and retain talented, creative people, not just companies."
Huntington is the perfect fit for this year's conference because it is transforming itself by using the same principles that Create West Virginia is promoting, James said. That will give conference attendees an opportunity to see these principles at work, he said.
"Create Huntington is one of the primary reasons we wanted to have the conference in Huntington, because they are not just talking about things. They are taking action and getting tangible results out of it," James said. "Then you have Marshall University and President (Stephen) Kopp, who is investing in research and development and culture and the arts and is working with the city to attract students. Throw all of those things into the mix and it makes for a really interesting backdrop."
Huntington in the spotlight
Most of the conference-related meetings, or tracks as Create West Virginia calls them, will be held at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena. There also are four keynote speakers wedged between track sessions on Monday and Tuesday.
The conference will be broken into seven tracks: education, business, place, diversity, technology, resources and projects. The projects track will be coordinated by Create Huntington volunteers and consist of three sessions that focus on building a sense of community, the relationship between Marshall University and the Huntington community and how to deal with a community's major problems.
Thomas McChesney, a Huntington resident and Create Huntington volunteer, said the conference is an opportunity to use the city as a laboratory to show people across the state what average citizens can accomplish when they want positive change. All of the Huntington track sessions, for example, will be conducted in neighborhoods such as Highlawn and Fairfield West, where residents have grown community gardens and formed work groups to make repairs to homes.
"We will be showcasing ourselves not as a community that has arrived, but as a work in progress," McChesney said. "We will demonstrate what we have done thus far, how we did it and how we came up with the vision for where we want to go."
The conference also is a chance for Huntington to showcase its downtown as a viable option for hosting other large conferences, said Tyson Compton, executive director of the Cabell-Huntington Convention and Visitors Bureau.
When members of Create West Virginia came to Huntington a few months ago to plan the conference, many had not been to the city in years and were surprised by the downtown's turnaround, Compton said.
"There will be a lot of business leaders at this conference who attend other conferences throughout the year," he said. "I think they will view Huntington as a vibrant city with a lot to offer in terms of meeting facilities and entertainment. We're hoping they will keep that in mind when planning future conferences."
The CVB is working with Create Huntington to clean up the downtown before the conference begins. The CVB also will offer free welcome posters for businesses to hang in their storefronts, Compton said.
Entertainment galore
Just as important as the track sessions is the bevy of entertainment that will be provided during the conference, officials said.
From an opening reception on Sunday afternoon at the Huntington Museum of Art to a music recital by Marshall faculty Monday night on campus, there will be plenty of extracurricular events to allow conference attendees and Huntington residents to mingle and get those creative juices flowing, Compton said.
The entertainment highlight will be Mountain Stage, the music radio show based in Charleston and heard on National Public Radio. The show will be at the Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center on Sunday evening. West Virginia native Kathy Mattea will headline the show, which also will include The Songcatchers, Shannon Whitworth and the Ahs of Summers County. Tickets are $20. Those who purchase the full conference package receive a ticket to the show.
There also are poetry readings, art exhibits and musical performances scheduled for Sunday and Monday evening. Most of those events are free and open to the general public.
