Westminster Employees Embrace NAP Exhibit

Mikayla Martin poses with her work “Rainy Day” which won both the Youth/Teen People’s Choice Award and the Art Education Award.

On May 30th, the very first NAP Exhibit in Westminster, Colorado entitled ‘Art in the Family’ opened and included 165 artworks from the cities employees and their family members. We are thankful for Rich Newman, Marketing Supervisor for Parks, Recreation and Libraries, whose appreciation of the arts follows him wherever he goes. Rich made it his mission to introduce the NAP Exhibit to Westminster after having experienced the benefits of the program first hand.   
Westminster did a terrific job promoting this opportunity to all possible participants for their inaugural show.  Efforts to reach the employees included; hanging posters, having group meetings, creating a video for the employee intranet, email blasts as well as plenty of one-on-one conversations to spread the word. They even provided lawn chairs to departments and encouraged groups to get together and make their very own ‘Game of Thrones Chair’ entries for the show. This clever idea certainly caught the attention of many who otherwise may not have been motivated to take part. 

The city also made sure to get everyone involved by putting photographs of all artworks from the exhibit on their intranet for ‘People’s Choice Award’ voting. The online competition was well received and in the end they presented a total of three People’s Choice Awards including a Youth/Teen Award for Mikayla Martin’s “Rainy Day”, a tie for the Adult Award for Anne Cloyed’s “Ladies in a Boat” and Chris Duran’s “Bears of Nature”, and a ‘Game of Thrones Chair’ Award went to Kathy Piper’s “Kathy’s World”.

Coordinator Laurie Brandt was dedicated to making their first exhibit a success and she really put forth the extra effort to make it a wonderful experience for all involved. We are looking forward to a continued partnership with Westminster and seeing the amazing talents of the community on display for many years to come.