finding our wings collective This is a group for teen girls that meets at MICA one day a week after-school. It's a leadership and mentoring program for girls to participate in throughout their high school / teen years. They are filming a documentary throughout this time, documenting the progression of the group and of the girls' lives over that time, that will be released in 2013. The trailer for the film is amazing. I am making a mental note to check up on them in 2013!
baltimore united viewfinders A fellow service member works with these youth. They are a teen youth leadership initiative that use art to tell stories of East Baltimore. The teens made a presentation yesterday about what their organization does and how they decided on the mission and name of the organization. It seems like a really autonomous group and I was really impressed with the videos they made. They gave the kids cameras to take home and film their lives, and the preview of this work is pretty great!
littleglobe is a community arts center working all over New Mexico. I believe their focus is performance art but they also discussed several film projects. Check out their very comprehensive list of projects.
mica place MICA's attempt to reach out to East Baltimore communities and also have a place to house graduate students who are interested in community arts. It's essentially apartments, a community arts center, an art gallery, and classrooms all in one building. It opened last year and it seems to still be growing into its many roles.
nora howell presented a workshop about addressing issues of race in community arts and addressing whiteness as a concept. We did stand-up/sit-down exercises, word associations, self portraits and other drawings and it was a well-organized and impactful workshop. She showed us some of her visual and performance art, which examines whiteness in ways that I think are compelling and thought provoking. She has done similar workshops with youth addressing issues of race. Check out her videos, and also these two projects:
- the cracker dress This is a dress made out of crackers that the artist periodically wears around Baltimore. She said that she takes on this character named Oblivia when she wears it. My interpretation is that the character is so comfortable walking down the street that she's completely oblivious to other peoples' reactions and has the luxury of always feeling normal. Even when she's dressed in crackers.
- that's so white sticker project I like this project as a way to simply get white people to recognize and think about white privilege (and for anyone else who isn't already thinking about whiteness regularly). I also like it as a way for us to stop equating white with normal. The artist distributes these stickers for you to stick on things and will post a photo you send her on the blog. I totally know where mine is going!
the club at collington square This is an after-school community arts program. Some fellow service members work there, and I know one of the staff there is working on an audio/spoken word project with the kids.
engage at cca California College of Art's community arts programs. Some nice programs to look into if you are lucky enough to live in the Bay Area.
alternate ROOTS I found out from their presentation that Alternate ROOTS came out of the Highlander Folk School which I did not know before. They work primarily in the Southeast/Southwest United States and incidentally in West Baltimore. They do great work through their member artists, have some creative and radical minds behind their organizing, and also have some pretty hefty community artist grants to dish out!
- you comin' was a project by Alternate ROOTS' Resources for Social Change members at the World Social Forums in 2006-2007. They got people to approach each other and filmed the conversations.
