Lively Programs Highlight Rich Northern Great Lakes Heritage on Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour in Summer 2002

Official Website - http://michiganhumanities.org/culturetour/

LANSING - Artists and presenters have been announced for the 2002 Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour, a six-week summer partnership project of the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and Michigan Humanities Council.

Twenty professional performers and presenters will again bring to life the rich culture and heritage of our state's northwoods and Great Lakes July 1-Aug. 15 as they travel around northern Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula to entertain and educate vacationers and area residents. They are musicians Rob and Anne Burns of Rochester, Wanda Degen of East Lansing, Tom Hodgson of Saline, Corinne Rockow of Marquette, Song of the Lakes of the Grand Traverse area, Donn Werling of Dearborn, Neil Woodward of Howell and John Berquist, Tom and Chris Kastle and Lee Murdock of the Chicago area; poet-bard Terry Wooten of Kewadin; the Mme. Cadillac Dancers of metro Detroit; storytellers Sheila Dailey Carroll of Mount Pleasant, Patty Clark of Charlevoix, Larry Massie of Allegan, Genot Picor of Macomb, Barbara Schutzgruber of Ann Arbor, and Jenifer Ivinskas Strauss of Hastings, and historical-cultural interpreters Michael Deren of Ann Arbor and Judy and Jim St. Arnold of Ironwood.

Ninety-seven lively evening cultural programs on the award-winning Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour will take place in state and national parks and campgrounds and at community venues in rural northern Michigan. All programs begin at 7 p.m. (local time) and are offered free of charge, sponsored by the statewide arts and humanities councils in cooperation with Michigan State Parks, the USDA-Forest Service, National Park Service, local cultural and heritage organizations and Mead Paper Division of Escanaba.

A complete schedule of all summer programs on Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour will be available in print in April and on-line in February on the Michigan Culture Link and Michigan Humanities Council web sites found at http://michiganhumanities.org. For a print copy, contact Michigan Humanities Council (517/372-7770) to be added to the mailing list.

Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour is the only Michigan project featured among 24 "model" programs included in the new "Share Your Heritage: Cultural Heritage Tourism Success Stories" publication of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Culture Tour also received the 2000 "Windows on the Past" national heritage award from the Chief of the Forest Service for "innovative work in bringing Michigan's artisans together with the public to showcase natural and cultural heritage" and was a finalist for a 2001 Travel Industry Association of America Odyssey Award last fall.

For more information about Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour,
contact:

Nancy Mathews
Director of Community Programs
Michigan Humanities Council's Northern Office
906/789-9471
E-mail: paomihum@voyager.net.