Arts Activities Support

The Driveway Tour had another successful season, performing 106 times and reaching around 7000 audience members in a wide range of communities and neighborhoods. As one of our hosts put it "So friendly and accepting :)" The 2016 Driveway Tour had many artistic goals. Most important of these was providing a valuable and enriching experience for communities by working with local partners to host an inclusive event around a professionally produced puppetry performance. To achieve this goal, we cast three teams of puppeteers, each cast performing one of the three puppet shows. The Driveway Tour Performed 106 times this summer in the Twin Cities Metro area and even traveling as far out as Red Wing. Our community partners included both experienced and first time hosts. Feedback from hosts was conducted via an online survey was very positive. Specific quotes include "It was the highlight of the summer" and "There was a grandmother who laughed so hard and loud during the entire performance, she really got a lot more than she was expecting." This summer we reached a total of 6923 audience members with at 106 Driveway Tour performances. We unfortunately did not reach our audience goal (10,000), we did perform slightly more than our goal for number of performances (105). Part of our lower attendance was a larger number of show cancellations than in previous years. These were due to a number of reasons, but primarily because of weather or other unforeseen events. In the future we will try to work with hosts to have additional contingency plans available so that the show can go on. This summer also included a large number of first time hosts, who often have a hard time attracting audiences in their first year, when there is not an established tradition. We will also continue our efforts to help our hosts spread the word and publicize their events. Another goal of the program is to create a professional quality performance while training and developing the skills of young artists. We originally estimated that we would train between 3-6 performers this summer, and we exceeded this goal and trained 5 new performers and further developed the skills of 3 returning puppeteers. These returning performers took on the additional leadership role of being a show manager, handling the day to day logistics and host relationships at performances. We received the feedback about our performer teams "Everyone was really impressed with the professionalism as well as how engaging it was for children and adults!" As in previous years the Driveway Tour succeeded in its goal of reaching audience members brought together through the efforts of our community partners and hosts in local performance locations i.e. backyards, schools, libraries, etc. In 2016 we reached audiences that were approximately 21% people of color. This percentage is very similar to that of previous years. This year also featured the show The Adventures of Juan Bobo, which is performed half in Spanish and half in English. This show is often requested to visit communities with a large Spanish speaking population, while still being accessible to families who speak any language. Some feedback we received about Juan Bobo included, "We loved the bilingual aspect of our performance." and "It's great because it gets the kids outside and involved in the story, and we loved having Juan Bobo in our largely Hispanic neighborhood." Also this summer we saw a change in our host composition as we had a much larger percentage of first-time hosts apply and bring shows to their neighborhoods. This is very exciting and will hopefully indicate a new generation of hosts starting a tradition in their communities as is common among our more established hosts. As some new hosts stated "Great opportunity to meet our neighbors, as we were new to the neighborhood." and "This performance was part of our first potluck event ever." One exciting aspect of this summer was our Ice Cream Social. Each summer Open Eye hosts a community Ice Cream Social at our physical location at 24th and Portland in South Minneapolis to engage with our own neighborhood. This event features free ice cream and games as well as performances of all three Driveway Tour Shows. This year we had attendance numbers, upwards of 400 people in our small theatre. Additionally we were very successful in bringing in people from our diverse neighborhood, with about 50% of the attendees being people of color. We will continue our efforts and outreach to hosts who identify as people of color and hopefully continue to increase opportunities for new and diverse communities to engage with our work.