Dear Principals, Counselors, Mentors,

My collegial encouragement and personal greetings as you engage a new year of your most vital work! I contact you on behalf of the Board of the National Creative Society to invite your school to "Charter a Chapter and Become a Champion for Young Artists!"

During our tenth anniversary year, we are excited to offer the initial charter membership process and first year's membership fee (normally a $125 cost) free to each applicant school. The only cost to you for your first year's membership (until August of 2008 when an annual renewal fee of $60 to continue your chapter as active would be due) is a five-dollar per student fee that would come to our national office in Rome. It is expected that the student fee would come as the "national dues" part of the membership fee that your school's chapter would freely establish and would be paid by each student who accepts nomination. For that annual fee, each student receives an annual membership certificate, as does the school, and ongoing registry in our national database and on our website as we receive permission. (Other awards and honor merchandise such as membership pins, graduation cords, logo design club shirts, etc, will be available from the National Creative Society at a fair cost-per- item basis.)

As does the National Honor Society, the National Creative Society follows a "chapter" or after-school-hours club model. Our mission is to identity, honor and nurture, through the chapter and its mentors, young artists who will help bring beauty into our world. (We embrace the visual, written, and performance arts; not only one particular area of arts emphasis.) Through this chapter approach, we want to provide a solution to the challenges of available money and curricular time for the arts that many school leaders face. We only require some very basic, formal paperwork for our records that documents the support of the school Principal, agreement with our National Creative Society's constitution and mission, and the designation of a named chapter mentor or mentors for your school annually. Thus, this new process requires each school to re­register annually with NCS. The forms are downloadable from our website at www.nationalcreativesociety.org  and should be completed, signed and mailed to:

National Creative Society
P.O. Box 1564 Rome,
GA 30162-1564

You probably know, as well, that such arts involvement increases G.P.A., high-stakes test scores, and school affinity. My personal experience as a professional learning consultant, who has worked to help over 2000 students prepare for the SAT and ACT college entrance exams, certainly agrees with the Champions of Change research summary attached. Most certainly the arts evoke deep learning!

Some of you in our region may be familiar with our work, through school chapters and in the Rome/Floyd community over the past decade. For instance, for most of those years, we were able to offer two $500 scholarships to each high school for nominated, arts-active seniors in the Floyd County and City school systems. It is a delight to note that in April, 2007, Ms. Jamie Barton, a local Shorter college graduate, who received such a scholarship from NCS in 2000, competed in the Metropolitan Opera national awards in New York and won the national "best mezzo soprano" award.

This year we will offer five scholarship awards for seniors that will now total $5500 and will be offered on a nationally competitive basis—across arts disciplines. (Of course, in these early years, the "odds" will still favor the students in those chapters who are first enrolled in our new system!) Add your school and students and share your ideas soon!

Over our first decade the National Creative Society has reinvested over $280,000 and countless volunteer hours in projects to benefit Rome and Floyd County youth arts and education programs such as the annual Show Case of the Arts. While we are necessarily changing our emphasis from being a local funding or re-granting agency, the Show Case of the Arts is positioned to continue annually and show-up as a "best practices" model for communities on our website. We want new member schools and chapters to also submit their "best practices" and experiences and make them available nationally to our other members. Our mission involves such "seeding and sharing."

Our regional outreach and national marketing for new member chapters is first directed to middle and high schools and my priority commission from our Board of Directors is to enroll schools in our region and state as national models.

While all elementary schools may hold charter chapter membership with the National Creative Society, and so advertise themselves, and all students of member schools are welcomed and encouraged to participate in any NCS sponsored events or conferences (such as the Show Case of the Arts in Rome, Georgia) individual students, currently, are first eligible to receive and accept nominations for membership at the end of the fourth grade year—when new members would be inducted in an awards ceremony. Active membership would continue for high school graduates as they enter colleges with active chapters.

A recent article on the National Creative Society appeared in the local Rome News-Tribune. It can be found in the archives section of www.romenews-tribune.com  and searching under the dates from August 5th to August 6th and the term '"National Creative Society." The Rome News-Tribune article online also references our website at www.nationalcreativesociety.org  and our office phone at 706-378-9144. Our website (while currently being updated for content and structure so as to provide interactivity among members, content resources and information and "best practices" sharing) has all the needed, downloadable forms necessary to make application for a charter chapter. Please let me know how I can help to facilitate a charter chapter in your school!

Charles E. Reichel, M.A., M.Div., Ph.D.,
Executive Director the National Creative Society.
Licensed Professional Counselor