Community Arts

We definitely achieved our artistic goals - we had community members sharing their stories, weighing in on the artistic depiction of the symbols of those stories, painting the mural, and demonstrating pride in the accomplishment through verbal statements throughout the process. What worked well was drawing the symbols from the stories, and attracting painters, especially when the mural began to take shape. The youth were particularly engaged in the process, participating and showing delight in their assistance with making the image take shape. What didn't work so well was our partnership with the apartment management - they did not assist with recruitment to the level they promised and did not seem willing (as they had said they would be) to provide our organizers with access to their facilities for our own recruitment. So recruitment happened in a less systematic way than we had hoped. We also discovered that in the Somali community art projects are felt to be for young people, and not something that adults do, so having adult supervisors of children participating was a great struggle. Our older youth, who were to assist with this were more interested in painting themselves than in supervising younger children as they painted. Bottom line is that the project involved far more staff and artist time to supervise than we anticipated. In addition, we had a change-over in our staff (not the artist) working on the project that was anticipated. However, what was not anticipated was the impact this would have on our recruiting, especially in light of the lack of assistance from the area management at the site. The weather this summer was another major challenge. When painting days were scheduled, too often they had to be canceled due to weather. This affected our timeline, which then ran into conflicts with the artist's and staff time constraints. But the surface was perfect for the project, its location made it very visible to passers-by, who commented extremely positively, sent children to participate, and in some instances came to paint themselves. People were proud, and the youth were EXTREMELY proud, of the design and the beauty of the final project. As a first project of its kind in our area, this project will act as a spark to the imagination of other neighbors. In subsequent projects, we will allow more time for completion, we make sure that there is more buy-in at the get-go, and we will include all levels of people in the planning to assure that there are no logistical surprises as we move forward. The overall premise and the ultimate outcome, however, were dynamite!! We successfully met our goals for participation although we would have liked to have doubled or tripled the participation on the design end of the work. We had almost 100 people participating in design and painting, and 40 people at the celebration. Again, we also found that for people new to art projects such as this, neighbors had to see the mural taking shape to actually commit to participating in the painting. Once that happened, however, they grew from merely curious to active participants. The artist and our staff were good at drawing people in, accepting them where they were in feeling comfortable with the arts, and letting them explore the possibilities. We drew a broader range of people than we expected from the neighborhood, and not just from the apartments, which was helpful in building a broader sense of community. But we had fewer older adult Somalis and other East Africans participating as a result of preconceptions from their cultures about who art activities are designed for - children, not adults. That we drew Asian and white participants was a positive thing, because it brought African immigrants, African Americans, Asian Americans and white folks together to work on something they could all take pride in. Our outreach efforts certainly resulted in diversity, but if our outreach partners had participated more fully, our overall numbers could have been much greater. We were quite clear on expectations from the beginning about this partnership responsibility, but getting it in writing and having continuing face-to-face meetings would have helped. The fact that we had our youth group doing some recruiting, that we were in a very public place along a public thoroughfare, and that the work took place in the summer when families were enjoying a range of cross-generational activities all made the project accessible and attractive. The fact that the design was so dynamic, colorful and enticing also helped. The symbols spoke to everyone. mural design from stories - "I am amazed the artist could capture everything we talked about and make something so unified and beautiful", "you all are doing great work - keep it up - this neighborhood really needs this!" complaint "why didn't you do the whole wall??" 100 part and 40 people at party (cold day in October!). 75% people of color, mostly African-American and African immigrants. Over 50% young people 7 to 26.