Arts Access

The goal of Saint Paul Neighborhood Network's Doc U program was to reach out to communities of color, women and low income individuals. We had 45 individuals apply for the program; of them thirty-nine were low income. Of the 39 individuals that qualified, 16 were white, 16 African American, two Native American, four Asian American and one Latino. Of the twelve applicants that were selected for the program all were limited income, seven were women, and seven were persons of color. Seven participants completed their documentaries, six were women and four were persons of color. Having had an application pool that exceeded our expectations and considering that more than 50% of qualified applicants were persons of color we feel we obtained our goal of reaching out to those communities. We did pre-assessments to ascertain the skill level of the participants, we conducted evaluations after each workshop and working group and we contracted with a professional evaluator to do a focus group at the end of the project. 2: In the first year of Doc U seven of the twelve participants reached the primary outcome of having a completed documentary, falling short of our goal of ten completed documentaries. One second goal was for participants to achieve a greater appreciation for the arts. Our independent evaluator conducted a focus group, and responses indicate that participants came to Doc U already possessing considerable appreciation for media arts, and that their appreciation has grown. Most of the participants consider themselves media makers. According to our focus group participants’ enthusiasm for making media remained strong and in many cases appeared to be increased as a result of participating in Doc U. Through post assessments, media management, time management, planning, storytelling and lighting were identified by participants as things they learned through the process.