Kahlil Almustafa: Thank You to The Field

This January 20, 2010, I will be launching my collection of poems, From Auction Block to Oval Office: 100 poems written in the first 100 days of Obama's presidency. We are proudly presenting The People's Inauguration: Poetry & Dialogue on the one-year anniversary of Obama's Inauguration to commemorate this occassion. The lessons I learned during ERPA have been invaluable to the success of this project. In the ERPA lab, I learned key concepts which helped me think about both my artistic and my business approach.

Let me quickly list the way three Field Workshops have helped build this project:

• The "Strategies for Internet Outreach" workshop with Jaki Levy in May 2009, helped me gain the confidence to work on WordPress and transformed my relationship to publishing content as an act of creating value.
• The "Public Relations Principles" workshop, also in May and the one-on-one session with Fran Kirmser, helped my wife, Julia, and I conceive of the "100 Donors 100 Dollars" campaign to raise money for my project. It was Fran's excitement about the possibilities of my book which led me to publish and her insistence that I set a date which would make sense for my project which led me to choose the one-year anniversary of Obama's inauguration. She also provided some simple strategies for creating a personalized mailing for my donors.
• The "Special Events Planning" workshop with Andrew Frank, who stepped in for Fran helped immensely with the final stages of the project's launch. Andrew's workshop focused on building community as the way to create successful events. He helped us map out our communities and strategize specific and personalized ways to engage with each of them.

In addition to the Field Workshops, my continued work with Executive Director, Jennifer Cook, and the conversations I had with the ERPA 7 have been invaluable moving this project forward. Thank you to the whole Field staff for your stance for the arts and the artists.

kahlil almustafa