NCS - A Short history
The National Creative Society was formed in 1997. Key, community volunteers from Rome, Georgia were gathered by a caring civic leader and visionary octogenarian, Mr. George Wallis. Many of those early founders are honored on our website with named scholarships. We celebrate their vision, hard work, and investment of time and resources—especially by moving boldly forward!
These key volunteers agreed that, in general, young creative students in this nation’s educational system—whose creativity was directed particularly to bringing beauty through the visual and performing arts and creative writing--had less access to honors and encouragement, through their schools and clubs, than did those students who were academic and athletic or sports-related achievers.
While recognizing that these student categories of achievement and honors were not always mutually, or necessarily, exclusive, it was still determined that the need existed for many more students to be identified, encouraged and honored for their “works of the heart” by nomination to and inclusion in a national arts- honorary society.
During October of 1997 the National Creative Society was officially incorporated in Georgia as a not-for-profit corporation with IRS 501(c)(3) status. Its name and logo are protected through trademark.
The mission and purpose of the National Creative Society was and remains to provide a formal organizational structure for a national honorary society for young, creative artists that would be interdisciplinary across the arts and include all school levels. It seeks to include and provide a national society and forum to join those many organizations and individuals who, at local and regional levels, honor young creative artists across disciplines and share a similar mission.
During its first decade, the National Creative Society, through its volunteers and early structure, raised over $280,000 that was totally reinvested in scholarships and programs for young artists in Floyd County and Rome, Georgia schools. From this decade of experience and gaining a sense of local “best practices” and outcomes to share, and with a developing infrastructure designed for better national outreach, the National Creative Society is now moving to gain chapters regionally, state-wide and nationally in this new era. This website and its interactivity is a chief tool.
Even more, in this current decade, as many arts programs are “being left- behind,” the National Creative Society, with its ten-year history, offers itself as an existing adjunct organization and collaborative structure to serve the many educators, educational organizations, parents, students and the arts organizations that are concerned for the “whole child.” A common affirmation is that the arts are core to all “deep-learning” and key to those very benchmarks (including high test scores, G.P.A.’s, and school affinity) that are expected and desired by school accountability standards.
Individual student membership and recognition is available by formal nomination, acceptance and induction into an approved, active chapter of the National Creative Society for students from fifth-grade through college or university.
As the past serves the present, we anticipate that our offerings, in service of young artists who bring their beauty to our world, will grow and our structure and processes adapt as new energies and ideas are added to the concentric circles that ring outward from the Coosa River Valley in Rome, Georgia. We invite your partnership!
