The West Plains Council on the Arts (WPCA) has served the south-central Missouri Ozarks, whose long history of involvement in traditional arts, music and culture has been called one of Missouri’s hidden treasures. It is also a region characterized by poverty, high levels of unemployment and inadequate available income. The Ozark Action, Inc. is a Community Action Agency which operates federal and state funded social action programs in a six-county region and is dedicated to combating the causes of poverty through education, job training, and other social action programs.
In fall of 2009, Ozark Action, Inc. in partnership with the WPCA designed and implemented a project to determine whether cultural conservation can serve as a basis for economic development and economic development might provide an incentive for ongoing cultural conservation. This session will discuss the collaborative approach to regional cultural sustainability and offer thoughts on the natural symbiosis between cultural conservation and economic development. Reporting on the progress of the Central Ozarks Development Project will be Kathleen Morrissey, the WPCA president and Matt Meacham, the agency’s folklorist.
Bios
Kathleen Fukasawa Morrissey
Kathleen Fukasawa Morrissey is the Coordinator of Theater and Events at Missouri State University-West Plains and President of the West Plains Council on the Arts, positions she has held since 1998. Previously she was Executive Director of The Media Arts Center, Inc., a public access television facility.
Born in Nebraska, Kathleen was educated in California, where she received the Bachelor of Arts degree in Asian Studies from the University of California-Berkeley. Her focus on the interconnection between culture, media, and the arts began while working for the National Asian-American Telecommunications Association in San Francisco, CA, and at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, CA.
Kathleen is a graduate of the Non-Profit Administrator Program at Southwest Missouri State University. In 1994, she was the visionary drive behind the creation of the Old Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival, which is now the signature event for West Plains.
Ms. Morrissey is the recipient of numerous awards for her efforts in community betterment, including the 2000 West Plains Chamber of Commerce Chairman’s Award, 2005 West Plains Citizen of the Year, and the 2006 Missouri State University’s Excellence in Community Service award. She has been a panelist for the Missouri Arts Council’s Media Arts Program, the Missouri Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program, and the Kentucky Arts Council’s special programs.
Matt Meacham
Matt Meacham is a folklorist with the West Plains Council on the Arts, contributing in various ways to the Council’s documentation, conservation, and public presentation of folk culture in the Ozarks of south-central and southeast Missouri. He is now involved in the Central Ozarks Development Project, a collaboration between the Council and Ozark Action, Inc., that seeks to link cultural sustainability with economic opportunity.
Matt also teaches courses at Missouri State University-West Plains and serves on the University’s Ozarks Studies Committee. Additionally, he is the Missouri Humanities Council’s consultant for its 2009 and 2010 statewide tours of the Smithsonian/Museum on Main Street exhibit, “New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music.”
Originally from southwestern Illinois, where he worked as a newspaper journalist and music teacher, Matt is a graduate of Centre College in Kentucky and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He held a one-year position with the West Virginia Humanities Council, conducting a study of traditional musical activity in southern West Virginia in preparation for the possible establishment of a proposed regional musical interpretive center there, before coming to West Plains in 2007.
