Community Arts

With such vision in mind, Sidewalk Arts Project has successfully completed as a summer-long outdoor Arts Learning and Street Arts project on around Broadway and Lyndale corridor in North Minneapolis. Led by established Hmong Artist Yang Yang and her 10 young artists have transformed the Broadway into arts space with Stenciled Arts and Hmong Patterns. The project is designed to mold messages and to provoke discussion around Arts and immigration settlement in North Minneapolis. Sidewalk Arts Project aims to enable immigrant/refugee youth, aged between 14-17 years old, to ACCESS traditional visual arts reflecting through stencil arts design/painting techniques to articulate historical and cultural concerns, and to reveal stories through Community Engagement process, that are personal to immigrant/refugees; yet so common in everyone and everyday life. This year we focused on the Hmong refugee experience. The Project has utilized the unexpected public spaces, such as sidewalks to activate North Minneapolis with art and energy. The project has split into 2 parts. In the first part – the first 6 weeks, youth has participated in one day a week for graphic design trainings to build solid two-dimensional arts skills and storytelling methods, learning different approaches to drawing with Minnesota based artists Yang Yang. Youth then collected Hmong traditional patterns and icons from Hmong elders. In the second part for the remaining 3 weeks, youth have participated in an intensive community outreach with stencil arts printing at North Minneapolis Sidewalks during weekends (7/30, 8/19, and 8/27), and youth have make collaborative designs/patterns, these Street Arts have beautified the neighborhoods with artistic design patterns. Our project has successfully increased participation by eliminating some fairly standards barriers ---arts class cost, lack of communal arts experience and transportation. Through our project, Hmong youth have opportunities to create the new bicultural arts - integrating the Hmong traditional patterns and Western graphic designs into their creations, additionally we have increased constituent influence and ownership through the street outreach to neighbors. The learning accumulated to the Street Arts Events, with more than 500 audiences the day of creation, and more than 2,000 audience over a 2-weeks period. All Planning Committee members and artists have focused on outreach and audience development process to support ACCESS for all people. Pathway Learning Center has reached out to the Hmong community and North Minneapolis residents; postcards sent around Metro areas and flyers to Minneapolis public school students. Our target participants are at-risk, low-income youth with special focus on Hmong refugee youth 14-17 years old. Besides young artists, our project has also successfully attracted – low-income North Minneapolis residents – to share/exchange cultural heritages through arts. We have successfully outreached to the intended communities, roughly estimated about 50% are African American audiences; 20% are Asian Americans; 20% are Caucasians and 10% are other ethnicity groups. Sidewalk Arts Project has successfully hosted a series of activities for the target participants and audiences, which included: Part 1: April - May, 2016, ongoing Community Engagement and Finalize the themes and youth participants, and secured the Sidewalk Arts usage agreements with the FLOW and the City. Part 2: Summer 2016, Mid-June to end July for 1 day a week for two-dimensional drawing and graphic design instructions for the youth, with Lead Artist Yang Yang. Part 3: Summer 2016 – July 30th Sidewalk Arts Project presented at the FLOW as a kickoff event at the Broadway and Lyndale. Youth has learnt mural painting techniques and storytelling methods following the “Comprehensive Arts Learning” model to address issues in their Hmong Community, establish an ALTERNATIVE PLATFORM for self-expression in a collaborative learning environment, and help youth and teaching artists gain creative, conceptual and professional arts skills. Sidewalk Arts Project supports a collaborative learning environment consisting of Minnesota-based teaching artists, for youth and adults, which may not be accessible due to economic barriers to build and strengthen creative and conceptual skills. This structure allows participants and teaching artists to build relationships beyond the student/teacher dynamic and provides for all participants to become learners and teachers to each other with a unified learning goal – to use their artistic talents as motifs to address social or cultural issues in their mural paintings. Through in-depth learning and community engagement, our project provides artists with the space and time to challenge their established ideas, move beyond their best work to investigate their next work. Additionally, the Sidewalk Arts Project, has: Taught transferrable skills to make youth more employable; Engaged artists across generations in a collaborative effort to create a vibrant place that speaks to the culture of the Hmong in North Side; Built an attractive connection between the North Side and urban arts that improves walk-ability and make the area more attractive to developers; Built the capacity of the Hmong artists to teach Asian American Arts and share the community history. We have evaluated the success through 1) Reaching Target Numbers (10 young artists) and the Quality of the Street Arts events (with 100% satisfaction rate with FLOW review), and 2) the Quality of Youth Creations to communicate their cultural heritages, and their growing up experience through design. Youth have also expressed the comments and suggestions for future program design.