Bunch re-elected to alliance board
Published 11:11 pm Thursday, July 24, 2014
Suffolk’s Linda Bunch has been re-elected to her post as vice president of programs for the Cultural Alliance of Greater Hampton Roads.
Known locally as the executive director of the Suffolk Art League and an accomplished clay artist, Bunch is starting her second three-year term in the office.
During a prior term as president of the organization, Bunch said, she did not feel like it did enough programming.
“The concentration at that time was more on advocacy,” she said. So when she left the presidency, others suggested she concentrate on improving the alliance’s program offerings.
During her last term, she started a half-day winter conference for alliance members. This year’s theme is the business of art.
“The cultural community in general, as nonprofits, it’s become evident with the economy and all that we really need to think of ourselves as small businesses,” Bunch said. “We are part of the economy.”
The alliance also conducts leadership forums for its member organizations, where the upper management and boards of directors get together.
It also holds two or three workshops per year, with a different theme each year.
“This year, all of our topics are spinning around diversity,” Bunch said. “We’re defining diversity very broadly — not only what you normally think of, racial diversity, but also age, economic diversity, occupational diversity.”
Bunch said the Cultural Alliance would continue adding programs each year. One of its newest is called “Poetry Explosion,” in which children visit a local museum and then work with members of local writing groups to write poetry about the artwork they saw.
Bunch said the Cultural Alliance has been around for a long time.
“It does a lot of really good things in support of the cultural community in Hampton Roads,” she said.