Experience

• As Executive Director of the Cascade County Historical Society, she led its development into a regional facility. From six thousand square feet of rented space, the group purchased a historic building over seven times larger with an enlarged permanent collection, a research archive, and expanded educational programming.
• Working with national and state opportunities, along with local groups, she formed a City-County Historical Preservation Commission to build awareness of historic properties. That effort incubated the movement to save the Ninth Street Bridge. She also worked with individuals who laid the foundations for research and growth of the First People’s Buffalo Jump Park, comparable to Canada’s Head Smashed-In in size and significance.
• Kittredge has pushed awareness of creativity by developing a stronger visual arts presence in the state. At the Montana Arts Council, she created the juried selection process for the MCAM (Montana’s Circle of American Masters) program. Professional photography recorded the artists’ work, a yearly ceremony honored them, and they could serve as mentors for artists in MAP. (See next bullet.)
• By 2004, using her research in Montana’s most rural counties (one or fewer people per square mile), Kittredge developed “My Artrepreneur Program (MAP).” Applying humanities and business concepts, she molded a path, especially for rural folk artists, to build sustainable businesses and increase financial stability through their creativity. Utilized by the Idaho Council for the Arts, Montana State University, the Montana Arts Council, and commended by the National Governor’s Association, this program has rippled into urban areas, impacting artists across twenty-eight states and three foreign countries.

Kittredge’s work finds its ground in an understanding of the heritage of the working and wild lands and their providing the context in which the creative mind thrives. In a world quick to expect, demand, or change, she continues to believe in the empowered learner and sees our cultural and physical landscapes as interwoven forces requiring nurturing and expression.

Whether discussing the folk arts with one person or many from New York’s Cornell University to Cornwall’s PCAD Academy, Kittredge finds linkages. It could be interacting with smaller groups at Oregon’s John Day or international Craftnet administrators at Wales’ Colleg Morganwegg. Or it becomes a presentation to larger audiences at the Small Business Administration’s national conference in San Antonio or a national retailers’ gathering in Minneapolis, MN.

Kittredge describes our human desire and need to create as often overlooked, when in fact, it is the wind at our backs.