Community Arts

Goal 1: To support poets in the creation of new work by commissioning 10 diverse poets to write a poem inspired by the long light of summer and the current events that they want to struggle with or celebrate. We were successful in commissioning 10 new poems from powerful poets. It is exciting to ask poets to write new poems specifically for this event because the poets can create really relevant new work that grapples with the current news. For example poet Sun Yung Shin created an erasure poem from a New York Times article about the shooting in Orlando. This allows the event to be a place where not only can people luxuriate in community, but they can also process/express their feelings about very current issues. 2: To strengthen community ties by offering a free, bi-lingual unique event during our precious summer season that allows people to be fed good food and beautiful language. Our Spanish speaking poetry reader was wonderful and partnered with several poets whose poems she had received translations for and walked around with them, allowing the poetry to go back and forth from English to Spanish. This was a treat for everyone, regardless of what language they spoke/understood. 3) To celebrate the powerful voices of racially, culturally, intergenerational, local poets while giving them an opportunity to witness and support each other’s work. We had a diverse group of poets who not only had meaningful exchanges with attendees but also stopped to listen to each other's poems, allowing them to connect with one another and be inspired by each other's work. All of them asked to do this event again next year! 4) To highlight the talents of local bakers. The pies! We had 30 pies that each had a distinct personality and flavor of their very own. A few of the pie makers are wanting to start their own pie making business and they were able to network and get future customers! 4) To stretch poets and audiences comfort zones by presenting poems in new ways that breaks down barriers, inspiring conversation and connection. This year, all of the poets commented on how many in-depth conversations poets had with attendees about the subject matter in their poems. To design an event that encourages diverse community members to interact meet each other. We had several people write in our reflections book that they made new connections and met up with old neighbors or were introduced to new ones. We believe this particular goal is the one this event succeeds at consistently. Once again this year we had a beautifully diverse audience/participant base. However, we were missing people who spoke Spanish as their first language. We created a postcard in English and Spanish and truly made the event a bi-lingual event, translating the poems into Spanish. We reached out to key leaders in the Latino organizing community through the Neighborhood Association, Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization, Alondra Cano's office, and other individual community organizers to let them know about the event and also sent out a Spanish email blast. We will continue to make this event a bi-lingual event and continue to build relationships with Latino/Spanish speaking residents year after year. We were able to make this event accessible to all ages and physical abilities and celebrated and welcomed a very diverse group of participants. 200 people attended. Audience and poet surveys were extremely positive and also reflected evidence that people are beginning to see this as part of their annual traditions and look forward to it year after year.