Partners in Arts Participation
ACHF Arts Access
Partnerships are developed between social service organizations and arts organizations to better serve underserved communities. More Minnesotans are able to participate in the arts. Social or human service organizations use arts to help achieve their service goals. Perceived or real barriers to participation are addressed. This outcome was evaluated by talking to participants and community members, who felt that their concerns were heard and dealt with in a respectful way. Some participants would not have been able to be a part of the workshops if we had not made the accommodations we did.
This project addressed language, cultural, and economic barriers to arts participation. The project involved Iraqis and Iraqi-Americans in the process of creating books and videos about their own stories, an artistic process in which they would not otherwise have been able to participate. We identified these barriers through our experience working with the Iraqi refugee community, and in soliciting advice from social service organizations and our refugee mental health liaison. We recruited participants through social service agencies and using local Iraqi community leaders. Where necessary, we provided Arabic translation to participants and made clear in our recruiting efforts that participants did not need to be fluent in English to participants. We reimbursed participants for transportation costs, provided culturally appropriate food at workshop events, and provided rides to participants and traveled to participants' homes when necessary. We took care to offer participants anonymity, and spent a good deal of time talking with participants about the concerns they had in sharing their art with the broader public in Minnesota. Finally, we had an on-call counselor with experience in working with refugee mental health issues. 2: The Advocates for Human Rights, the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project, and two independent artists came together to give voice to Iraqis living in Minnesota through art that they created in workshops. The art and stories were used to produce educational resources for students. All parties worked together well, and by virtue of the end results of the grant and the fact that the process was smooth, we consider the project to have been very successful. The organizations and artists will host a reception this fall for the participants and the broader public, and will continue to use one another as a resource. All materials online cross-link to the other organizations' websites and materials. In general, a healthy relationship has been established that can continue to flourish in order to ensure that Iraqi refugees' human rights are respected and their voices are heard.