ROCKPORT, Maine — Meg Weston joined the Maine Media Workshops and College as president in late March. But she’s not a newcomer to the educational institution.
Weston attended an introductory photography session in 1976-77. She remembers signing up because she was impressed with “the fact that these luminaries taught there.”
And she remembers the sacrifice that attending the school meant. A family member had given her money to install underground water lines at a camp on the Saco River, but she used the gift instead to pay the tuition at the Workshops.
“We hauled water in by sled all winter long and I never regretted it,” she said Monday.
A lot has changed since then.
An amateur photographer would be baffled walking through the classrooms and labs these days, but the high-end equipment is only part of the mystery. Peek over the shoulder of a student at work at a laptop, and you’ll witness software programs digitally manipulating still and moving images in ways that were unimaginable even a decade ago.
Get closer to the action and a theme emerges. Above all, as Weston said Monday, “Really, it’s all about telling a story.”
Later that evening, international photojournalist and Workshops instructor Peter Turnley made the same point in a lecture at the Rockport Opera House. Writers, he observed, don’t sit around talking about their word processing programs — they talk about how to tell a story.
This emphasis on the creative process is the core mission of the Workshops, as the educational institution is known in the Camden-Rockport area.
“One of the things we do here is help [participants] realize their own creative potential,” Weston said.
Sometimes, she said, that creativity is unleashed at a very personal level for a 40-something woman looking for fulfillment beyond her corporate career. Or it may be embraced by a 65-year-old man, ready to embark on new challenges after retirement. And often creative confidence is instilled in 20-somethings during intensive, hands-on classes, enabling them to make their way in careers in TV, film or photography.
The Workshops is beginning its 40th summer of classes. And again this summer, it’s bringing in some of the best photographers and filmmakers in the country, if not the world, to teach the creative craft.
This summer, some 1,700 students from around the country and the world will spend a week, or maybe two or more, at the campus, attending workshops titled “Documentary Portraits,” “Directing TV Commercials,” “Late Night Comedy Writing” and “The Ethereal Landscape.”
More and more, Weston said, working in photography and film requires being well versed in multiple platforms and formats, “blurring the lines between the technical and the creative.”
The Workshops, founded by David Lyman as a for-profit endeavor in 1973, ran into hard times five years ago. A nonprofit formed to protect the assets and continue its mission. Since then, the institution has consolidated its campus a short distance from Rockport Harbor, where it had operated in the imposing Union Hall brick building, though it leases some gallery space there.
Events like Monday night’s lecture at Rockport Opera House will continue through the summer on Monday and Tuesday nights, and will be free and open to the public, connecting the institution to the community that has hosted it all these years.
The Workshops is an economic driver in the area, too. Weston estimates it pumps $3 million a year in direct spending into the local economy, hiring about 100 people through the summer months. Many students rent housing in the area, and when family members visit, they spend at area restaurants and lodging establishments.
In addition to tuition, the Workshops enjoys corporate sponsorship from companies like Canon, Olympus, Sony, Epson, Panasonic and dozens of others that provide equipment and support.
Along with her ties to the Workshops as a student, Weston, 60, believes her career experiences will help her guide the institution forward. Most recently, she served as vice president for University Advancement at the University of Southern Maine and as CEO and president of the University of Southern Maine Foundation.
Before that, she was president of the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, and president and chief operating officer of the U.S. photo-finishing operations of Konica Corp.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Weston worked as president and CEO of PrintLife, an Israeli startup focusing on self-publishing of digital photos.
The Workshops valued her forward-looking approach to a rapidly changing media world, she said.
“I had a bit of reputation as a visionary, seeing technological disruption as offering opportunity,” she said. Weston sees the position as the intersection of her educational and corporate experiences with her passion for photography.
And passion is a word she returns to when extolling the experience students have at the Workshops. Recounting the stories of some recent students, she said “they were each at a transition point in their lives. It can be a life-changing experience for them — I hear that over and over again. We’re this catalyst for creativity.”
In addition to the summer workshops, the school offers a nine-month professional certificate in film or photography and a master’s of fine arts degree in film, photography or multimedia that follows “an intensive, immersive program” that has students stay on campus through the winter.
A splendid example of the creative economy in action!