Arts Activities Support

We successfully completed one large-scale mural project in a busy south Minneapolis neighborhood. Survey responses collected from participants, neighboring businesses, and the neighborhood association all reflected that the mural is a very valuable addition to the community. The creative teen group is a fully functioning collaborative supported by teaching mentor artists and lead artists. Our Teen Arts Council program reached all artistic goals set forth of completing the minimum requirement of one public art project. We witnessed an interesting change in the core group in how they viewed their individual and collective roles. Through various conversations, they concluded that there was less of a desire for a council concept since community partner development and site evaluation were laborious and sometimes intimidating. They were ultimately much more interested in focusing on the design and execution of creative public art projects instead of being both creators and an administrative council. This approach will allow them to best apply their time to project development and design sessions in future projects. The group thus renamed themselves the Youth Arts Collaborative. Staff will identify community partners and locations for future projects and share the external partnering processes with the group, enabling them to indirectly learn some of the administrative tasks. Also, our original model of majority recruitment responsibilities by the teens was inadequate. In the future staff will take a more active role in upfront recruitment with a more extensive social media campaign and through local schools. Youth Arts Collaborative partnered with Audubon Minnesota (environmental conservation organization), Standish-Ericsson Neighborhood Association in Minneapolis and local businesses. The project entailed designing and installing a large mural that depicts what it means to live in a river city where protecting clean water resources for birds and people is not only a responsibility but a way of life. Audubon Minnesota taught the teens and Articulture staff about water conservation issues and migratory birds who rely on Minnesota’s water resources. This encouraged the teens to think of solutions to these clean water conservation issues. Their challenge was to use their art to educate the public about this issue and stimulate social change. Youth Arts Collaborative planned a community paint day where the community came out to participate and learn about the educational project. Our biggest challenge was the unusually high number of rain days, causing scheduled paint days to be canceled. During the installation we received a lot of positive feedback from citizens and the local businesses. Youth Arts Collaborative mentoring artists and our lead artist all did a fabulous job of supporting the teens throughout the project process, keeping them on track and allowing them to take ownership of the design process. Both the mentors and the lead artist have reported their observations of artistic growth in many if not all of the teens during the project. Some teens at the beginning of the project were more reserved or made negative comments about their artistic abilities. However, they progressed into more confident young artists who sought out opportunities by taking the lead on design elements or worked on improving their painting skills and taking initiative to have ownership in developing parts of the project. Our hope was to engage a core group of urban teens in a meaningful public arts program, and to connect with the community at large where the public art would be installed. We successfully recruited, educated and inspired 9 local teens who exceeded our expectations and took on the task of also honing and clarifying what they wanted the program to be—less administrative and more about being a creative collaboration. Audubon Minnesota was the critical community partner Clean Water for Birds and People with the creation of the Mississippi Flyway mural. A site was identified in the Standish Ericsson neighborhood and we received a vested interest and support from the Standish-Ericsson Neighborhood Association. Standish-Ericsson Neighborhood Association helped to get out information about the new mural in the neighborhood through their communications network, which also served to cultivate community volunteers for both the public community paint day and the final unveiling event. Standish-Ericsson Neighborhood Association also arranged for wall preparation services, which included power washing and priming the wall. The community paint day event successfully engaged 67 people from the community where the mural was installed. We had single adults, young couples and children of all ages come to paint and ask questions about the project. Information about the Youth Arts Collaborative our public arts program was distributed with the intent of introducing the Articulture to new families and teens for future projects. A local business, A Baker’s Wife, located directly across the street from the mural, donated freshly baked doughnuts while Standish-Ericsson Neighborhood Association provided beverages and pizza for both the community paint day and the final unveiling event. The mural is located in Minneapolis at the corner of 42 St and 28 Ave South. The corner has a busy Metro bus stop, is near the Light Rail Blue line, and there are more than 8 local businesses that surround it, which makes the site a perfect place to engage community members where they live. It is at an intersection where there is a lot of car and foot traffic and a restaurant with sidewalk seating directly across from the mural. Lake Hiawatha is located two blocks south of the mural site, of which the community, city and park service are attempting to address toxic health issues of the lake due to runoff. The mural design spotlighted through text and imagery—succeeding in designing public art for social change.