Went to an interesting workshop today.

Met a bunch of people and did some networking in the arts.

It’s so weird.

I didn’t notice I was the only brown person in the room till much later when I was relating some interesting anecdotes to my husband. And I thought, “Oh yeah. I think I was the only brown person in the room.”

It was funny because the Arts community seems to live in a world all its own.

They understand, the way other people cannot seem to, the importance of arts education.

Basically arts comes down to expression.

Can you express yourself artistically?

And if people don’t think that’s vital, they’re sadly mistaken.

It goes from sensing the undercurrents in the words we use to express ourselves, to body language. Dance is just a refined form of body language if you think about it, and if you don’t think body language is important…well.

And yet the problem is the Arts organizations don’t seem to know how to convey that to regular people.

Isn’t that ironic???

They were talking about fund raising, and I probably should have kept my mouth shut but I couldn’t help saying something.

Any artist who actually makes a living at it, basically knows about fund-raising.

Fund – raising is being able to convince people that what you do is so valuable you should be paid for your art!

That’s the crux of fund-raising. So how do you do that?

You show it!

It’s been very interesting lately.

I was contacted by a church group who wanted permission to use my book Many Windows to form a sort of play for their Easter congregation.

And I thought, Wow!

Many Windows is probably my least publicized books. I was sad when it didn’t receive any promotional recognition at all. And yet it made it out to the American Midwest somewhere and they liked it enough to share it with their congregation at an Easter service when the church is probably going to be well attended.

Fascinating!

It’s amazing where your work can end up!

And today, sitting beside me was a teacher who was from Ottawa. In doing one of those icebreaker activities we had to ask each other questions.

She said, “I know who you are! I love your books! I read Dahling if You Luv Me Would You Please Please Smile”

And again I thought Wow! But it turned out she’d read it when she was 12 years old! And now she was a teacher. And that was more than fifteen years ago, so yeah, I felt old.

But alhamdu lillah.

It was an interesting day.

And once again, I thought alhamdu lillah, I get paid quite well for what I love to do.

It’s all good!