50 Years of Nantucket Arts and Creativity with Charley Walters

Nantucket Edition

Charley Walters proves that you don’t have to create art to be immersed in it.  Over the 50 years he has lived on Nantucket, Charley has become a guiding presence in the island’s evolving arts scene.

In this episode, Charley recounts his early career writing album reviews for Rolling Stone magazine and the Boston Phoenix while owning Nantucket’s only record store.  As the music industry shifted, he leveraged his expertise to start a new career in midlife, becoming a radio host for a jazz and blues show on WACK 97.7 FM and teaching occasional courses on music history. Charley is also deeply involved with the Dreamland theater, where he co-programs a popular year-round film series called "Film for Thought" that caters to an older demographic interested in documentaries, foreign films, and independent cinema.

Charley also reflects on the significant changes on Nantucket over the past 50 years and the evolution of its creative community, offering insights and advice for aspiring creatives drawn to the island.

In this episode:

• Career reinvention in midlife is achievable by staying connected to your core passions, even as the industries around them change

• Targeted, curated cultural programming can be successful, especially when it serves a specific and often overlooked demographic, such as an older audience

• The demise of the gatekeepers that kept new artists at bay presents a dilemma: new technology makes it easy for creators to make and distribute content, but audiences feel overwhelmed by the avalanche

• While Nantucket offers unique resources and opportunities for creatives, there are significant economic barriers, primarily the cost of living

Links:

https://www.nantucketdreamland.org