Community Arts

ALLY was able to achieve all its artistic goals of: Serving 33 program participants and availing them the opportunity to create art in an intentional and supportive cohort, and developing skills defined as participants' art project planning, management, completion and exhibition in one or more public events. The project was not able to realize as many project hours as originally anticipated due to scheduling conflicts between ALLY program participant schedules and the COMPAS Artist in Residence schedule. ALLY found that late spring to summer sessions may not be as well attended or as easily coordinated as fall, winter, to early spring sessions. However, the project's soft skills development benchmarks were met for each student artist, and the modules 1-3 for the Finding True North, Artist in Residence Program were achieved. The strengths of the artistic process were: working with a COMPAS teaching artist, having two days for the Artist in Residence "in-house" as the population of ALLY artists who were served for this session were individuals who were employed in the community or on work crews; having two days weekly to achieve maximum participation were necessary; this is something we had learned in the 2015 sessions, which continues to work moving forward. The artist process was based on the learning of three new techniques in self expressive art, thus the theme of the session: Finding True North. ALLY student artists related to the theme because most of them had just completed or were in the midst of Personal Empowerment Training being offered at ALLY People Solutions in collaboration with Twin Cities Rise. The theme and modules included self-portraits, stencils, street art and graffiti, which was especially well received with this spring-early summer session cohort who were 50% younger and more diverse ethnically than the student artists who had attended the Allies in Art and Artful Employment pilot project the previous two sessions. The next session that ALLY will propose will comprise of many of the same aspects and assets with which we're working now. COMPAS has been an excellent partner, hosting our Artist in Residence sessions in our dedicated Arts and Cultural space on the Green Line, maximizes participant inclusion and participation, and we will again host two sessions weekly in order to coordinate with schedules and maximize the experience for each participant. ALLY was successful in reaching out intended community of participants and artists. ALLY had secured a COMPAS Artist in Residence and an associate of hers as soon as the grant was awarded. Katrina had worked with ALLY in previous Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Artist in Residence proposals, and she along with her associate were very well received by the ALLY program participants. Program participants who have disabilities received instruction from the Artist in Residence over the course of 14 weeks. They were diverse in racial and ethnic composition and were diverse in their artistic goals, interests and abilities. 1. All 33 Artists had individualized goals to work on. The Artist in Residence provided progress reports on each of their goals upon the completion of each of the three modules. 2. An Art wall was created at ALLY's corporate office and has been on display since July. 3. Approximately 900 people have viewed the art at four different events. 300 more are expected at a final event in November.