The Florida Keys were hit hard by the economic woes of the Great Depression, and some say even more so than the rest of the country. But there were advantages to being in the Florida Keys, too.
With 85 percent of the population on government relief, it was grits and grunts on most dinner tables and whatever else could be scrounged from local resources: Spanish limes, coconuts, papayas and mangos kept hungry island kids busy foraging, while others fished for their supper off local docks.
By 1934, with the New Deal in place, there was hope that programs like the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) and later, the Work Project Administration (WPA) would help make a difference. In Key West, these programs brought work projects and artists.
When William Randolph Porter, President of the First National Bank of Key West, ventured to Washington D.C. to ask President Roosevelt to make the Keys a pilot FERA project, his old acquaintance from a fishing trip was quick to respond. A team of ten artists and two administrators was sent to the Southernmost Key and a program to promote Key West as a tourist destination was launched. The rest, as they say, is history.
The WPA art program was designed to inspire artistic renditions of Key West as a tropical paradise that would lure visitors, whose dollars would feed the local economy. And while it is apparent that there were artists living and working in Key West prior to the program, the amount of art created, exhibited and reproduced between 1934 and 1936 was phenomenal as the artists here inspired each other’s creativity. With the establishment of the Key West Art Center and the classes and exhibits that followed, Key West became recognized as an artistic community and colorful tourist destination that continues to thrive on that legacy today.
Cost $275. Robert Haru Fisher has been teaching his Travel Writing Workshop since 1991. He is Contributing Editor of Frommers.com and has created two other guidebook series: the Fisher Annotated Guides and the Crown Insider Guides. A graduate of Harvard, Bob is a former president of the Society of American Travel Writers and a former director of the British Guild of Travel Writers. The author of several travel and art books, he has edited nearly 800 books.
This year, emphasis will be on getting the attention of your editor and reader with dynamic leads and threads. Enhance your writing skills and publication opportunities under the expert guidance of travel author/editor Robert Haru Fisher, former editor-in-chief of the Fodor Travel Guides. Limited to 15 participants, the workshop venue is the Frost Conference Room of the Heritage House Museum in historic Old Town Key West, close to hotels, restaurants and area attractions.
The 16th Annual Robert Frost Poetry Festival will be held in the garden of the Heritage House Museum. The Celebration of Poetry will feature the announcement and reading of the winners of the International Poetry Contest and the Monroe County Poetry in Schools Contest. Look for the return of the five day festival in 2011.For more information, visit www.robertfrostpoetryfestival.com