What are your iconic images of West Virginia culture? A group of old-time fiddlers? Crafts at Tamarack or the Mountain State Arts and Crafts Festival? Most likely these images include older, white folks keeping Scotch-Irish traditions alive in the rural hills.

A great avenue towards sparking creativity is combining things that may never have been thought of together before. For example, how many people out there would think that traditional West Virginia culture may hold some appeal for a young urban or African-American kid? How many people would visualize one of those traditional, older, and yes – whiter – West Virginians mentoring one of these children of color to embrace the music of the hills?

That’s why I love stories like this one. Through the Music Mentors program from Charleston’s East End Family Resource Center, started by Bob Webb and Heidi Muller, little Shalor Gore from Piedmont Elementary has found a new passion – the dulcimer. In fact, through the mentorship of Bob Webb, he came in second in the youth dulcimer competition at West Virginia’s Vandalia Gathering. Shalor says he plays the dulcimer because “it brings him joy, and it’s cool.”

How many of us today would have classified dulcimer-playing as cool? Who would have remotely guessed that this neat young kid would embrace it? Apparently Bob Webb and Heidi Muller!

This is what Create West Virginia is all about. It’s about building on the beautiful culture and traditions that we have, but not putting limits or stereotypes on them. It’s about creatively breaking stereotypes and limitations that only exist in our own minds. It’s about reaching across economic, racial and other boundaries to develop a new creative generation in West Virginia that will invigorate culture, entertainment and economic growth in our state.

And for anyone who thinks this is just a “sweet” story but nothing more, it may be good to be reminded by this quote: “Scientific research has found music instruction offered to children at an early age increases their learning capacity in other areas.” The American Music Conference has gathered some information to help fight cuts and spark growth in music education budgets, including this great one-page statement from former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee (R). We’re finding that reducing these arts programs does have a negative impact on reaching our national goal of increasing math, reading and science scores.

We need your ideas on how to spark a dramatic increase in activity like the Music Mentors program. How can we build support and momentum for a creative explosion among our people? Let’s break through some barriers and think big.