By Ron Fortier

Unprecedented! Even the use of this word has been unprecedented. The definition, “without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled,” describes national, world, and local events. Here at The Artists Index, we entered our second year as a nonprofit and significantly increased our content, our podcast hosts, and our brand recognition – unprecedented!

Our content additions include our first-ever podcast series. The Jazz Podcast Series, underwritten by Fiber Optic Center and Whaling City Sound and hosted by a legend and our local encyclopedia of Jazz – Dave Reis. The Gallery X Documentation Podcast Series, hosted by Sean FitzGerald whose guests include the key individuals affiliated with Gallery X since it’s inception in 1989 and, his wife, artist Christine Maiato FitzGerald who is heading up the scanning portion of the project whose goal is to digitally archive their entire collection of documents including news clippings, posters, flyers, photographs, and more.

In July, we launched our Live From AHA! live podcast series from the Living Room at Play Arcade. We have represented and relected the AHA! Night theme and showcases the vibrant and phenomenal creative community of New Bedford and the South Coast each month. And as the old television infomercials used to shout, “Wait! There’s more!” Our music and performing podcast hosts have been adding their time and talents to our agenda. Jeff Angeley was our first traditional music podcast host and is now heading up the New Bedford Roots & Branches Festival along with the festival’s co-founder Chris Camaro.

Scott Bishop started out covering local indie musicians, then wrote articles for The Artists Index and will soon start to head up the new Fairhaven Artist Podcast Series by curating existing content and producing new episodes We have, so to speak, suffered from an embarrasment of riches. Because of our podcast hosts’ dedication, we are exhibiting the preverbial growing pains of our success. We still have podcast episodes, 198, 199 and our 200th podcast episode to drop. With the holidays just a day away, we have held off in favor of releasing them right after the New Year. There’s a lot more to come!

What had started as a combination hobby project and labor of love, turned into a mission to create a community digital archive of the South Coast’s visual, performing, literary, and culinary artists. We attracted the attention of our first sponsor Heavenly Spirits, whose co-owner, Dan Cooney, is also a fellow artist. Joining him, Neal Weiss of the Fiber Optic Center and Whaling City Sound  as well as Feingold, Bonnet-Hebert, our community partners: the New Bedford Whaling Museum, The New Bedford Light, and AHA! We are also grant supported by the Mass Cultural Council through the New Bedford Cultural Council and Fairhaven Cultural Council, and Wicked Cool Places/ARPA grant through New Bedford Creative.

The grant funding, sponsorship, and donations we receive have been used to hire artists from our creative community to continue as subcontract podcasters, media specialists editors, researchers, and other documentarians to research, gather, produce, and document the history and the stories of the contemporary and historical artists of our creative community.

With your continued support we will continue to collect, document, and archive as many contemporary artists and those from as many generations from the past while making our archives available to everyone in and beyond the creative community. We close the year with two In-Focus Articles, the first, the final chapter of a local Fado singer, and the second, on the importance of time.

Please consider donating whatever you can to help and assure us in our mission to continue documenting the legacies of our South Coast Artists.

If you would like to be a guest on The Artists Index or have a suggestion, please let us know!