The goings on at Appalshop

Things are going much more smoothly around here since my last post/our last small group phone conversation. This is what is new:
-we got our Facilitation Guide printed and it's super pretty and is drawing a lot of attention!
-StoryLine, the web based story gathering project I'm doing has really begun to hit the ground running. We're getting calls into the skype line every week and I put them up on the website. I've also developed a partnership for Thousand Kites with the Guild of Outsider Writers. They are an online community of writers and are volunteering to read/record the poems we get from folks in the prisons. It's great.
(this is my big project, so it's exciting that it's actually going somewhere) People are starting to comment on the pieces, too, which is the goal.
-I was invited to attend a convening of grantees of the Nathan Cummings Foundation in NYC last week. With about 20 other organizations my boss Nick and I spoke about Appalshop and Thousand Kites and got to share ideas. I felt fairly young and inexperienced there, but it was a fantastic learning experience and I met some wonderful people in the art/social justice field.
-This weekend the gathering continued in Whitesburg when we brought 10 funders to come hang out here. It was wonderful. Yay fundraising strategies!
-next up is our big Calls From Home annual holiday call in radio show, which I'm doing a ton of outreach and organizing for.

Super busy time right now. It finally feels really good to be here.