From our friends at the North Carolina Arts Council:
Rebecca Moore, director of marketing, and David Potorti, literature and theater director, have announced their departure from the North Carolina Arts Council.
David will leave his position effective July 27 to pursue training in live audio description for arts events, voiceover work, and audiobook narration. Rebecca departs September 1 to work full-time in media relations.
Rebecca facilitated the North Carolina Arts Council’s presence through messaging, brand management, and communications. She was responsible for NCArts.org, promotional materials, and provided marketing support for all programs including Poet Laureate, N.C. Heritage Award, and SmART Communities.
Rebecca joined the staff in 2005 charged with promoting arts and culture in N.C., with an emphasis on funded organizations and cultural tourism. She launched the Arts Council’s first blog and guided the first steps into social media and the creation of cultural tourism videos as a storytelling medium—unique at that time among state arts agencies.
Additionally, she coordinated the agency’s first media/publicity event in New York, which resulted in national placements in Antiques Magazine and American Craft Magazine, for example, and hosted a press tour in Kinston and Wilson for the African American Music Trails. Rebecca oversaw new messaging and an updated logo for the 50th anniversary of the agency. Through the years she facilitated media partnerships with Our State magazine, UNC-TV, and WRAL.com, and she coordinated statewide press announcements of the Arts Economic Prosperity studies.
She served as project manager with the University of North Carolina Press on the production and launch of two volumes of Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina, Literary Trails of North Carolina (Mountains, Piedmont, and Eastern volumes), and African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina.
“I am privileged to have been part of a remarkable staff at the North Carolina Arts Council, and I am grateful to the amazing artists in our state and our arts organizations who work so hard to elevate awareness of the arts in our state,†Rebecca said.
David joined the Arts Council as its arts tourism manager in 2007. Drawing on his background as a journalist, writer, folklorist, and radio and television producer, David produced more than 150 videos as the “Artful Traveler.†Supporting the Arts Council’s series of cultural tourism guidebooks, David traveled across the state, interviewing and capturing the work of N.C. artists in craft, theater, literature, dance, music, and the visual arts and highlighting arts communities in Penland, Seagrove, and Cherokee.
He later took on responsibilities for grantmaking to theater and literature organizations and artists and directly facilitated the work of four of our state’s poet laureates: Cathy Smith Bowers, Joseph Bathanti, Shelby Stephenson, and Jaki Shelton Green (North Carolina’s first African American poet laureate). He assisted Jaki in earning the inaugural Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her “Literary Changemakers†project. David documented several N.C. Literary Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and created and promoted opportunities for recipients of N.C. Arts Council literature fellowships to read from their work at independent bookstores statewide.
“My favorite memories include capturing Mark Dendy’s site-specific choreography in and outside of the new Durham Performing Arts Center; documenting the fiftieth anniversary show of Bill Myers and the Monitors at the Boykin Theatre, in Wilson; capturing Black Mountain College’s seventy-fifth anniversary events at Lenoir-Rhyne University; and recording Haliwa-Saponi Pow Wow activities,†David said.
Although he is leaving the Arts Council, David will not be slowing down. In addition to completing personal writing projects, he will be active in journalism and community organizing.
The impact of the work that Rebecca and David have done will be felt across North Carolina for years to come. Please join the Arts Council staff in thanking them for their outstanding service to the state.
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On behalf of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, we would like to thank both Rebecca and David for their service and for their tireless support of the NC Writers’ Network. The NC Arts Council is the NC Writers’ Network’s single largest and longest-supporting grantor.
We’ve enjoyed working with them both over the years and wish them godspeed and good luck!