Community Arts

We will emerge from this project with strengthened relationships with artists and their communities, as well as our own. We will do this by producing an event series that has six events curated by and with arts and conversations created by artists and writers who are women of color, First Nations people, collaborative musicians, and Muslim writers and artists. Our monthly arts series will be promoted to the East Side community in particular through the neighborhood low-frequency radio station WEQY and the weekly East Side Review. We will also ensure that the events are open to the East Side as well as a larger audience through our monthly electronic newsletter that reaches 3000 subscribers and social media that also has 3000 subscribers. We will work with all of the artists, at least 30 days in advance, to craft a flier that represents their work and to develop a target list of partner organizations and community groups that should be made aware of the event. Our new project in evaluation with Dr. Remi Douah and his Epimap 247 will engage audience members in qualitative assessment of their experiences at these programs. Epimap 247 is currently working on developing an assessment module for ESFL where we will have a section of our website and a phone app for event attendees to complete surveys and evaluate events. We plan to use online surveys, for instance, to evaluate the project and its outcomes as follows: Which artistic approaches challenge participants to envision how art-making process plays a functional purpose in communities (Participating in demonstrations of artistic activities?)? What artistic processes of the different performances enable attendees to appreciate the arts as a vital function in everyday life rather than a mere tool for entertainment and viewing pleasure? They will process this information with the artists to build and maintain an information feedback loop than can shape the planning of subsequent programs.