Hi Everyone! We had a fantastic first meeting where we crafted the following vision statement for the Music and Arts presence in Oakland Mills:

OM village is a vibrant community where artists want to live, work, perform, learn, and grow. It’s a place that encourages artistic expression of people of all cultures, intergenerational relationships, professional artistic development, and a dynamic network of creative and innovative thinkers.

Here are our next steps that we will take in this next meeting:

1. Continue brainstorming 50 - 100 ideas for activites that align with our vision.

2. Each of us select our top 15 ideas using the following criteria:

• Is it achievable in the next two-years
• Is it profitable or be able to have adequate funding, if applicable
• Does it have a champion who really wants to make it happen, and be able to have adequate manpower to make it happen
• Does it have enough appeal to bring in enough of an audience to make it worthwhile
• Does it support achieving world class fine and performing offerings in addition to amateur fine and performing art offerings.

3. We tally up the overall group vote for the top 15 and then work them into our work plan to work on over the next two years.

For this meeting we’ll provide yummy goodies to eat and drink and help us be more creative.

So dream big, juice up your creative mind, and think without borders. Invite other creative folks who you think might want in on this experience. Let them know that they don’t have to sign up for anything to participate in this evening; we are looking to maximize idea generation and creativity.

And if you are drawn to, you may want to do a little “research” beforehand and come to the table with artists, musicians, genre’s etc. that excite and interest you.