Waco Women Profiles: Creative Waco's Fiona Bond
In honor of Women’s History Month earlier this year, we visited virtually with Waco Women throughout our community. Here are their stories. In their own words, we asked them to share about the work they do, the women who inspire them, and why they love Waco.
“I am the founding executive director of Creative Waco, Waco’s 'Local Arts Agency'. In some communities this is called a council for the arts or arts commission. We do the work of nourishing strong roots for growing every branch of the arts in Waco through funding, policy, infrastructure, and professional development…basically creating the right environment for creative people to thrive and make Waco their base to do great things in arts and culture.
I come from a line of female role models who impacted me with their fierce love for family and community, and fearless defiance of social norms. My great grandmother was among the first cohort of women allowed to compete in the Olympics. She won a bronze medal for gymnastics in the 1928 Amsterdam games. My grandmother shocked friends and neighbors by becoming a professional fabric designer for Liberty of London, and my mother was a scientist, artist, teacher, and ordained minister, who did brave and wonderful work in the intersection between faith and the medical field. All of these women were selfless leaders in their communities, wise about prioritizing family life alongside their vocational work, always encouraging, and great fun to be around. They each had a fabulous sense of humor and never took themselves too seriously.
I was born and raised in England and moved to Waco from St Andrews in Scotland. I have lived in 5 different countries (at one time, every member of my family had a different accent). My husband has a chair in the religion department at Baylor, and is a world expert on the emergence of Christianity in Greco Roman culture (he has published over 20 books and made some pretty cool discoveries that changed the way people understand the early church). We have two teen boys, Callum (18) who is about to go to UT to study cyber security and artificial intelligence, and Torrin (15) who recently apprenticed with the Queen’s hatmaker in London, and bought himself a 1964 Lincoln Imperial as his first car. He and I play the bagpipes together for fun (everyone in our family plays a range of instruments).
Like many people involved in shaping Waco during this exciting time, I am a big fan and supporter of many of our non-profits, and the intersection between our work where we can make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. We work closely with other organizations so that arts projects can play a role in everything from revitalization to education to workforce development to making Waco a more beautiful and safe place to be.
We have a funding program that supports brilliant arts ideas that impact our community in every direction, and every funding application we write is a collaborative venture. You may have seen the fruits of some of our labors; the new murals we have created around town are a joint venture with Waco ISD, Prosper Waco, our chambers of commerce, City Center Waco and others to create opportunities for gifted high schoolers to learn to manage an arts-base project from concept to completion. [Earlier this year] we just put up 28 new animal sculptures along the riverbank in partnership with City of Waco and a wonderful group of community benefactors, and we just launched a professional development program in collaboration with the Tremaine Foundation (the national experts in this work), Startup Waco, our Chambers of Commerce and TFNB. In the fall, we will be running a chalk art festival with our Convention and Visitor Bureau to put Waco on the map as a tourist destination (and to help out the artists and creatives who will have been so negatively impacted by the current COVID-19 crisis.
I love that we have the privilege of living in Waco at this formative and culturally defining time. These are what people will one day call “the good old days”. Just as it would have been amazing to live in Florence during the time of the Medicis, or Bohemian Paris, we get to be the generation that shapes Waco’s cultural identity for generations to come. It’s a formidable privilege, and we currently have a coalition of visionary leaders."