My View of Life on the Dock
GloucesterCast Podcast Taped 11/10/13 With Guests Kim Smith Toby Pett and Host Joey Ciaramitaro
Topics Include: Donuts from Brother’s Brew, Gloucester High Only Plays 7 Regular Season Football Games, Passports and Olive Kitteridge Filming, Frances McDormand and Bill Murray in Town, Toby’s Psychotic Dining Expectations, Sista Felicia bringing The Thunder, Mass Office of Travel and Tourism, Betsy Wall and Catherine Ryan
Cat Ryan submits-
Hi all,
Here are few deadline events that may interest you, and some wonderful Gloucester news. So many updates are possible because of the strong support and lead from the City of Gloucester through the office of Mayor Kirk. Click the logos to follow the links—orange seems to be in fashion for these logos! What amazing partnerships surround us; please share the links with your friends. Good Morning Gloucester, the Gloucester Daily Times, the Cape Ann Beacon, Cape Ann TV and other local media have helped tremendously in spreading the word for our creative art, businesses, and orgs.
Sincerely
Catherine
November 14, 2013 FREE special conference on rising water issues and natural systems: The Great Marsh Symposium at the Crane Estate, Ipswich, MA, Great House at the Trustees of Reservations, Ipswich, MA, hosted by The Great Marsh Coalition. Essex National Heritage is a member. There’s a tour from the great roof after! FREE
Wednesday, November 20, 2013, Smart Growth Alliance Conference at the ABX convention center, Boston. Celebrating Smart Growth projects across the Commonwealth and ten years of Smart Growth. I’m going as a participant. I’ll also be speaking about arts/culture updates in Gloucester for one of the panels. Gloucester’s successes via its Community Development department and the HarborWalk public spaces inspired this invitation.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013, Montserrat Gallery, Beverly: The Creative Economy of the North Shore (CEANS) is hosting a networking reception. Feature of the night: arts and culture curator, and non profit advisor, Ricardo Barreto, will speak about the NEA public art process that led to 75 nationally known artists submitting public art ideas. We’ll meet the artist awarded the project, too, Anna Schuleit Haber. FREE
You may have missed Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce’s hosting for MOTT’s Director Betsy Wall. A big focus of this reception described the excellent platform of their website. Please add in your businesses and orgs ASAP—the North Shore and Gloucester can do more! If you have questions feel free to email me! Immediate exciting impact: MOTT has asked multi talented Gloucester resident and artist Kim Smith to be a guest blogger on their fantastic website. Also, her video of the schooner festival will be added to their YouTube channel. The Chamber is also working on a campaign for a Cape Ann license plate. They’re working with legislature to see if the restrictive parameters for logo design can revert to offering the entire background as part of a winning design (as we see with Cape Cod or the MA Environmental Trust’s Right Whale).
Harbortown Cultural District is featured in the November 2013 issue of their publication Horizons as part of a submission for one of its regularly published “ten” lists. You can find the article here They introduce the ten districts as “the creative heart of many communities. Here are some in the region worth visiting.” The other districts on the list cover 7 states: New Haven’s Audubon Arts District, Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts, Lowell’s Canalway, New York City’s East Fourth Street, Providence’s Downtown, Hartford’s Downtown, Baltimore’s Mount Vernon, Portland’s Arts, and Pittsfield’s Upstreet. The article also credits the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s (MCC) cultural districts program. www.gloucesterharbortown.org. The author selected this district because of the HarborWalk.
Excellent podcast webinar from the Massachusetts Cultural Council on how to build audiences with ArtsBoston Audience Initiative project. The link also has a copy of the presentation if you don’t have time to listen. When you do find an hour to sit with the audio, there’s a lot of good information (and maybe one dog barking in the background at some point and one swear whoops!) There’s a sliding scale fee to sign up and share audience lists. Gloucester businesses/orgs should do it. Local mention: If you listen to the entire broadcast you’ll hear artist and seARTS Chair Jackie Ganim-Defalco ask a question and mention Cape Ann Artisans! Update: In September, the Massachusetts Cultural Council worked with legislatures to append the state budget, requesting an increase in $500,000 towards marketing. The request was tabled for now. But what’s important is the advocacy, the communication, and the ideas are out there! It is so important to share. Mention and coverage of arts and culture across many elections and in the media has significantly increased and improved.
US Travel Association. Please text to show your support for this Jolt Act. It affects Gloucester and all MA residents! I can’t believe that Brazil, Romania and Poland have trouble with visas! Text from your phone today 877-877, “travel”, and send to sign up for the Power of Travel coalition if you want to help there.See Good Morning Gloucester coverage here
Essex National Heritage outstanding Essex Trails and Sails is not surprisingly already planning for next year. They were thrilled with Gloucester participation and the Block Party overlap, and hope to have even more partners and more promotion for 2014. Update coming soon and please plan for it next year! Their website and social media platforms are excellent opportunities.
November 1-17, 2013, save time for Cape Ann Community Cinema’s 6th Cape Ann Film Festival 
The Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce’s Coffee and Connections featuring Betsy Wall, the Director of the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, was very well attended this morning and was hosted by Chamber board member Mat Anzivino of the Rockport Inn and Suites. Peter Webber, Senior Voice President of the Cape Ann Chamber, had arranged for this very interesting and informative meeting. Thanks so much to Joey and Catherine Ryan for getting the word out with several postings on Good Morning Gloucester.
Senator Bruce Tarr, Betsy Wall, Peter Webber, and Mat Anzivino
Betsy Wall and Harold Burnham
See recent GMG post by Catherine Ryan about the 2013 Annual Conference on Travel and Tourism that she attended, and how connecting with the MOTT website can significantly help your business or organization.
Betsy Wall and Lisa Simmons, Director of PR and CommunicationsÂ
Catherine Ryan submits-
I sat with Peter Webber of the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce and a great group from Newburyport. The Massachusetts Director of Travel and Tourism (MOTT) is Betsy Wall and she’s impressive! She has pushed for investment in this sector, measurable returns, and building success through strong partner engagement. I thought about the Essex National Heritage Trail and MA Smart Growth Alliance. I thought about the great work from Anita Walker and the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the new state Cultural Districts. This led me to wondering how many women were in charge of Departments with Gov. Patrick and how much were their budgets and all sectors? I confess that I would have started to look that up right then and there (wifi was good!), but everything was so interesting I had to listen.
Several dignitaries were introduced.
Massachusetts State Representative Kathleen O’Connor Ives is the co-chair of the Joint Committee on Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development (seems very approachable) along with Representative Cory Atkins (Concord). Ives lives in Newburyport so our table was excited when she spoke! There was big applause from Plymouth and Cape Cod attendees for Therese Murray (Plymouth/Barnstable), the Massachusetts Senate President. Well, she likely supported Plymouth’s 400th Centennial exhibition that will travel across the US and overseas!
The room– and the international table– just beamed for Governor Deval Patrick who was our keynote speaker. Travel and tourism is right up there with other market pillars that have helped the MA economy recover (such as higher education and healthcare). He gave a shout out to…The Berkshires! He presented MOTT awards to several successes in the TT arena including City of Salem, the Freedom Trail, SturbridgeVillage, The Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, and Boston Gay Pride. The international representatives at the table next to us covered Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland and Japan. The three big emerging countries? China, Brazil and India.
Betsy Wall lined up the speakers to cover the big picture on down, and how they’re working and partnering together. The first Guest Speaker was great, President of Brand USA (Discover America), Christopher L. Thompson.
He shared this Roseanne Cash “Land of Dreams” song/video commercial that was done “before he came on board”. I’m not sure if that meant he was cool for it or not! I admit that I was trying to spot Gloucester’s flag and other towns within the great room, and did not concentrate just then on specific shots of MA in this video, but I did see iconic art and bridges. You can see it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrUs_FWqj9s
Incidentally tracking film and tv production within MA falls in MOTT’s domain and Gloucester is one of 70 towns or cities that have been used as location over the past two years. In 2013 alone there have been 16 major productions in MA and estimated spending for the year is north of $215,000,000.
Thompson (and others) described this industry as the nation’s #1 service export and that1 in every 8 jobs reflects this sector of the economy. Massachusetts is big time involved. Massachusetts is a destination for its “must see” sights, and so many of our Nation’s “firsts” are here. Massachusetts is also leading or in the top 5 for work in healthcare, energy efficiency and alternate energy, life sciences and biology. People are visiting their kids at our universities, moving through for military travel, etc. Boston Conventions is the leading INTERNATIONAL headquarters for business, scientific and medical segments of the economy. Although travel is up, it has not reached the levels pre 2001. Brand USA was implemented to raise these numbers. This industry is so ready with measurements and metrics they could easily offer exact data about how much business was lost and the economic impact from the government shut down.
Another speaker, Tom Glynn, CEO for the Massachusetts Port Authority, gave a terrific update. Massport is helping people move through quickly and safely and they have a global outlook. They’ve streamlined the clog (vehicular and exhaust!) at pick up and drop off for Logan by switching to one integrated bus system for all rental car companies (28 vs. 100+). They’ve rearranged curbs and added better wayfinding. They’ve introduced the new TSA program “global entry”. There are big gains in travel infrastructure and many more non stop flights available.
The last speaker up was Patricia Rojas-Ungar, Vice President of Relations for the United States Travel Association (USTA). She spoke about our country being the number one place foreigners say they want to travel to– but then don’t, because of how long it takes to acquire a visa and the travel hassles. She’d say that increased international travel means more American jobs. They’re working on making that travel easier. This means in places such as Brazil and China, two willing markets, people may be able to access digital media for interviews for visas rather than having to take a trip to another location possibly hours away just to apply… to take a trip to the US. It also means spreading the news about the Jolt Act (HR 1354) which supports expanding the Visa Waiver Program to Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Israel, Poland, Romania and Uruguay because it could add billions to our economy and create more jobs. Text from your phone today 877-877, “travel”, and send to sign up for the Power of Travel coalition if you want to help there.
What does MOTT mean for folks, organizations and businesses in Gloucester? You can sign up to meet Director Betsy Wall in person. Peter Webber has arranged for Ms. Wall to visit Cape Ann next week. The Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce is hosting this very special reception on Wednesday, October 30th, from 9AM-10:30AM at the Rockport Inn & Suites. You can RSVP here http://web.capeannchamber.com/events/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1136
Visit and re-visit MOTT’s website www.massvacation.com. It’s full on engagement, ever updating and rich content. Take some time to submit your business/org listing to the website (no guaranty but worth a try); use great (seasonal) photos, and write ups. See what is already listed. Look at the tabs for LBGT and MA Green and other categories. Add into their social media platforms (send in your photos, posts, comments) and partake in the robust real time marketing they’re making available. It’s going to be a great resource when you want to visit other towns, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUA1CXIku8
Good Morning Gloucester 