Janice Shaw has devoted her entire career to supporting artists and bringing their work into our awareness and our daily lives. As Executive Director of the Arts Council she established features and practices still in place today. She expanded the cultural bulletin, Arts News (now Currents), into a multi-agency publication in which other organizations would have their own voice; and she initiated Island-wide distribution to bring cultural news into every household. She was instrumental in bringing the humanities into the Arts Council, thus creating the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council. She helped expand the public art program and liberalize the guidelines so that public art could be located anywhere on the Island and not just on city-owned property. Perhaps her greatest achievement was to establish a contractual working relationship with the mayor and the newly incorporated City. Out of this came the official designation of BIAHC as the organization to manage cultural affairs for the city. And finally, Janice was instrumental in developing what would become the Cultural Element of the City’s Comprehensive Plan.
Everything she has done reflects Janice‘s conviction that our artists and our civic institutions can work together to benefit one another.