WHEREAS, This year the Lively Arts Group bids farewell to its founding director, Naomi Klein, who is retiring after twenty-five years of service; and
WHEREAS, The Lively Arts Group is unique as the nation's only nonprofit cultural arts touring organization since its founding in 1975 by Naomi Klein. Since then she has conducted an average of 50 adult-education, cultural-arts tours each year, totaling 1,250 tours in her twenty-five years, personally guiding more than 62,000 Philadelphia area residents and throughout our country to major museums, orchestra concerts, theater, ballet and opera performances, historic houses, mansions, villages and sites, and gardens. For many of these travelers, especially those with physical disabilities, it has been their eye-opening and mind-opening introduction to the various cultural arts, which they have subsequently pursued and enjoyed independently; and
WHEREAS, At the same time, these group visits have provided a new outreach audience, additional new members and support for these cultural organizations and institutions. Directors of Philadelphia's museums and cultural institutions have served as the Lively Arts Group's Advisory Board, lending their prestige and professional knowledge to these tours; and
WHEREAS, The Lively Arts Group adventures have spread Philadelphia's reputation for its cultural-minded citizens throughout the country and abroad; and
WHEREAS, The Lively Arts Group continues into the twenty-first century on the principles and highest standards of arts-education and community services created in 1975 by its founder, Naomi Klein; now therefore
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That it hereby honors Naomi Klein and the Lively Arts Group.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That an Engrossed copy of this resolution be presented to Naomi Klein in recognition of twenty-five years of service with the Lively Arts Group.
End