Sally Gaskill

My first convention was in 1983 or 1984 in Hartford, when the then National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies met with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. (Those were not only the pre-digital years, but the period when the acronyms – NALAA and NASAA - were more in alignment.)

I was a fresh-faced community development coordinator for the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. I remember what a rush it was to meet people like me from all over the country.

We did communicate back then – there were telephones, and we actually wrote letters and posted them in the mail – but there sure wasn’t Facebook or Twitter to keep us in touch with each other by the minute. So meeting up at convention was a big deal.

As the years have passed, I have been a frequent attendee of these annual meetings. Americans for the Arts has always been my home, because my work in arts administration has been grounded in community arts.