|
|
| Gail Hannemann – CEO of the Girls Scout Council of Hawaii, First Lady of Honolulu |
 PRINTABLE VERSION |
KL: What brings you to be so involved in arts in Hawaii?
GH: Well, I always say that my parents spent lots of money to find out I have no talent. So it wasn't about necessarily that I am such a talented human being, that I just want to find venues in order to do my thing. But it was really when I thought about it, it was what the arts taught me. Kind of two parts to the question. When I moved to Hawaii, Mufi and I had very similar professional backgrounds. We'd both been involved in public policy, etc. And I knew from day one that he wanted to be a public elected official or in that public policy arena, I should say. Not that I wanted to stay out of it, but there would be too much for the two of us being in the same field. So I was looking for some things that I could personally contribute to in a public policy way but that would kind of stay out of the areas that he was interested in. He's always been very interested in business development, etc. And so I looked down and I was looking at all the things were happening in Hawaii, or not happening, I should say for that matter, and what I felt would be a meaningful thing for me to contribute efforts toward. It ended up being at the arts. At that time the state was doing major budget cuts. A lot of times in those budget cuts, it's the arts go first. And what I was thinking about was my personal experience in that most everyone is more like me where they aren't going to be an artist. They don't really have artistic being. But we're all human beings and the arts and the culture really speak to that part of the human being. And I know from my side when I look at it, some of the things that I learned in the arts really help me in professional experiences today. So, for example, I learned my fractions by studying music cause it's all about counting measures and bars and notes and etc. I also had a teacher who was very into music theory and listening and harmony and things like that. Those skills that you learn when you're trying to hear notes and figuring out what the harmony is, things like that, are the same skills that you use when you go into meetings. And there's all this discord going on. There are all these things going on. You're trying to pick out the different sounds and the notes, what's going on. And your job, in my particular case the CEO, is in trying to take that stuff and harmonize it or to align it or to figure out which note is out of tune and how to get it back. So it's the same exact skill, same thing with the visual arts when we study it. It's about being able to see spatial relations and that very much plays a part into business development and understanding relationships and things of that nature. So I feel that it's important for every child to have that, as well as somehow, I mean you know being in a studio, music and art has a common language. You don't necessarily have to understand that language to have that music or that piece of art or that performance pull at your heart strings. So that's how I got involved. The interesting part, though, is that where I have had more success keeping my Girl Scouts separate from Mufi, the arts have actually collided. Even though that was the one area that I though I was making this effort to make sure that I stayed completely out of the same arena, it's actually now in his role as mayor and in my role in terms of doing the community development part with the Alliance have actually crossed over. So one of the areas would be the Chinatown redevelopment. Arts at Mark's Garage is in that corridor that many of us have had the vision of trying to help change through the arts and it also has become one of the priorities of Mufi's administration on a broader scope, not just the arts. But so it's interesting how there's a summit that's coming up, the Chinatown Summit, and the Alliance will play a small part in that. One is that we're part of the presenters. I'm actually not going to do the presenting, but we have a presentation. We had a grant from the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation economic development section has awarded, I think it's nine of us now across the nation, on demonstration projects that show on how the arts can transform communities. And so through that they've also given us additional funding to try to entice people in the Chinatown area to come up with bright ideas. We have this grant that we're going to give, it's like these mini, little grants I guess is probably the right word for people who come up with bright ideas to try to improve the Chinatown area. So it's an example where sometimes your best intents ends up not working the way you want it. I'm not complaining. It's just I find it sort of ironic. But it also speaks to what the arts is about. It's about building communities and that's what the mayor does too. He's supposed to be building communities too.
EL: Do you sing?
GH: Oh, no. Oh my goodness. No. We won't be doing duets. No.
EL: OK. Well, thank you so much, Gail
|
Tags
You must be logged in to add tags.
|
Writer Profile
Jay-R Patron
Jay-R Patron, 24 years old, currently works as content provider for a multinational IT consultancy firm, under its interactive marketing department.
He was a writer for Hawaii-based Greater Good Inc., a media company behind the much-acclaimed Greater Good Radio. The show promotes social entrepreneurship and servant leadership.
Jay-r is a Journalism and Communication and Media Studies graduate from the University of Southern Queensland.
|
Comments
You must be a TakingITGlobal member to post a comment. Sign up for free or login.
|
|
