Community Arts

Below are the goals we established for PorchFest and how we believe we achieved them: 1) Provides a performance opportunity for local emerging and established artists. We had 21 groups participate this year with a combination of emerging and established. All of the groups live, play, or work within five miles of the festival. Because of the diverse array of musicians, dance groups, and spoken word groups, each artist performed for new audiences, increasing their exposure to future fans and also meeting other musicians who shared their community-based values. Something we will change/add in the future is working with more curators. We would like to have 4 - one for each porch. This will help us bring in more new artists as well as reach more community members. 2) Increases access to the arts through music and poetry: We believe that traditional barriers to arts participation include difficulty in traveling to an arts event or venue, cost, or lack of family-friendly atmosphere that allows families to experience art together. Porchfest addresses all of these barriers by having an event that starts at 4 pm (allowing families with younger children to participate), that has no costs or fees involved, and that takes place in the streets where people live and can walk to experience. Something to add for next year is to continue to get more input from community members in general for the event. 3) Works to build connection among neighbors across perceived lines of gender, age, race/culture, and ability: This is a huge area of success for Porchfest, specifically with the artists-audience connection. We have a great diversity of bands/musical genres, people can walk down two blocks and hear four different types of music. We had participating musicians from the GLBT, African-American, Latino/a, Native American, White, Mixed, differently abled communities and more. Audience participation is high for families, elders, inter-generational access. To improve in future years: reaching Immigrant populations who live close, people who aren’t on certain social media circles, working with curators from missing audience groups. The diversity of the neighborhoods is represented through the musicians, and there is still work to be done with the audience participation. The successful piece of Porchfest 2016 was the participation of families and neighbors, the inter-generational participation, and a new partnership with Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association and Pillsbury House and Theatre. We increased our outreach this year with bi-lingual fliers and information in the neighborhood publications. We also had one new curator – a community member and previous Porchfest musician, Carlos Lumbi. The shared curation was a successful collaboration. We recognize the name carries a certain connotation with it of a more white-demographic, blue-grassy vibe. We notice that as new people experience Porchfest each year, they are surprised at the musical diversity – the audience demographics have been slowly but steadily shifting towards greater representation of the neighborhood demographics. This is something we will continue to work towards in marketing and during the event. Visions for the future include arriving at four curators. Also, we hope to increase opportunities for new, emerging, local food vendors to use Porchfest as a jumping off point. We will continue and deepen our partnership with Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association as a way to reach more of the local community members. To paraphrase Thomas X, Porchfest artist: This is what’s possible when we believe anything is possible. We are creating the community we know is possible and reclaiming our streets and neighborhoods. September is perfect for this event: a final celebration of summer and a transition into the fall. We have witnessed that Porchfest is inspiration for others to host events in their neighborhoods.